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Left Behind: The Game - I reviewed it so you never have to see it.
Okay, I was talking about this game the last weekend I was hanging out with Rym and Scott.
For those unfamiliar, the Left-Behind series of books about the revelation actually happening. Billions up and vanish suddenly leaving behind those who are "unsaved". Now, I actually thought it could be an interesting premise for a book and even a game. However, the books are generally preachy, stupid and terrible. For some reason, my hopes for the game were for it to be not-terrible. I don't know why I thought this.
Anyhow, I heard the game was coming out and that there was a demo was available, so I decided to download it and give it a spin. I CAN NOT ephasize just how bad this game is not only as a game, but the messages that the game puts forth are not only stupid, but harmful to humanity in general.
The game itself takes place in cities around the world. You start off as some guy back from South America to New York to find some guy he heard about who might be able to explain the dissappearenes. Graphically, the game is mediocre as best, and has lots of problems with camera angles. Part of this is because they attempted to build a city to scale with huge skyscrapers. This makes the units you control painfuly tiny and hard to select.
While I couldn't stomach more than about half an hour of the game because of stupid game mechanics (like the fact you constantly have to keep telling your followers to pray if you are playing 'the good guys' or else they abandon you, [fuckers], impossible-to-figure-out tech trees, and the fact that anyone who is 'not of the faith' not only instantly attacks you even if they are not part of the 'bad guys' force, but they rape you regardless of the guns and shit you have) it's the little things in this game that worry me immensely.
Every person (EVERY person) has a backstory. They typically involve people being HORRIBLE people and then trying to turn their lives around bevore 'the revelation'. Many stories emphasize that the people are essentially good people who lived good lives, but fuck them! They weren't evangelical christians so they get screwed along with everyone else. Other sob stories are eerily similar to many bogus proslytizing stories you'be probably heard before, so I won't bother to go into them. There are other minute details that are worrisome, like the forces of the anti-crhist (who thankfully don't have to keep praying) that are called the Global Protection Initiatve. Hmm....seems like a shot at the UN to me.
Also, the voicework is disturbing. When you selevt one person, it's fine, even two people, you get both voices saying the same thing. But when you select a whole mess of units, the unison they speak in is creepy and robotic. It occured to me while giving orders to the rightous peons (who do NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING without your direction) that this is the way the left-behind people want believers to act.
As you convert people to your cause, you can train them to be soldiers or workers or whatever (supposedly, I was unable to achieve this though I really really tried). But here's where it gets odd...women convertees CAN NOT advance to anything except medical. They can be healers. Not soldiers, builders, or converters. Also, there are NO MINORITIES. At all. This means either the left-behind people think very highly of every other race but the caucasians and assume they all got sucked up into the sky, or they are not aware that New York City (or the rest of the world)contains people who are not white.
I mentioned that you have to pray to keep your faith levels up or your fickle convertees simply leave (fuckers). Do you know what the biggest threat to your faith levels is? Satan? No. Doing evil deeds or killing people? No.
It's hip hop/rap music. I swear to fuck that's what it is. As your people walk down the street, you'll pass by imprompteu street parties featuring punk-kids who start lowering your faith levels by standing near them. Wait, it gets better. When you select any unit, it gives a little blurb about the person or vehicle in the bottom of the screen. It says in this box for the punk-kids (and I shit you not) "What.....what...c'mon.....yeah....say what...yeah...c'mon" and then a blurb about how it's lowering your faith levels. HOLY SHIT. I can not believe how bigoted and subliminaly racist this game is.
If you still don't believe me, go here http://www.leftbehindgames.com/ and download it for yourself.
I can't wait to see the spectacular failure this game will be. Maybe E.T. will have a friend burried next to it out in the Nevada desert.
For those unfamiliar, the Left-Behind series of books about the revelation actually happening. Billions up and vanish suddenly leaving behind those who are "unsaved". Now, I actually thought it could be an interesting premise for a book and even a game. However, the books are generally preachy, stupid and terrible. For some reason, my hopes for the game were for it to be not-terrible. I don't know why I thought this.
