@RobBex2
Preacher this is not.
To preface this: other than a very probably GodHatesGeeks tie-in video game — that, being sacrilegious AF — I had absolutely no idea what to expect from The Church in the Darkness. Like anyone, really, I never heard of it and just wanted to try something new. And yet, there is nothing worse than a project with such great potential and such horrific execution…
The Church in the Darkness has a great premise: your protag has to sneak into a 1970’s style “church” (i.e. cult) in the South American jungles. You are either given a gun or a bible — I kid you not, clergy-nerds! — at the beginning and you have to sneak in and rescue church members before they, you know, drink any kool-aid. Or listen to IGN podcasts instead of GHG’s. On this premise alone, the game should be awesome, but let’s just pump the brakes.
The execution is bad. The game plays like something off the Atari, which, if this is how it was imagined since this does take place in the 70s, I could maybe let it slide. But, that’s not how it’s presented. The controls are clunky and the graphics are just “eh”. The view is eagle eye and you have to move around a maze that gets repetitive as hell. The reason why we love our old NES games is because we grew up on them; but, gamers don’t want our new games to look worse than the games we grew up with.
I would expect this type of gameplay from a smartphone app, but not a PS4 game. I do applaud Paranoid Productions for completing their game. God knows that is a huge hurdle and getting it on the system is an even bigger one. That said, my fellow clergy of the cool, I really wish The Church in the Darkness could have had more money/time to give this game the story it really deserves– one that deserves our utter biblical praise! 1.5/5 Bibles.
-Robert Bexar