Oh my fucking God...

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Covenant
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Post by Covenant »

Stas Bush wrote:That sucks. I thought there would be the Four Horsemen, blood-turning powers, two witnesses who can ruing buildings and call lightning with bare hand movement, giant meteorites and angels with cups of hatred. Pooh. This game is crap. Not even close to what an Apocalypse game could've been.
Seriously! That's what I was hoping for too! If you're going to do a goddamn fire-and-brimstone evangelical wanking of the end of days, you might as well go full bore. They don't even want to have blood because they want to be able to sell this to children and such. I mean... it's okay to shoot folks, but not okay to graphically demonstrate what the actual theological reference depicts?

But then again, this is the fairly wussy tribulation garbage, not the final war between good and evil. I was really hoping we were going to get more of that.
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Post by Stark »

This game is awesome. It's even packed with gender stereotypes!

And call my cynical, but christian music doesn't 'raise my spirit'. :)
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Post by Yogi »

Played the demo. It says its a Beta, and I certainly hope so.

1) To move the mouse via the keyboard, you use the numeric keypad. It's a pain because if you're holding the mouse with the right hand, you'll have to move your left hand to the right side of the keyboard for it to work.

2) You CAN'T RE-BIND KEYS!!!

3) The units and buildings are of correct proportionate size. That means, if you zoom out far enough to see a layout of all your buildings, your units look like ants (not that you could zoom out too far anyway.) Plus, all your units are humans, so the only way to tell which unit is which is to zoom in close enough to see their clothes. It may be realistic, but it makes for shitty gameplay. Put icons or something over the unit types FFS.

4) If you select multiple units, it won't give you a list of your selected units, just the most recent one you selected.

5) No "autocast" function. There's no way to have your converion units automatically convert people, or your other units pray while you're not around.


So, it's almost impossible to identiy and select the units you want. Plus without auto-cast, you have to micromanage everything, making the above problem even worse!!!

That, combined with the ads in the game, inspid storyline ("Take Leonard to meet Brad".) and the poorly designed levels (wander down the wrong street and you'll get jumped by a zillion enemies at once) and general "I can't beleive it's not parody" ness of the plot rates this game as "not worth the download time."
I am capable of rearranging the fundamental building blocks of the universe in under six seconds. I shelve physics texts under "Fiction" in my personal library! I am grasping the reigns of the universe's carriage, and every morning get up and shout "Giddy up, boy!" You may never grasp the complexities of what I do, but at least have the courtesy to feign something other than slack-jawed oblivion in my presence. I, sir, am a wizard, and I break more natural laws before breakfast than of which you are even aware!

-- Vaarsuvius, from Order of the Stick
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Covenant
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Post by Covenant »

Stark wrote:This game is awesome. It's even packed with gender stereotypes!

And call my cynical, but christian music doesn't 'raise my spirit'. :)
Clearly you are evil. The pangs of pain you feel are simply the fingers of Jesus Almighty scooping the gift of free thought from the unfilled chalice of your mind, and replacing it with the intoxicating wine of THE TRUTH.

Seriously, where is my Goddamn Baelrog or beast with 7 heads and 42 mouths? All we get to play are the boring parts of reveleations.
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Post by Stark »

Yogi wrote: 5) No "autocast" function. There's no way to have your converion units automatically convert people, or your other units pray while you're not around.
There totally is, dude. I leave guys on streetcorners set to auto, and the convert people as they walk past.

I like the cultish way it plays order aks from all the units selected: if you're controlling a group of eight units, it sounds crazy. 'We serve your will' being chanted by half a dozen voices is the very essence of the Tribulation. :D
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Post by Yogi »

Stark wrote:There totally is, dude. I leave guys on streetcorners set to auto, and the convert people as they walk past.
How do you manage that? I click "AUTO" and "Convert" but it only converts one at a time. I have to click "convert" again.
Stark wrote:I like the cultish way it plays order aks from all the units selected: if you're controlling a group of eight units, it sounds crazy. 'We serve your will' being chanted by half a dozen voices is the very essence of the Tribulation. :D
It would be a hilarious feature, if this was a parody game. It is reather creepy though.
I am capable of rearranging the fundamental building blocks of the universe in under six seconds. I shelve physics texts under "Fiction" in my personal library! I am grasping the reigns of the universe's carriage, and every morning get up and shout "Giddy up, boy!" You may never grasp the complexities of what I do, but at least have the courtesy to feign something other than slack-jawed oblivion in my presence. I, sir, am a wizard, and I break more natural laws before breakfast than of which you are even aware!

-- Vaarsuvius, from Order of the Stick
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Post by Stark »

Oh, I just click 'auto' (and it lights up) and they seem to automatically walk over to, and convert, passersby. You don't have to trigger the convert thing.

The convert power is the worst controlled power ever. You press it, and it picks someone nearby to convert. You can't pick a target, you can't say 'convert here', or anything like that. Oh wait, is this game shit? :D
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Post by Yogi »

I also love the fact that only MEN can be musicians, but the sing command has a picture of a WOMAN singing.

