All Aboard The Jesus Train!

Well, yet again I had plans for today’s blog post…I was supposed to be drafting my first fantasy football team of the season, but NOOOOO. Seeing as the draft is set so stupidly early, the 2 bodies the league needed to join the enable the draft didn’t appear, so now the league is in limbo. Niiiiiice.In the interests of transparency I will say that I have had concerns about this league and the guy running it pretty much from the start. The fact he hasn’t addressed this debacle in any form anywhere on the forum where most of the members spend our time, or by emailing us, doesn’t exactly convince me that I was wrong in my original thinking.

Anyway, on to my writing for today, which will now take the form of another game review. This time it’s Left Behind : Tribulation Forces, I game I…errr…’obtained’.

Now, I went in to this fully expecting a craptastic game experience that I could laugh at and mock. I was in no way disappointed. I can also say that it is so entertainingly stupid that I would gladly fork over ten bucks, in the same way that I’ll happily drop a ten spot on a copy of Battlefield Earth.Now, you can play through the missions from both Trib. Forces (which I guess is based on the 2nd book of the surprisingly long book series…learn more about all that here if you really want) OR the first game, Eternal Forces. Huzzah, twice the fun!

Immediately upon loading I’m disappointed…I don’t see Kirk Cameron’s name anywhere on this damn thing! Yes, Kirk has become Captain Christian, and he says that the book series led him there. Hell, he’s IN the crappy movies. Actually, as a sidebar, in ‘researching’ (aka looking for more shit to make fun of) this I discovered Kirk…HAS A MINISTRY. Yes, you too can be preached to by Mike Seaver and some evangelist I had never heard of before named Ray Comfort. They have a website you NEED to go to (I cannot stress enough how much you NEED to go to this!) called The Way of the Master. Be ready for the introductory video! And definitely, DEFINITELY enjoy the others! Their ‘evidence’ and ‘reasoning’ behind being against evolution is utterly astounding in its hilarious vapidity. And watch as they interview/harangue people on the street (after setting up these man on the street moments with claims of talking to ‘experts’), all of whom have the same look on their face…Why the fuck is Mike Seaver talking to me, and why is he trying to convince me that evolution is bad and atheism is wrong?

Sorry about that, BACK TO THE GAME. So, no Mike Seaver voice acting…bit of a drawback. However, there IS acting. Every single stage has a video sequence as a lead in. Now, I don’t know if these were done for the game, or lifted from the existing movies (that would be my guess) but the performances given here are spellbinding. I’ve pretty harshly criticized Sofia Coppolla’s egregious sin against film that was her ‘performance’ in Godfather 3. Sofia, all is forgiven!

Basically, a year and a half after the ‘chosen’ are taken to heaven, mankind has united in a global community under Nicolae Carpathian (who spends his performance basically going “I’m not Satan…hey, not Satan…no Satan here! Oh, okay, I’m Satan.”) free from ‘the shackles of religion’ (pretty much a direct quote). This game makes a kick to the balls seem subtle by comparison.

Finally, the game starts. Think Syndicate…you, as the Tribulation Force, have to recruit neutrals at a faster rate than the bad guys. Oh, this is the best part…GUESS who the bad guys are. I’ll give you a minute…

Satan? Not really.

Uhhh…Muslims? Nope (though sorta)

Give up? The name of the ‘evil’ syndicate in this game…the Global Community Peacekeepers. Any game where Peacekeepers are BAD GUYS automatically gets about a bazillion fucking cool points!

So, you play the tutorials and learn to play. You start as a disciple…they’re the ‘recruiting’ class in the game. Recruitments consists of walking up to a random stranger and talking to them while waving your arms around. It sort of looks like what Jehovah’s Witnesses do, only on a one on one basis on the street, and they’re shaking around like a meth head. Eventually you succeed and the person says something like “Okay, sounds good.” or “You’ve got me!” If convincing these people that you’re right is this easy, why is there any fucking competition? Seems odds to me. Anyway, educate these people to become Builders/Soldiers/Musicians, etc. to your cause and spread out through the city, trying to stay one step ahead of those jackboot wearing peace types! Imagine all of this from a top down perspective, all of it recreated in a graphics engine circa 1994. Also, give it the most painfully horrific interface I have ever encountered. I suspect that successfully mastering this broken UI might be one of the trials that earns you brownie points with St. Peter.

