WHAA?!

Ya' know, I've seen lots of things. I'm only twenty-one, but I've seen things that would make the Ghostbusters shit themselves, ya' know the real ones. Probably the highest on the rankings would either be seeing a kitten microwaved or a man murdered by rebels with a combat knife. However, this tops them all:
http://buzzplant.com/lbg/ecard1/?gclid=CKzvm-idrYkCFSSEYAod4H05Lw

That's right, the makers of the Left Behind book series finally could not bear it anymore and had to get into the game market. Niiice, like I didn't enjoy having to hear about those crappy books already, now they've invaded another field I love. I swear if any religious group plans to place a religion based football or soccer squad into the pros, I'll friggin go jihad on those fools.

http://www.leftbehind.com/channelnews.asp?pageid=1322&channelID=17
I originally wanted to go step by step in my diagnosis of this pile of horse shit, but opted instead to take on their pro-argument piece by piece (above link):

• "From the beginning, we have been jealous about the subsidiary rights to Left Behind. We have turned down all sorts of offers to capitalize on the name with pins, pens, mugs, candles, jewelry, and even board games. Our sole purpose in the writing was to declare a message in the hope that fewer people would be left behind, so unless a product can expand that message—as have the kids books, graphic novels (comics), and movies—we have stood firm." EEEH! Wrong answer Jerry, would you like to advance to Double Jeopardy where the scores can really change? Hypocrisy is a dangerous concept, you've whored yourself out to the movie industry (not to mention the rest) and if there is an industry that ever seeks to just make money, that is it. By making a "Left Behind" film early on in the conception of your masterpiece, it shows your willingness to make money off of this idea. Those "I *heart* Jesus" pins really pulled in the cash, I'm sorry but those are tinkertoy enterprises. Video games ARE a money-making endeavor. Its not like the Mormons make a ton of cash off of selling Books of Mormon, nor do missionaries make people pay for The Bible. Unfortunately, the assholes behind Left Behind do make a lot of money off your dumb religious asses. When you only read the book cause your religious, you are stupid, you should be reading something you would enjoy reading like Louis L'Amour, J.R.R. Tolkien or Tom Clancy. Don't support these money-hounding assholes. Ask how much they give of their money to Christian causes. "Q: Do any proceeds from the books go to special causes? A: Jenkins—'Of course, but Scripture is clear that if we talk about this and get the praise of men for it in this life, we lose the reward for it in heaven.'" Hahaha, are you fucking kidding me? I even know church's who will explain how their given offerings are distributed. That kind of garbage is bullshit, I'm guessing its probably somewhere between 0 and .5%. Oliver Stone and the makers of "World Trade Center" said they would donate 10% of their earnings, and they have. Even Mel Gibson said that the money from The Passion would be going towards a church. There is no need to cop-out on your greed, it is okay to be greedy, remember Gordon Gekko "Greed is a good thing, greed makes the world go round."
• "When first we heard of a video game, we were as skeptical as anyone and insisted on hearing the idea directly from the planners. We were pleased to find that they were thorough professionals, shared our faith, and were as committed as we were to have the message be clear. We also wanted to avoid gratuitous violence." Yup, I know how important religious views can be, I'm sure that Wisdom Tree had the same views as the people who wanted to create "Bible Adventures" for the NES (given that the former company made unlicensed games and had to cop-out to religious thoughts to continue making games). I don't want to break anyone's heart here, but video games are also created to make money. Games that have a message flop (insert: Bible Adventures, Captain Novelin, and of course Revolution X). I will get to the gratuitous violence bit later.
• "The result is a game that is beautifully rendered, clearly carries our message (indeed, we have already heard of one young man who has become a believer through playing it), is strategic rather than only warfare based, and is no more violent than the Lone Ranger or Roy Rogers episodes I grew up watching. Unlike typical video games that show buckets of blood and flying body parts, victims shot in our game fall in a puff of smoke." Phew, passed the first hurdle, if the game wasn't well rendered (which its not badly rendered), it wouldn't be able to sell at all. And I'm glad that there has been a conversion. I'm sure that your numbers compared to the number of people who have adopted the religious implications that generally surround "Final Fantasy" or "The Secret of Mana" are astoundingly different even though neither have an actual religion and take place in impossible dream worlds. Again, I will reserve my violence argument for later.
• "Yes, there is killing in self-defense, but more points are scored by building the Tribulation Force and its infrastructure. There is zero targeting of specific people groups. The enemy are the forces of the antichrist who have already taken the mark of the beast and committed themselves to his service." Exactly, you have these things called "Spirit Points" and you earn more by getting people to join by prayer rather than warfare. Well, that solves it, conversion to Christ pays for riflemen, ammunition, training and of course, tanks. I mean really, points? Are you kidding me? The only thing that matters is money in video games and if spirit points are the currency, I guess you better start praying. I think that its been said many times, "It is easier to destroy than create." And I bet you ten bucks that you can bring a Muslim down faster with a battalion of troops than one prayer child and its probably more fun too. In Age of Empires II, you had monks who could work conversion powers on rival soldiers and make them join your side...that was the most boring shit I ever had to do...possibly ever and that includes writing a paper on the metric system. I can only imagine how much more terrible it is in this. The Mark of the Beast is probably attributed to many different walks of people like leaders of his army with Arabic names, I'm sure that Satan gets reinforcements from San Fransisco where gay people have adopted his free-swinging lifestyle. His number one reinforcement area is the nation of Israel because their misbelief in Jesus has caused them to remain on Earth during the Rapture. Its quite comforting to know that all major religions that aren't remotely Christian contribute to the Satan Squad. Either way, you can only convert stragglers who can't decide if they want to eat pastrami on rye or bologna on white. You simply cannot help those who are your enemies and must challenge them to war, you and your prayer circle versus, from what I can tell, guys with guns, big guns...watch out they shoot real bullets. While you on the other hand look like your trying to shoot a prayer gun from Billy Graham's Bible Blaster.
