As far as I know this is the first ever Bible themed game for a console. It was only a matter of time before someone did one I guess, and I must say that I'm all for it. Despite the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube generation of consoles having really rammed home the mass market appeal of gaming, there's obviously still a stigma attached to gaming for a lot of people. As much as a DVD player can be equally used to watch a children's educational cartoon as it can be for an adult erotic film, I hope that the next generation of consoles are able to cater for every part of the market and every person's needs. However, to do that, titles are needed that fill as many niches as possible. The Bible Game is one such title.
The Bible Game is a small collection of mini-games and Old Testament trivia, wrapped up into the form of a TV-style gameshow called 'Do Unto Others'. There are four contestants on the show, and they each take turns randomly selecting a tile on a board. Each tile yields a number of points for the player, and reveals either a four player mini-game, a trivia question, a personal game, a 'Do Unto Others' award or the 'Wrath of God' penalty. The games and trivia award points to the players depending on the player's performance, whereas 'Do Unto Others' makes the selected player either play a game for another player, or just give them some points. Everyone has to hope to avoid the 'Wrath of God' as it will remove all your points for that round, and open a new board. Of course, there are only so many tiles on a board, and so someone will hit 'Wrath of God' eventually. A 20 minute game will usually throw up two or three 'Wrath of God' tiles, and so you will play three or four boards. At the end of a preset time limit, the scores from all the rounds are accumulated and you go a final game of chance to add a bonus to your score, allowing those that are behind a bit a final chance of glory.
There are 12 multiplayer mini-games, and a handful of single player ones. They're all bible themed, are well presented, very simple, and neatly executed in most cases – great for kids and a non-games playing family, but really not for anyone with a serious interest in gaming, which is fine. What is not fine is the strength level of the AI players. Forgive me for presuming that the non-gaming family that buys this will not have a multitap and four controllers, which means they will be playing the game with two AI players. So why is it that the AI players on the easiest setting can still give me a good kicking on several of the mini-games? I'm not the greatest gamer, but I think I can 'bring it' just a little... In fact, switching the game difficulty to hard, I actually did better on some games...
On top of that the trivia is questionably difficult on the lowest setting. Again, I'm no Ned Flanders, but I actually did get quite a lot of education in the stories of the old testament, but the easiest questions were of knowledge buried deep in my mind, certainly well beyond most kids, and again, setting the trivia level to the hardest setting made little difference in the difficulty of the questions.
It's a shame, because obviously a lot of work has gone into this – the game is no looker, but effort has been made with some nice cartoon-like styling, the voice over of the gameshow host, and even some decent music tracks from Christian rock bands are played over the challenges. Don't get me wrong, the game is plenty flawed in other than the difficulty levels, but it's all forgiveable stuff that the intended audience won't really care about – and forgiveness is a virtue.
In short, I'm glad to see titles like this as evidence that games are really branching out, and proof that not all games are toys of serial-killers. Crave have made a simple game, fair enough, but I'd question whether they were focused enough on who was going to end up playing this type of product.
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