First-person shooter, real-time strategy, sports, action, puzzle. These are just a few of the genres that every videogame falls under. Sometimes, however, these don’t tell the whole story. To call Katamari Damacy just a “puzzle game” is to overlook its charming ridiculousness. To call Zombie Nation a “shooter” ignores the fact that the point is to control an inexplicably large, disembodied zombie-head that destroys cities while simultaneously saving the people whose city you are in the process of destroying.
Genre labels have their purpose, but sometimes they overlook important quirks. That’s where I come in.
This month’s Heap:
Part 2 of 2
This month’s adjective: It’s still Bibletasticness. The Bibletasticness score does not factor in to the overall score, but it will let you know how closely these games follow Biblical scripture and how far down your throat it will be shoved.
So here we are with the second half of our look at religious games through the years. If you missed the last article, here’s a Quick Recap:
Bible Buffet
Inoffensive, wholesome fun an entire Christian family can enjoy, or propaganda sent from Beelzebub to promote morbid obesity? The point is moot since the game is as fun as passing a kidney stone either way.
Fun: 2
Novelty: 3
Audio: 2
Visuals: 2
Controls: 4
Replay Value: 2
Overall: 2.66
Bibletasticness: 4
King of Kings
You may have noticed last month that I forgot to include a score for the visuals. Long story short: The visuals are sub-par, the music is ridiculous and the game is an affront to everything good in the world.
Fun: 1
Novelty: 1
Audio: 1
Visuals: 3
Controls: 2
Replay Value: 1
Overall: 1.5
Bibletasticness: 7
The Bible Game
Imagine if your local church had a gameshow for kids hosted by an overzealous youth minister. Omit the bonus round where he touches all the kids in the no-no spot, and you’ve got The Bible Game. It’s about half as fun as the game’s name is clever.
Fun: 3
Novelty: 5
Audio: 1
Visuals: 3
Controls: 5
Replay Value: 2
Overall: 3.16
Bibletasticness: 7
Left Behind: Eternal Forces
Not a good RTS by any means, but compared to its competition so far this piece of garbage is looking like filet mignon.
Fun: 3.5
Novelty: 5
Audio: 2
Visuals: 3
Controls: 5
Replay Value: 3
Overall: 3.58
Bibletasticness: 8
OK! Let’s plod forward and find out who’s crowned the king of this terrible, terrible heap.
Spiritual Warfare (NES)
Upon playing this game you’d think that surely it’s a good Christian game. Much like with Bible Buffet, you’d be dead wrong. The point of this game is to convert evil Atheists—who are represented by such evil people as thugs, businessmen and old people—by tossing blessed fruit at them. Even though this may have all the earmarks of a game that closely follows the teachings of the Bible in that it’s boring, goofy and hostile to the beliefs of others, it has ignored a very important part of the Bible. Namely, the 8th commandment: Thou shalt not steal.
Simply put, this game is an obvious rip-off of The Legend of Zelda. However, please note that The Legend of Zelda is an amazingly complex game that requires the exploration of an intricate world, palaces and caves, fighting monsters and collecting hidden items. This game, on the other hand, has you tossing blessed fruits at people that magically convert them to Christianity, and detonate exploding buckets full of “God’s Wrath.”
Occasionally you will be subjected to—what else?—more Bible trivia. The difference between this game’s Bible trivia and all of the other games’ is that this game seems to understand the concept of positive reinforcement, since, after getting enough correct answers to the Bible trivia, you are rewarded with with the spinning of a creepy disembodied head’s bow tie. They tried, at least.
Not quite a replacement for Zelda. Hell, it’s not even a good replacement for The Legend of Kage, but, relatively speaking, it’s not that bad. At least it’s (badly) mimicking an old champ.
Fun: 3
Novelty: 1
Audio: 3
Visuals: 2
Controls: 4
Replay Value: 3
Overall: 2.66
Bibletasticness: 4
Exodus (NES)
In this maze-ish puzzle game we find Moses, inexplicably stuck underground, using the Word of God as a shovel. The point of the game is to traipse around underground and collect jarsmarked with an “M” while avoiding getting crushed by falling rocks or beaten up by satanish looking guys until the exit to the level appears. Just like the Bible stories of Moses tell us he did.
Fun: 1.5
Novelty: 2
Audio: 2
Visuals: 1.5
Controls: 4
Replay Value: 2
Overall: 2.16
Bibletasticness: 4
Joshua (NES)
Remember Exodus? Polish the graphics, add goofy synthesized voices and replace Moses with a lame bard, and you’ve got Joshua.
Fun: 1.5
Novelty: 1.5
Audio: 3
Visuals: 2
Controls: 4
Replay Value: 2
Overall: 2.33
Bibletasticness: 5
Bible Adventures (NES)
What’s worse than playing a game that sucks? Playing three games that suck.
