Review: The Bible Game (Xbox, PS2)
"Jacob's Ladder? Really? You just went there?"
I trick Luke into playing a harmless little Star Wars game and he responds by unleashing a horror of biblical proportions upon me. If you were to take all that was terrible in the “Mario Party” and “Fuzion Frenzy” games and then distill them down to the point that all that was left was pure bile, and then throw in a couple of bits of Bible trivia you would have “The Bible Game.” Now I am in no way against the Bible and I am in no way against games. If I thought that this was an honest attempt to teach kids about the Bible, I would be all for it. Instead, this game is simply a cheap ploy to get church goers to fork over money.
As Wisdom Tree proved in the NES era, there are few licenses as potent as God. Simply calling your game “The Bible Game” insures that a segment of the population will buy your product, regardless of the games quality. I can imagine the nameless executives pondering demographic charts and trying something to increase revenues by expanding tangential market capitalization (or whatever it is executives do).
The most important thing in any mini game collection, Jesus approved or not, is the quality of the mini games. The games contained within “The Bible Game” range from terrible to “The Ten Plagues of Egypt”. The most excitement anyone has had with “The Bible Game” was when it was thrown in the microwave by a confused 6 year old.
Then there is the trivia section, and the one redeeming portion of the game. Theoretically, people could learn about the Bible, but even if you were to answer every trivia question correctly and win every terrible mini game, you could still end up losing. Over the course of three rounds, I was in first at the end of each round until I was hit with a random plague, which wiped out all of my points. So, my reward for answering correctly and winning the mini games, was a plague of locusts. What is this supposed to teach kids? That even if you are the best, insects can eat all your points and make you a loser. Although this does serve as a nice warning against the unholy power of bugs, I don’t think that this is the best message to be sending out.
I give “the Bible Game” a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwEk62HViIA
Tags: ps2, The Bible Game, Wisdom Tree, xbox
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 19th, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 19th, 2009 at 10:25 am
Jonah "spambot" Gregory says:If they really want to use videogames to make kids learn about the Bible, they should really try making a good game.
Though honestly, I don’t believe that’s the best way to go about it.
How many kids became plumbers because they were Mario Bros. fans?
March 19th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Jesse "Main Finger" Gregory says:This is like the conversation I often have with Geoffio about Christian Rock (since one of our favorite restaurants seemed to always play it). No matter how bad your band is, somebody has to like it because it’s “for God” and they want to support that. It’s like a guaranteed fanbase.