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Christianity doesn't make a good video game NovemberJoy
This is going to be a longer review, because there's two games in this one cartridge, along with a karaoke song by a Christian band, and no, I didn't make that last part up. How good of a game is this...?
I haven't even started the game yet, and there's a problem. For some unknown reason, the cursor moves down, but it doesn't move back up! No, I'm serious, you can't move the cursor back up again. Who thought that would be a good idea?
The first game on the list is Sunday Funday, and, for some reason, this game's just a reskin of a game that they previously made under the alias of Color Dreams called Menace Beach. It's...of...noticeably sub-par quality.
The graphics and sound are pretty bland, for the most part. The most noticeable thing about them is the way the graphics handle bomb explosions, characters exploding, and lighting effects. Also, for some reason, when you finish a level, it almost looks as though the boy you control is giving you the finger. That's not very Christian behavior!
So, you're supposed to play as this boy, and your goal is to...get to Sunday school. What kind of game is this?! Also, you have to skate somewhere around at least 15 miles over all kinds of terrain to get there! Seriously, Sunday school isn't important enough that you should spend hours just to make sure you get there! Seriously, I'd probably just rely on my parents and my Bible if I were this kid. Also, there's a massive number of enemies, which will try to hinder you from getting to Sunday school. These include bullies, monstrously fat women, plumbers, and all kinds of crazy obstacles, including exposed water flows in sewers, and mines. No, I didn't make that up, there's literally mines in this game. And most of them are in the sewers...
Of course, this game is kind of a sidescrolling beat-em-up, except it's strictly left-to-right. Just like in a normal beat-em-up, enemies appear, and you have to fight them. But wait! This is a Christian game! How will they put fighting into a Christian game without massive backlash? Well, they accomplished this by making it so that a white dove floats offscreen every time you kill an enemy. So you murdered them and they just go straight to Heaven? Well, in that case, I'll just go murder some atheists so that they'll go to Heaven. I guess this justifies the Crusades?
As you would expect from a game produced by Color Dreams, the controls are all slippery and horrible. You'll slip right off of ledges and miss jumps solely because the characters always slide like they're on ice, and the fighting mechanics are even worse. You only really have one attack, though you can pick up (sparse) items to throw at enemies, and it doesn't do much damage, while the basic enemies(the aforementioned bullies) just hit you over and over again with jump kicks. Isn't this kinda sending the wrong message about Christians?
There are powerups, few they may be, to help you get through these levels. They include hearts to refill one heart on your life bar, toy cars with white faces on them to add extra lives, and...well, there really isn't anything else to help you. Other than the infinite continues you're given...
Well, I'm not really sure what else I can say about the game. But I'll move on to the next one, Fish Fall. Doesn't that sound like an awesome game! Well, let's see how this thing plays.
Well, in the game, you control a hand coming out of a widescreen TV, and you get to catch fish and throw them into a basket. Yeah, that's it, just catch the fish and throw them into the basket. But, there's a catch. In every level after the first one, there's some kind of twist to it - there's something that affects the way the fish fall, the fish fall in a different way, there's obstacles that will vaporize the fish if hit, just what you'd expect from a game like this, right?
Every so often, something will go across the screen, and if you hit it, it releases...er, I guess some kind of soul, and if it gets into the basket, you get an extra hand, which is this game's cute way of saying extra life. And if you hit a "happy whale," which looks more like a plane, and it hits the basket, it counts as ten fish. And, of course, to give this game some kind of difficulty, you have a time limit to get a certain quota of fish into the basket.
The controls work just fine, but, in some cases, the level setups don't, because the difficulty level is pretty uneven. In some levels, I finished with only a few seconds to spare, while in a different, later level, I finished with more than a minute to spare. I'm not sure if it's just differences between people, but it just seems really sloppy to me. For example, there's one level where there's four platforms that block the fish from falling, which also block you from throwing them into the basket. I finished with only a scant few seconds remaining, and then, a later level has a shell that pours out multiple fish at a time, and there's only an electric eel to defend the basket. Which level sounds harder to you?
And then, there's these boss fights every five levels, and let's just say that these are really pathetic. You have to avoid projectiles thrown by a crab, and hit it by throwing seashells at it. This is probably just about the only plausible way to lose a hand, because the hand can only take one hit. Also, the one-liner before the fight is just so cheesy - "Look out! He's feeling crabby!"(or, at least, I think that's what it was)? How is that clever or funny at all?
So, we're done with that game, and next is the karaoke song, which technically isn't even a game, because you don't do anything like hitting buttons to the music, that'd be just a little too interactive. Instead, you just get to listen to the NES belching out "The Ride" by a band called 4Him, which should be indicative of what religion they follow. When there's Chinese bootlegged rhythm games that have better versions of the songs they try to have on cartridge than your game, you screwed up real good. It's almost painful trying to listen to this song, and I just stopped listening before the halfway point, it's that bad. I'm not sure about the original song, but this is a really terrible remix.
In conclusion, is anything on this cartridge worth much of anything? The answer is no. Really, don't try to make a Christian video game, because you're not going to make a good one. Seriously, Bible Adventures and then this? I'm sure there's a good Bible-based video game out there, but I'm not going to devote my time to finding it. Even the PC/DOS games that I've played that were Bible-based were bad! Seriously, if there's a good Bible-based game, inform me right now, and I'll immediately go and play it on Vizzed, if I can.
Overall Rating - F(If there's any quality hidden within this cartridge, I couldn't find it)
Graphics 5 Sound 4 Addictive 1 Difficulty 8
Review Rating: 3/5
Submitted: 09-30-12
Review Replies: 5
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