Can’t Say Nothing Nice? Say Nothing At All…
My original intention was to write a quick review of the demo to “Left Behind – Eternal Forces“, as I was challenged to do by a friend. And a whole bunch of bloggers were challenged to do by some PR guy working for the developers. I played the game for a while a few weeks back for this very purpose. But it’s late, and if I don’t do this now, I just know I’ll never do it at all, so all you get is this:
The initial and pleasant surprise of the quite attractive (if embarassingly one-note and evangelical) presentation of the game took me about half an hour into this (unforgivably buggy) demo before I came to the conclusion that, if the developers are right, God doesn’t think his children deserve innovative, or even passable, gameplay… in fact, the almighty clearly believes that original sin denies the kids any right to intuitive or consistently working control systems, graphics that allow you to see what you’re actually doing, or any gaming advances that have happened to 3d, top-down resource management or adventure games since around 1992.
This game is clearly aimed at either the humourless and converted, or the naive and malleable, and the developers seem to have decided that none of these people will have ever played a half-decent PC game before, but if there’s one thing this atheist believes, it’s that just because an audience is captive or retarded, doesn’t mean they should be short changed. IT JUST AIN’T RIGHT!
I know “fundamentalism” is two thirds “mentalism”, but that’s no excuse for “Left Behind – Eternal Forces” to skimp so totally on the “fun”.
Jonathan Hutson
Last November, when Left Behind Games launched its convert-or-die videogame, its stock traded at a peak of $7.44 a share. RedChip issued a “strong buy” recommendation, forecasting that within 18 months, the share price would soar to $18.70. Really? As of March 21, reports Talk to Action, you could buy a share for a quarter — and have change left over.
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Nicolas Papaconstantinou
That’s interesting background, thanks Jonathan.
Difficult to believe from my posts, I’ve resisted the urge to come down on these guys as hard as my natural instincts wanted me to, because people have told me that grown-ups use restraint and I figured it was something I could try. And because I genuinely believe that just because someone’s beliefs are naive and occassionally repugnant, doesn’t mean they can’t have talent, I wouldn’t wish failure on them.
But there really was no excuse for a game this bad, so I’m glad they have struggled. It’s fittingly Darwinian, and can only mean better religious fundamentalist games in the future.
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Cousin George
I for one, look forward to better religious fundamentalist games. After all, the devil shouldn’t get all the good tunes.
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Steev Bishop
Things were worse once. Those crafty Christians used to create UNLICENSED NES games~! And of course, they were just as excellent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkNvQYiM6bw
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Nicolas Papaconstantinou
George – My sentiments exactly.
Steev – Glad to see you, dude… The linked video looked awesome, but I’m going to have to watch the rest later. And will probably be astonished!
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