The population group depicting the city residents, however, looks nothing like the real residents of NYC, and they are depicting as lacking religious beliefs.

As a simple extension of logic from facts on the official game website, the game allows players to act out a campaign of religious warfare in which all the residents of NYC will be converted or, sadly, killed. Initial descriptions of the game described characters from the Christian “Tribulation Force” exclaiming “praise the Lord !” as they killed their opponents.

The game is based on the “Left Behind” book series and the “evil” forces in the game, the “Global Peacekeepers” are in the book series the forces of the UN and commanded by the antichrist. In co-author Tim LaHaye’s series all non-fundamentalist Christians left on earth after the “Rapture” die exceedingly gory deaths and then go to hell to suffer for all eternity. LaHaye believes that there is a 200 year old Illuminati conspiracy to create a satanic one world government and that public education, secular government, and and something called “secular humanism” are part of that conspiracy. That Lahaye’s paranoid, bigoted ideology gets packed into the videogame in various ways. For example, characters on the “evil” side in the game are described as “secularists” skilled at deception who got their training in “college”. Rock musicians are all on the side of evil in the game, and the evil side features a number of characters with middle-eastern sounding ( presumeably Muslim ) names. ( for an 8-part series on LaHaye’s beliefs, see: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/6/26/122744/780 )

The game’s makers have admitted that the game is rigged – the side of ‘evil’ can never lose. So what is it ? What is a game in which players can never lose ? Is it a game ? Is it indoctrination into the ideology of religious warfare ?

Initially, at the introductory levels, the game seems innocuous – players spend most of their time converting noncombatants and acquiring resources ; the heavy violence comes later in the game.

Interestingly, the CEO of Left Behind Games, Troy Lyndon, made statements to Computer Gaming World last February, 2006, to the effect that imply the current commercial release of “Left Behind: Eternal Forces” will desensitize teenage gamers to violence. ( http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/12/15/13453/933 ) :

“The CEO of Left Behind Games, who has recently characterized the nature of “Left Behind: Eternal Forces” as potentially wholly nonviolent such that “You can actually play the entire game without firing a shot.” ( from a Boston Globe review of the game ) said in February 2006 that play resulted in “hundreds of dead bodies” piling up on the lovingly detailed streets of the virtual New York City in his game and that he thought the game might gain a “mature” audience rating for its depiction of mass killing. But Lyndon expressed a concern that making those piles of corpses magically vanish would desensitize gamers to violence.

Then, Troy Lyndon’s game was redesigned prior to commercial release so that those dead bodies Lyndon referred to just disappeared… and it was marketed to a 13 to 34 age range that included teenagers. “

I can’t wait to see this game, it’s the funniest thing i’ve ever heard. And the quote from the company’s Rep about after you kill people you just pray to get your soul points back…

Personally I prefer the swords and sorcery and strategy/tactics type games over the first person shooters.

With any luck, we can kill two birds with one stone by keeping it in Wal-Mart:
1) Cutting in on Wal-Mart’s bottom line
2) Killing the franchise where it stands