You don’t really notice it when you’re reading the thing, but there are a lot of stories that involve carrying stuff in the Bible. Noah’s Ark, for example: Those animals didn’t get there by themselves. You play as Noah collecting all the world’s animals (six or so species—that’s close enough) and throwing them into your ark. He hides it well under his robes, but that Noah is one strong S.O.B. How strong could that old man be, you ask? Oh, strong enough to lift a few horses above his head! Yeah, how’s that shit grab you, smart guy?
The second game is Baby Moses. In this game you play as Jochebed, the mother of Moses, carrying him through the desert to safety from the evil Egyptians. You can toss Baby Moses at your enemies to your heart’s content; it doesn’t matter, however, because your enemies are invincible. Awesome.
David and Goliath is the last game in this trifecta of terrible. This game is very similar to the Noah’s Ark game in that it requires a lot of animal-carrying. In the beginning of the game you’ll find David being accosted by harmless woodland creatures. Eventually you get a sling and can fight guards (you can actually defeat these) and later, Goliath.
All of the games mentioned above play like Mario 2’s retarded cousin.
Fun: 1
Novelty: 1
Audio: 2
Visuals: 2
Controls: 1.5
Replay Value: 1
Overall: 1.41
Bibletasticness: 7
Sunday Funday (NES)
The saddest thing about Sunday Funday isn’t that the game sucks a bucket of asses. No, the saddest thing is that this game is nothing but a graphical hack of another game called Menace Beach that Color Dreams (the company that later became Wisdom Tree) decided was just too good to keep in the vault. What’s so sad about that, you ask? Imagine being the president of Color Dreams/Wisdom Tree and acknowledging that a game with a retarded storyline and a main character that moves like a crippled narwhal on a skateboard is your magnum opus.
Another strange thing about Sunday Funday/Menace Beach is that it made a lot more sense as a religious game before the graphic hack. Originally the final boss is a character named Demon Dan; in Sunday Funday, however, the final boss is a bear. Additionally, you fight plumbers that look like milkmen in the sewers, avoid floating clowns and defend against hostile, old, morbidly obese women all of whom are apparently trying to keep you from going to Sunday School. I’m not sure I understand this game’s choice of enemies.
Feeling badly about completely gypping their buyers, Wisdom Tree added two bonus games to Sunday Funday. The first is Fishfall. I’ll be honest with you—I haven’t played Fishfall since I began this column last month and I don’t remember anything about the game except that fish fall from the top of the screen and Thing from The Adams Family is on the bottom of the screen to catch them. Rather than make me go play this again, can we all just pretend that I did and verified what we all know: This game is a waste of time? Thanks.
4Him The Ride, however, is an experience I won’t soon forget in much the same way a Holocaust survivor wouldn’t forget their train ride to Bergen Belzen. This “game” isn’t just the combination of two things that shouldn’t go together; it’s the combination of three things that should never, ever, be put anywhere near each other: NES, Karaoke and Christian Contemporary music. Personally, I think Jagermeister, Ted Kennedy and a truck full of knives is a better combination than this garbage. The idea of singing Christian Contemporary karaoke on the NES doesn’t exactly strike me as a treat. In fact, I think I’d rather play Taboo: The Sixth Sense for a three-day long marathon while getting repeatedly kicked in the nuts by Shaquille O’neil wearing a shoe made of cheese graters.
Super Noah’s Ark 3D (SNES)
This game marks the most flagrant violation of the 8th Commandment of the all games reviewed by being nothing more than Wolfenstein 3D with a huge vagina.
Replace the Nazis with barnyard animals, guns and ammo with slingshots and fruit and BJ Blazkowicz with famed skeptic James Randi, and you’ve got yourself Super Noah’s Ark 3D. This game seems to be nothing more than a graphical hack, as the levels and gameplay seem to be exactly the same as Wolfenstein 3D. Along with stealing the entire game from Wolfenstein 3D this game also takes a page out of Spiritual Warfare’s crappy, crappy book by making the main character hurl fruit at his attackers. The blatancy of this game’s breaking of the 8th Commandment surely makes baby Jesus cry.
Fun: 3
Novelty: 2
Audio: 3
Visuals: 3
Controls: 3.5
Replay Value: 2
Overall: 2.75
Bibletasticness: 2
OK, finally, that’s it. That’s the end of this gigantic Heap. The next one will be shorter, I promise. Now, let’s see which of these games was the least horrible:
Left Behind: Eternal Forces
How great does a game have to be when a science-buff atheist names your game that insults atheists, blacks, women and science in general to be the best religious game out there? Well, the fact is that this game didn’t win the award because of its own outstanding merits—it won by default. It isn’t a good game at all, but when you’re given the choice between AIDS, cancer and gonorrhea, gonorrhea starts looking pretty damn great.
Congratulations, Left Behind. You are the gonorrhea of PC gaming.
