Jesus save this game - it's horrible.

User Rating: 2.2 | The Bible Game GBA
Adding to a (thankfully) short history of boring and unimaginative Bible games, The Bible Game for GBA makes both Christianity and video games seem about as boring as... well, Sunday school.

The Bible itself is one of the most complex and influential literary masterpieces in the history of the world. It contains more wars, love affairs, betrayals, mysteries, intriques, miracles, and debates than could ever be packed into even the most massive four-disc RPG.

Contrast the impressiveness of the actual Bible against the Bible Game for the GBA - in which you play a boring conservatively-dressed kid wandering around a boring town stepping on spiders and preaching to little red, cackling demons.

Theologically, the game is as problematic as any before it. Clearly, this game is meant to represent only one tiny facet of Christianity - the type that appeals to the conservative evangelical U.S. American (who may or may not be white, but probably is). Expect the verses and any meanings they originally contained to be funneled through that one viewpoint. Also, expect things to appear from that subculture that aren't even in the Bible, and are instead based on more modern Christian mythology (I've already mentioned the literal demons flying around - they laugh at you and lie, and oh... they shoot fire). Many Christians will not agree with this very culturally and historically specific interpretation of the Bible. Naturally, if you are a Jew or a Muslim, this game will far from represent the place the Bible has in your religion and your life.

Why can't they just make a Bible game set in Biblical times? That at least would be interesting.

Religious debate aside, the game is just bad. The point of the game is to collect Paul's infamous "armor of God", which has been done before in many a Christian toy and game (with all the amazing images that are in the Bible, they couldn't pick something new to work with?) As I said, you basically run around squashing spiders (why are spiders evil? Did God not create insects?) and confronting demons. When that happens, you get (have) to answer a series of nit-picky questions about Bible verses that are so specific, it reduces the value of the entire game to learning mindless Bible trivia rather than coming to any comprehensive, general understanding of the Bible. For your average Christian, this information will help them pass an exam in Bible study class, but won't add anything to their overall understanding of the Bible.

Oh, and speaking again of the theologic problems, some of the answers are wrong. For instance, I was forced to say that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, even though theologians generally agree he did not (and in fact he dies before the end of the book he supposedly wrote himself). The creators of the game would have done well to take a college class on religious studies.

My advice: if you want a so-called "Christian" game, then go for Narnia. True, it won't teach you how to memorize ever single Bible verse, so you won't be able to hold your own in long-winded, pointless religious arguments. But you might learn a little something of the values that the armor of God is supposed to represent, and it might actually be a fun game as well.

-E