The reviews have not been kind, overall.
I wonder what Jack Chick thinks of all this.
Well, there’s also the US Army’s Future Force Company Commander, where the US forces have equipment with 100% reliability rates and the enemies are dumber than a box of rocks. I also vaguely recall a paper-and-pen US-vs.-Russia wargame from the mid-'70s where the game was slanted so the Soviets could never win.
As for the Left Behind game, I have to wonder about the message it’s conveying: “Shooting the heathens and non-believers is bad – but if you stop to pray, we’ll forgive you so you can shoot them some more.”
I’m really surprised by that review, because gamespot.com’s review was almost the complete opposite.
The write-ups don’t say anything about praying for forgiveness, just praying. So that leads to two possible scenarios I see:
[ol][li]Lord, I’m sorry I was forced to slay the unbeliever, please forgive me and grant me sucess in my future encounters with such people so that they can live a life in your work.[/li][li]Lord, I thank thee for allowing me to rid the world of yet another evil sinner, one who is bent on teaching the evils of evolution, forcing us to accept members of different races and religions as our equals, disrespecting the foundations of our nation by dismissing the Bible and taking an oath on a Qur’an or on nothing at all, who is teaching the evils of tolerance and thinking for oneself. Please help me to rid the world of more such evil.[/ol][/li]
Guess which one I think is more likely in the LB mindset.
That explanation would seem to leave no room for not treating Jews exactly the same way . . .
“But Plugged In”…
Best part of the article. Of any article. EVER.
Give it enough time-it will. 
In all seriousness, I do actually have to take issue with those picketing Wal-Marts that are carrying the game. If people want the game, and Wal-Mart wants to sell it, they have that right. If you choose not to support Wal-Mart, fine-but picketing? That’s a little like those that would campaign to have Wal-Mart not sell GTA, or, oh, I dunno, The Sims?
I don’t see anything wrong with this on the gameplay side - assuming it’s handled well, of course. Starcraft did this - if memory serves, you play a campaign as each of the three races (human, zerg, protoss), and at the end of the game, the Zerg are defeated. But when you’re playing as the Zerg, you can win the Zerg campaign - and in fact, you must, if you’re going to beat the game. They could do something like that with this game - have a “prequel” campaign where you play as the bad guys, and then the main campaign where you play as the fundie good guys.
I can’t speak for the game, but this totally matches my experience of NYC.
So if you join on Lucifer’s team, you can’t win?
How about if you play on God’s side, and play to lose? Is that possible?
The writeups do say, though, that if a character kills someone, even one of the enemies, he loses “spirit points”, which represent his faith in God. If a character runs out of spirit points, he becomes evil and joins the antichrist side.
So that would seem to suggest that killing is seen as a suboptimal solution, and that God doesn’t like it when you kill somebody, even an “evil sinner, one who is bent on teaching the evils of evolution, forcing us to accept members of different races and religions as our equals, disrespecting the foundations of our nation by dismissing the Bible and taking an oath on a Qur’an or on nothing at all, who is teaching the evils of tolerance and thinking for oneself”.
What I want to know is how many spirit points you lose for killing people compared to how many you lose from going near rock stars.
Chick believes so-called “Christian rock” is just as Satanic as any other kind,* so who knows? Maybe he thinks all computer games are tools of the Devil.
*No, really. I have a collection of his “Crusader Comics.” One of them is about rock music. There’s actually a scene where witches come to a recording studio to “bless” a master copy of a soon-to-be-released album, i.e., imbue it with a possessing-demon, “to increase our listeners’ belief in reincarnation.” In another, a Christian missionary in Africa is visited by his villagers, who are horrified at the rock album his children are playing. “Is there something wrong?” “Yes, Pastor! Before we came to Jesus, we used that music to call up demons!” It’s the beat, you see, the beat. (As James Watt well knew.)
I think I smell a heresy in this point system . . . I mean, it sounds effing Catholic!
I wonder what Jack “MURDER SIMULATOR!” Thompson thinks of all this.
It would be really fun to get Jack “Mehoff” Thompson in a knock-down drag-out legal fight with the fundies. (Did you ever notice that “fundies” breaks down into “fun dies”? Is it any wonder this game apparently sucks ass?)
Yeah, but you’d think people from that area of the right wing spectrum would be the best at making war games, with they way they like to see wars all over the place (war on drugs, war on terror, war on Christmas).
It’s the one where Maude Flanders dies: Alone Again, Natura-Diddly.
What does Jack Thompson say about Left Behind? If the quotes from this Wikipedia article are accurate, quite a bit:Thompson has also criticized a Christian video game based on the Left Behind series. . . . Thompson claims that the makers of the game are sacrificing their values.[86] He said, “Because of the Christian context, somehow it’s OK? It’s not OK. The context is irrelevant. It’s a mass-killing game.”[87] Left Behind author Tim LaHaye disagrees, saying “Rather than forbid young people from viewing their favorite pastime, I prefer to give them something that’s positive.”[86] The dispute over the game has caused Thompson to sever ties with Tyndale House, which publishes both the Left Behind books and Thompson’s book, Out of Harm’s Way.[87] Thompson has not seen the game, which he says has “personally broken my heart,” but claims, “I don’t have to meet Abraham Lincoln to know that he was the 16th president of the United States.”[88]Much as I dislike his stance on video games, I have to give him points for consistency.
Okay, now that was funny.
What would have been way cooler is if they’d hired Gene Simmons, Robbie Halford and Ozzy Osbourne to do voices and play themselves.