May Jesus bless this game, since it needs all the help it can get.
I am capable of rearranging the fundamental building blocks of the universe in under six seconds. I shelve physics texts under "Fiction" in my personal library! I am grasping the reigns of the universe's carriage, and every morning get up and shout "Giddy up, boy!" You may never grasp the complexities of what I do, but at least have the courtesy to feign something other than slack-jawed oblivion in my presence. I, sir, am a wizard, and I break more natural laws before breakfast than of which you are even aware!

-- Vaarsuvius, from Order of the Stick
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Post by Covenant »

Stark wrote:Oh, I just click 'auto' (and it lights up) and they seem to automatically walk over to, and convert, passersby. You don't have to trigger the convert thing.

The convert power is the worst controlled power ever. You press it, and it picks someone nearby to convert. You can't pick a target, you can't say 'convert here', or anything like that. Oh wait, is this game shit? :D
I really wish that occasionally your baseball capped retard would run up with his bookbag full of bibles, start harassing someone on their way to the subway, and they'd blow him off--possibly losing faith. Or they'd blow right past you. That'd really be a more realistic demonstration of how things are. :D

Some day I know I'm gonna get punched by a kid who thinks I'm evil because I'm not converted 10 seconds after he starts running up to me.
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Post by Nephtys »

We should combine this with 'Dead Rising'. Now, you're a fundamentalist trapped in the world's only completely 100 percent non-'proper'-christian Mall, and you have two days before your bible camp's bus returns to pick you up.

Now with sacks full of bibles, giant Iron crosses, you fight your way through the rest of society. :P
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Post by Invictus ChiKen »

Here I thought my spelling was bad... I got dyslexia: What is there excuse for this horrible writing!?
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Post by wolveraptor »

Goddamn that was disappointing. This has got to be the lamest rendition of Revalations I've ever seen. Why the fuck can't you train a flaming Jesus unit? It'd be biblically accurate.
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Post by fgalkin »

Yogi wrote:The sad thing is, from what I read the game does have some pretty innovative gameplay elements that could have been put to better use in another game.
What innovative gameplay? This game seems to be a fundie-ized version of Constructor 2- Street Wars

Have a very nice day.
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Post by Covenant »

wolveraptor wrote:Goddamn that was disappointing. This has got to be the lamest rendition of Revalations I've ever seen. Why the fuck can't you train a flaming Jesus unit? It'd be biblically accurate.
I think it's only his eyes that are made of fire, the rest of his body--from what we've seen--shines or is like bronze. Cyborg Mechajesus would suffice though.
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Post by Yogi »

fgalkin wrote:What innovative gameplay? This game seems to be a fundie-ized version of Constructor 2- Street Wars
I thought it was interesting that the goal is to convert instead of kill the enemy, and that training a huge army and just blowing the enemy away isn't really the winning strategy. Also, the fact that there are only a limited number of units on the map for both you and your opponent and that these units can actually be wrestled away from the enemy made it look kind of interesting. Now if only they had done it right.
I am capable of rearranging the fundamental building blocks of the universe in under six seconds. I shelve physics texts under "Fiction" in my personal library! I am grasping the reigns of the universe's carriage, and every morning get up and shout "Giddy up, boy!" You may never grasp the complexities of what I do, but at least have the courtesy to feign something other than slack-jawed oblivion in my presence. I, sir, am a wizard, and I break more natural laws before breakfast than of which you are even aware!

-- Vaarsuvius, from Order of the Stick
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Post by Rye »

To be entirely fair, that idea's been used in games since Syndicate came out on the Amiga.
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Post by Covenant »

Rye wrote:To be entirely fair, that idea's been used in games since Syndicate came out on the Amiga.
Yeah, Syndicate was great with the converter beams, you could zap an entire enemy team into your control if you had a higher level brain chip and some good gear. Man that game was good!

Eternal Forces treats people as a really... sad expendible force, it's depressing. It's very fundie. You walk up to people, convert them to your cause and they abandon their life like you were sucking them into a cult. They join your 'Tribulation Force' whose job is to, essentially, create disorder and chaos by striking the first blows against so-called evil people. All must be converted or killed, so anyone you can't afford to convert--since you have a maximum population cap--needs to be killed.

And those people you do convert become 'friends', in the creepiest sense possible. I wish they were called Believers or Converted or something, I wish also that these weren't people who had lives and families before I decided to make them into expendible soldiers, church singers, and medics. And I throw them at the UN's Peacekeeping Forces, who puts them down like any other religious cult.

It's depressing. The game isn't about a war between good and evil, it's between order and freedom versus chaos and theocratic believerdom. And it's not even veiled, it's that literal, and these people seriously believe in this. If it ever boils over some day, these folks could be incredibly dangerous, and it's really not that out of the realm of possibility that something might set them off.
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