• "The game has been approved by Focus on the Family, which is careful about such matters." Yeah, Focus on the Family, these are the same group of people who feel that movies like "Borat", that are edgy for certain are on the verge of destroying our society. They never even stopped to examine the rare thought experiment that Sacha Baron Cohen revealed to us in our convoluted American Nature. Another quote I found on Focus on the Family's website was this: "A study to be published in the Journal of Environmental Management found an interesting correlation between the public's flagging interest in national parks and increased video gaming activity. Between 1987 to 2000, the average American's game-playing time grew from almost nothing to 90 hours annually. Throw in time spent surfing the Internet and watching movies, and "the average person in the U.S. spent 327 more hours per year on these entertainment media in 2003 than he or she did in 1987," says the study. This increased media usage corresponds with a diminishing number of national park visits by the American public each year since 1988. Up to that year, national park visits had grown annually for the previous 50 years." Being that I'm an amatuer statistician, I've come to understand what exactly bullshit statistics are. The above is an example of bullshit statistics. Bullshit statistics are used to bolster a pathetically weak argument with numbers that seem important. A good example of this is that I could point out that because the world is becoming increasingly more religious, this could be tied with a rising abortion rate. Now everyone knows this is stupid and everyone is of course, right because this is an example of bullshit statstics. I don't blame anyone in paticular for bullshit statistics except for the makers of Freakanomics who seem to think that child illiteracy is caused by the amount of super glue you keep in your kitchen. However, when people choose to use bullshit statistics, I will attack them, Focus on the Family, you suck.
• The Founder of the Promise Keepers (and I do love that title) said "The enemy (being Satan, not Rockstar North) is bombarding them (video gamers) with really clever stuff (entertaining video games)." Mhmm, that's right old man, I'm sure that Satan's big goal to really make me go to hell was to release Gran Turismo 4, Ridge Racer 7, or even more importantly, Madden 2007! Seriously, even the Grand Theft Auto games, Resident Evil titles or first person shooters lack the uhh, ties to the Dark Lord. If you want to talk about a game that deals in showing some satanism, go to Apocalypse on the PSX (and that is STILL FAR OFF), its dealing with exactly the type of stuff Left Behind is. If you look to violent games as a generator for Satan's armies...you have to blame crack for the rising cost of potato chips.
• One section in the promotional video included a section where you can delve into the clues from the scripture in order to help your cause. One slide said "Evolution explained", I understand that one must take a stand against these things, but good Lord. The game designers publicly said that this was going to be neutral towards groups, you were fighting Satan or you weren't. Well uhh, it seems like you're fighting Evolutionists, Scientologists, Muslims, Mormons, Jews and the like...unbelievable. Not to mention that the baddies on the box cover are Hispanics, African Americans, and what look to be masked Arabs. As compared with the good guys who are ALL white. I mean c'mon, seriously, how freakin' blatant does it get.
• I didn't see "The Passion of the Christ" and I didn't see "The Nativity Story", what makes you think I want to play a video game that is supposedly selling me what the Rapture is supposed to be. Uhh, there is a book...hmm, that's right Revelations. If I want a dose of that, I WILL read the book (again). Also, "We're trying to show what will happen in a practical way." Hello! Its the FUCKING APOCALYPSE! Do I need to draw you a fucking picture? I don't need your shitty CG conversions and violence to get me all hopped up about the Apocalypse. I'm sure I can do that on my own.
• I have a major issue with logic. Can you save the souls? The righteous are gone...do you remember this, there are only heathans and Satan. I think that Lucifer wouldn't have too much of a problem kicking the shit out of the stragglers left on Earth. During the Rapture there won't be saving of souls, people will be SOL and they will be fighting to stay alive until they eventually die. Remember this too, Lucifer is second to God in ability and we can stop him right!? Well if you're on Earth and Lucifer is at it, I'll quote Samuel L. Jackson "Your asses would be dead as fried fuckin' chicken."
• Now to the area that pisses me off the most. Violence. Violence in real-time strategy games is almost non-existent. In Command and Conquer tanks get blown up a poof of smoke, men fall down after being killed, people's bodies don't splatter across the map. Age of Empires was the same way, you didn't see bloody charred corpses after the battle, no they just were dead and gone. So don't feed me this, we're holier than thou because we have a RTS title that is non-violent crap. Warcraft 3, now there were some brutal finishes there...NOT! They also said it was more strategy based, now I may be wrong here, but Warcraft 3 was like you have infinite guys and you could just battle forever right? Same thing with Age of Empires and Command and Conquer correct? You didn't have to manage supplies, find more raw materials or even wisely upgrade buildings, classes of characters or even your entire society? I always knew those games had no strategy. You want to look at a strategic real-time strategy game, its called "Civilization", you brainless dickheads and it is non-violent, there is NO VIOLENCE. Go ahead LB Games, make a third person action or a first person shooter Bible game that manages to keep everyone amused and still get your message across. These are the same jackasses who managed to say when Bible Adventures came out, "Well, Mario is just too violent, hopping on turtles and riding green dinosaurs. First of all, why's he riding a dinosaur, does the Guinea smoke pot? Secondly, everyone knows that dinosaurs are just a myth that scientists made up to scare our faith away." It is this level of assumed idiocy that will not stand with me for a fucking second. Never have I been an enemy of trying to bring people to ANY faith, but it is when these people opt to do it out of a pompous, arrogant and ignorant manner I will stand against it.

So, this closes my diatribe on Left Behind: Eternal Forces. If you purchase it, don't let me know, cause I'll knock your fucking head off.