Re: Keeping your brain in shape Over 50's

Alas Alan despite good efforts to stay fit, years of pain can drag a person slowly down and finally the brain can be dragged down with the years of surviving it, then a small problem for one person can become a large and anxious problem for another.
Then others breeze through life.

Re: Keeping your brain in shape Over 50's

Total thumbs up from me here !

PORTAL on the XBOX is one of the best thinking puzzling games out there and is available these days for about £7 as a compilation called "The Orange Box" which has the brilliant game Half-Life 2 thrown in.

Older people often deride consoles because they seem to take up so much time of kids but they can be great tools for keeping the mind and reflexes occupied.

I would buy an XBOX 360 just to play the original PORTAL game. You could pick up both for peanuts these days.

For those clueless about what we are talking about, Portal is a beautiful "First Person" game set in a futuristic experimental facility where humans are being held and trained by being put into rooms with various tricks and traps and devices which they have to master in order to be able to escape the room and move onto the next. This is not a Tetris or other flat screen style puzzle game. It is a fully immersive game like any other console game where your character moves about freely. You are aided by a special device called a Portal Gun which can shoot portals onto a wall, floor, ceiling or other flat surface. It can create an entry and exit type of portal. Once created you can walking into the entry portal and pop out of the exit portal.

Thus for example, if you find yourself beneath a high ledge that you can't climb up, and the room exit door is on that ledge, you can shoot an entry portal on the wall next to you and an exit portal up on the ledge, then walk through to get yourself up there.

What makes this game brilliant is not only the long array of increasingly interesting and devious puzzle rooms, but the running story and the comical and entertaining voice of the computer who runs the experimental facility. The even better twist to the entire thing is that just as you think you have reached the last of the experimental puzzle rooms you find yourself in the back rooms and corridors of the facility and have to then escape the entire place. Now you are no longer being controlled by the computer but have to use all the training skills and tricks you used in the rooms to help you escape. Suffice to say the game is ground-breaking and utterly compelling in every aspect. Adults of all ages will have great fun figuring out ways to get through each room.
The sequel, Portal 2 is even better. Both games are unique and playable over and over and over.

You can get a new XBOX 360 for about £70-£80 or a preowned one for maybe £50. The Orange Box game can be picked up for about £5-£7. Small price to pay for a lot of thinking fun and entertainment. No brainer imo.

Re: Keeping your brain in shape Over 50's

I watch some of the quiz shows but by no means all. I do some cross words and other similar sorts of games, and do on line games of scrabble. I also have a mind training ap I put on my Kindle which has all types of games to do and gives a score of how good or bad you are compared to other people of the same age. Mostly I do ok, and over the time have learnt my weaker areas. I am better with remembering words than faces for instance.

Re: Keeping your brain in shape Over 50's

I have to say that, in Portal, I have sometimes found my way out of a room without knowing how. Made a portal somewhere, went through it and Hey Presto! I suppose the only exercise my brain got on that room was wondering what I did.

I do jig-saws occasionally too. Not timed though. I like to take my time. I know about online jig-saws but prefer to have a jig-saw game installed on the computer. The one I've been using for quite a few years is called 'BrainsBreaker'. Not free but good. Jig-saws can be made out of photos or computer screenshots, even a Portal room.

The 'Hidden Object' games I mentioned can be a useful source of jig-saw pictures. Here are a couple of screenshots from such games. They have plenty of detail in them and at a decent size, can be made into puzzles of many pieces. 350 is about right for my 24" monitor but there can be less or more as preferred.

Re: Keeping your brain in shape Over 50's

I love the 'Hidden Objects' games, mart. Especially the ones that move the objects around so they are not all in the same place next you play!

Re: Keeping your brain in shape Over 50's

I had one like that. The only trouble was it eventually wanted me to buy coins with real money and so I didn't keep it installed. It was good while on the computer though because its was different to the Hidden Object games I have.

With these, if the same scene is used further on in the game (doesn't happen often), the picture is exactly the same but different objects have to be found.

Mrs mart likes the HO games too. She plays them on her iPad but with the screen being smaller, it can be more difficult to find the hidden objects. Maybe that would mean even more exercise for the brain but not so good for the eyes.

Re: Keeping your brain in shape Over 50's

Jeez, I haven't even thought about doing that. I'm glad I can string a few meaningless words together.

Re: Keeping your brain in shape Over 50's

I think anyone who knows advanced Algebra deserves to live forever, well done Alan, I could never make head nor tail of Algebra.
Sometimes I play darts and dominoes when I'm in the pub, some reading at home but not as much as I used to, working at the bench keeps my mind active and alert, and thats about it.

Re: Keeping your brain in shape Over 50's

Just posting,reading,and trying to comprehend some of the stuff on OFF,is enough to keep My auld brain in good nick I think...That and quiz shows on TV,reading everything,including the backs of foods stuff to see how much sugar and gunk is in it, :~(....exercising My body regularly helps too as it gives Me the 'feel good' factor...and not forgetting starting a wee 'rumble in the jungle' on 'ere occasionally...All good for the old grey matter ;~)

Re: Keeping your brain in shape Over 50's

I love hidden object games, text twist and other word games, I also read a lot, helping people fill in various forms occasionally mangles my brain, Spanish lessons definitely mangle my brain, as for Alan and his calculus, the mere mention of it and my brain completely shuts down.