On to the game! Okay, I’ve seen the intro movie to the first Eternal Forces level…now I begin. I’m some kid who flew home to New York City to help convert people to the side of Christ. Awesome. Actually, my goals for this stage are to find my buddy Brad, then meet some other guy at a church. That is actually the extent of my objectives instructions. Yeah, find 2 distinct people in a massive city, THAT’S not too nebulous a mission goal! And WHAT a cityscape they have created! A bunch of random buildings to either side of a street with a burnt out car on the side of the road. That’s it. Didn’t the intro to this shit say that it was a city teeming with life? Did they mean life at the microbial level??? Huh. Well, let’s walk a bit. What the…okay, someone’s yelling at me…oh, there they are. Some Mexican woman started screaming at me about staying away before I could even see her…okay, I guess it IS a fair representation of New York. Thanks for the nothing, senorita. Continue on…okay, now a homeless guy is warning me about some rock musicians and their guitars? Thanks, reject. Continue on…oh look, it’s the musician types. None of them can hear me because of the evils of their music, but every now and then some guitar noises play and these lines of light pass between them. Uh huh. Well, better turn to the South. Oh, some other person who just happens to be hanging out in the middle of the road warns me of ‘toughs’ ahead that…GASP…steal stuff! Doesn’t sound so bad. Uh oh…they have leather jackets. I have a sweater vest. And I’m beaten to death! Yay!

Okay, THAT didn’t go so well. I guess I’m supposed to pass by the evil rockers. So, here we go. So far so good…oh no…OH NO…guitar…uhhh…attack…? Quick, PRAY! Yes, that IS my character’s ‘special’. Good, my faith is back up. Keep moving and…another attack…I have just been told that I have lost my faith and therefore the game.

I haven’t tackled this game again…YET. However, I am amused by it’s message, which seems to be that faith is so fucking hard it really doesn’t seem worth it. How weak is this dumb ass that a single note of a guitar playing causes him to rethink what he’s doing? It’s not even something epic, like Hendrix…it sounds like a lick from a Disturbed song. If you are so weak that listening to nu metal makes you reconsider your beliefs you probably shouldn’t be the main character in a game. Actually, every damn time you move this idiot he says something…and being a cheap game he has about 4 different phrases he says, ALL of them saying things like “That’s a great idea!” or “My faith is my guide.” If you have to reinforce yourself to THAT degree, spewing garbage like that every 5 seconds, you really don’t seem to have too much belief to begin with. I didn’t fail at this game, this sweater vested moron did. Old Testament God woulda found this candyass wanting in about 2 and a half seconds!

I don’t even know how to grade this game as it seems to completely and utterly fail at the most basic level to even achieve its point. In fact, it seems to almost serve as an argument for the other side. Nice work, Mike Seaver and friends…nice.

UPDATE : Okay, I tried it again. After wandering around and avoiding the attack of power chords apparently brought to life, I found Brad…whose little character looks EXACTLY like me…he was just standing in the middle of a road like seemingly everyone else. I love how the intro spoke of New York returning to normal existence, yet every street is chock full of burnt out hulks of destroyed cars…sure, that would be acceptable as normal DETROIT, but not New York.

Anyway, he tells me that he’s been ‘saved’ as well. Huzzah! And we can go to his Apartment to read the news story that led him to God, or go to a Church to meet some guy named Thomas for…well, there are probably reasons, but the objectives screen doesn’t feel like sharing them. Well, lead me in to temptation…I wanna see this story that ‘saved’ you, my sweater vest wearing friend! And we’re off…I’m slamming down on Pray every time it becomes available. And we make it to the target building. At this point, another HORRIBLE speech window opens and Brad informs me that he ‘talked to him’ and ‘we’ll meet later’. What the fuck? I thought we were reading a fucking paper, nimrod, not trying to hook up with your goddamn coke dealer! So, THIS was just a giant waste of time. Stupid temptation! You know, if this game wasn’t such a disaster I would assume this was some sort of lesson…”See what temptation hath wrought?”…but the game blows, so that’s out.

BACK through the obstacle course of rock bands (apparently when this happens, Earth will be overcome by Linkin Park wannabes. If/when this happens I fully intend to be running down the road with a shotgun, takin’ care of business), over to the church. And we’re there. Let’s go in…and the mission ends.

This is where things go horribly wrong. See, between missions you can view these ‘clues’ that are the most hilarious religious propaganda ever written. “Creatonism must be true. The alternative is that everything just happened for no reason!”, stuff like that. And with each there are buttons to ‘Find Out More’ or ‘Discuss’. Who can resist THAT?! And I hit them, and it launched Firefox, and doing so crashed the game. So there you go…I have had my game ended by the sin of my own temptation. Stupid biblical lessons! Fuck you, Tribulation Forces!

I sincerely doubt that I will play this again because you CAN’T put a carrot like THAT in front of me (it’s one tempting carrot! It’s like a carrot with tits!) and not expect me to press the damn buttons. I am evil, therefore this game is off limits for me.