Anyhow, I heard the game was coming out and that there was a demo was available, so I decided to download it and give it a spin. I CAN NOT ephasize just how bad this game is not only as a game, but the messages that the game puts forth are not only stupid, but harmful to humanity in general.
The game itself takes place in cities around the world. You start off as some guy back from South America to New York to find some guy he heard about who might be able to explain the dissappearenes. Graphically, the game is mediocre as best, and has lots of problems with camera angles. Part of this is because they attempted to build a city to scale with huge skyscrapers. This makes the units you control painfuly tiny and hard to select.
While I couldn't stomach more than about half an hour of the game because of stupid game mechanics (like the fact you constantly have to keep telling your followers to pray if you are playing 'the good guys' or else they abandon you, [fuckers], impossible-to-figure-out tech trees, and the fact that anyone who is 'not of the faith' not only instantly attacks you even if they are not part of the 'bad guys' force, but they rape you regardless of the guns and shit you have) it's the little things in this game that worry me immensely.
Every person (EVERY person) has a backstory. They typically involve people being HORRIBLE people and then trying to turn their lives around bevore 'the revelation'. Many stories emphasize that the people are essentially good people who lived good lives, but fuck them! They weren't evangelical christians so they get screwed along with everyone else. Other sob stories are eerily similar to many bogus proslytizing stories you'be probably heard before, so I won't bother to go into them. There are other minute details that are worrisome, like the forces of the anti-crhist (who thankfully don't have to keep praying) that are called the Global Protection Initiatve. Hmm....seems like a shot at the UN to me.
Also, the voicework is disturbing. When you selevt one person, it's fine, even two people, you get both voices saying the same thing. But when you select a whole mess of units, the unison they speak in is creepy and robotic. It occured to me while giving orders to the rightous peons (who do NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING without your direction) that this is the way the left-behind people want believers to act.
As you convert people to your cause, you can train them to be soldiers or workers or whatever (supposedly, I was unable to achieve this though I really really tried). But here's where it gets odd...women convertees CAN NOT advance to anything except medical. They can be healers. Not soldiers, builders, or converters. Also, there are NO MINORITIES. At all. This means either the left-behind people think very highly of every other race but the caucasians and assume they all got sucked up into the sky, or they are not aware that New York City (or the rest of the world)contains people who are not white.
I mentioned that you have to pray to keep your faith levels up or your fickle convertees simply leave (fuckers). Do you know what the biggest threat to your faith levels is? Satan? No. Doing evil deeds or killing people? No.
It's hip hop/rap music. I swear to fuck that's what it is. As your people walk down the street, you'll pass by imprompteu street parties featuring punk-kids who start lowering your faith levels by standing near them. Wait, it gets better. When you select any unit, it gives a little blurb about the person or vehicle in the bottom of the screen. It says in this box for the punk-kids (and I shit you not) "What.....what...c'mon.....yeah....say what...yeah...c'mon" and then a blurb about how it's lowering your faith levels. HOLY SHIT. I can not believe how bigoted and subliminaly racist this game is.
If you still don't believe me, go here http://www.leftbehindgames.com/ and download it for yourself.
I can't wait to see the spectacular failure this game will be. Maybe E.T. will have a friend burried next to it out in the Nevada desert.
Comments
Yea, Artboy covers most of my thoughts on this "game" except I feel it's going to be sorta a success. Sorta the way postal sold enough copies to make a Postal 2. If you get enough controversy behind something even if it's crappy people will still go and check it out. Kinda like how Artboy and I downloaded the demo. When otherwise we wouldn't have even gone near it if it had not been talked about.
Finally I found the favor text to be the funniest things in the game. Every unit you come across has a "Tell life story" button which brings you to a large box of story that goes through how they feel from grace, saw people around them disappear and decided to come back into the fold (in the case of the "good" guys) or fell into evil (the "bad" guys) or were indecisive ("neutral/conversion ready").
I feel just for the sheer crazy view this game presents you should at least download the demo.. (and cost them money for bandwidth!) and see what a crazy racist bigoted crappy game this is and wonder how the moderately sane Christians will react to it.