Convert or Die, the Game

Ah, yes. It’s December. Christmas is just about here. What better way to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace than having your tykes play Left Behind: Eternal Forces? Your future missionary will learn that he has to either convert the Muslim hordes or gun them down. Of course, gunning them down’s not spiritually the best thing to do, but there’s a cure–for the killer, not the victim. All the killer has to do is pray to regenerate his spirit points. To ensure you know the enemy, they have “Muslim-sounding names.” Well, at least one enemy is a rock star. Having your character stand too close to him will cause your character to lose spirit points.

Why is the enemy Muslims? You’ll love this response from the president of Left Behind Games to that query:

I’ve been staring at my monitor for ten minutes, trying to think of just the right thing to say.

I’m just too appalled to think.

And very, very sad.

Now see, I find this offensive:

*Players can choose to join the Antichrist’s team, but of course they can never win on Carpathia’s side. The enemy team includes fictional rock stars and folks with Muslim-sounding names, while the righteous include gospel singers, missionaries, healers and medics. Every character comes with a life story. *

No, not as a religious person, which I’m not. It offends me as a gamer. What is the point of playing a game you can’t win with either side? That’s not a game, it’s an infomercial.

what next? a missionary game where you try to convert the heathen savages, or the “oh the horror?” secular people?

Well, well, well. It’s a Simpsons episode come to life.

I may regret asking this, but here goes anyway. Skald the Rhymer, which episode?

Bart spends the day at the Flanderseses’s house. He picks up a game controller, but they only have one game: Billy Graham’s Bible Blaster. Apparently the point is to shoot at cavemen and devils to turn them into suit-wearing halo-sporting Christians.

Bart: Got 'im!
Rod (or is it Todd?): Nah, you only winged him. He’s a Unitarian.

From the article:

Come on now…the copywriters must have been cackling to themselves. My fave co-worker and I try to inject that type of shit into documents any time we can…

It was one of the early episodes, I believe when they’re having flashbacks to Lisa’s birth (Bart has to sleep over at the Flanders’ while Homer and Marge are at the hospital).

I love when they reach the boss enemy.
“Oh, no! The gentle Baha’i!” blastblastblast

Wired article.

If it had the gory Armageddon, I would totally play this game.

Bart: All right! Full conversion!

It is single-player only, hence the side of evil can’t “win;” you can only lose.

Actually, I like the idea of a game where the object isn’t to kill the enemy, but to make them happy and productive. :smiley:

I guess I’m not so offended by the idea that the game puts Muslims on the anti-Christian side…I mean, if the game divides everybody into “Christian vs. everybody else”, then obviously, like the game designer says, the Muslims are on the “everybody else” side.

What’s more offensive, I think, is something the PC Gamer reviewer realized:

http://www.pcgamer.com/archives/2006/12/12106_-_the_dif.html

Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh.

And what better to plug these assholes than the baby Jesus.

I wonder how long it’ll be until some crafty gamer comes up with a game patch or something that allows Satan to win.

I’d love to get a copy of this game. It would make a great Christmas present for the “gag gift” pool (though to qualify, it has to be less than $10). :stuck_out_tongue:

“You only winged him; now he’s a Unitarian”.

And I see BraheSilver beat me :smack: .