Review Left Behind: Eternal Forces Developer: Left Behind Games Publisher: Left Behind Games Genre: Real Time Strategy Release Date: November 2006 Platform: Review by Robert Washburne November 14, 2006		Buy this game at Trade for this game at:

Eternal Forces is a licensed game taking place in the world of the popular Left Behind novel series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. It is a real-time strategy game much like Warcraft 2, but placed in an eschatological setting.

What is eschatology and what are these novels talking about? If you taught Sunday School and know the answer to these questions, then skip ahead to the Game Play section. For the rest of us, here is a quick look into a world which most people have never heard about.

Eschatology is the branch of theology which concerns itself with the end of the world or of mankind. In this case, we are talking about Christian theology. The Christian religion is splintered into many denominations (sects) and each one has its own opinion of the End Times. All of them share the following major events, although they disagree over the order and just how literally they believe the scriptures will be fulfilled.

1. All the Christians get their act together. (Ep 5:27) In what can only be defined as a Divine miracle, Christians all over the world start behaving as if they were disciples of Christ. In the past, when this has happened locally on a small scale, many unbelieving people would decide this was a pretty good thing and would become Christians. These were called “Revivals.”
2. The “Rapture” (I Th.4:16-17) The Church, having finally become what God intended all along, is transported straight up into Heaven. This causes great chaos on earth as economies collapse from the lack of workers and managers.
3. The (Great) Tribulation. (Mt.24:21) With the Church safely out of the way, God is finally able to vent His anger which has been building up all these millennium. His wrath is poured out for seven years through a series of natural and supernatural disasters which destroys much of the life on earth. Through out this time many people still come to Christ, but Satan himself comes to earth and possesses a world leader who fights and persecutes these young believers. This person is known as The Beast and The Anti-Christ.
4. The Second Coming. (Mt.25:31-32) Jesus comes back to earth with all of Heaven. He gets rid of all unbelievers and all the demonic, chaining them in The Pit for a thousand years.
5. The Millennial Kingdom. (Da.2:44) Christ sets up the perfect kingdom on earth which lasts for one thousand years. No more sickness, no more war, no more aging. At the end of that time, Satan is released to allow for one last temptation. Hey, everyone has to get tempted and it isn't fair that those who were born after the Kingdom was established should miss out.
6. Armageddon. (Re20:7-9) Satan recruits everyone he can and marches on Jerusalem. God causes fire to come down from Heaven and destroys them all before the first shot is fired. Enough is enough and God passes final judgment on everyone – humans, angels and demons alike.
7. New Heaven and Earth (Re.21:1) God, having accomplished everything He intended with heaven and earth, melts them both down and creates new ones which are perfect and in which is no evil. We are not told anything about what happens after this.

Eternal Forces takes place during Part 3, just after the rapture when the earth is in a state of chaos and newly converted believers must fight for their lives against “The Beast.”

The whole point of this is that there is a spiritual reality behind all the stuff that is going on. The Leader isn't just out to get rid of annoying religious people, he is waring against God and His purposes. And believers aren't just resisting against religious intolerance, but are fighting against evil spirits and the prince of evil himself. One must conquer in the spirit world first because the earthly world is just a refection of that deeper reality.

OK, now you have a vague idea of where the game is coming from. How well does it play?

Game Play

Eternal Forces is a Real-Time Strategy/Resource Management game. Classic examples would include Populous and Warcraft 2.

You start out with a few people. You send them out to gather supplies. The supplies help you get more people and to build infrastructure. The infrastructure helps your people become more powerful. You continue gathering and building until you are strong enough to defeat the enemy. Of course, the enemy is doing the same thing at the same time.

To play these types of games well, you must know your strengths and weaknesses as well as those of your opponent and leverage your resources so as to tip the advantage in your direction. This usually means keeping track of lots of things at the same time. How are the resources coming? Am I spending them on the most useful stuff? Is everyone where I need them to be? What is the enemy doing? Have I protected myself adequately? What is my best strategy? Is everyone busy doing something? It is easy to get overwhelmed.

For me, it has always boiled down to how quickly and efficiently you can control your units. I loved Populous, but could only get through half of the levels before the computer got faster than me. At that point there was no way I could win. I loved Warcraft 2, but could never finish the final levels because I couldn't jump around the screen and control things as quickly as the computer. So one of my first questions about Eternal Forces was how efficiently could I control my units.

Unfortunately, the answer for me was, “Not well.”

The first problem I ran into was the buildings. They were always in the way. It was nice that LB Games decided to make a realistic 3D setting, but it did nothing for the game play. As you can see from the screen shots, sometimes the buildings were translucent, sometimes they were opaque. Sometimes you could see your units as green shadows through the buildings. Most of the time I was just wondering what was on the other side where I couldn't see.

You can raise and lower the camera, but by the time it is high enough for the buildings not not be a problem, your units are too small to see or control. Can you see my Disciple in the aerial Shot? Or is that my Medic? So I found that I was spending much too much time struggling with the camera angle when I should have been directing my units.

Which leads me to the next frustration – Everything looks alike. You must take over abandoned buildings and convert them to your needs. But only certain buildings are available and they can only be converted into one or two choices. To me, they all looked the same and I found myself wandering around the city trying to find the right one. Time wasted when I should have been building or upgrading.

Ditto for your units. They are small at the best of times and I found I had to get right up on them to be able to tell them apart. More camera angle misery.

And speaking of moving around, don't even think about playing this game unless you have a very powerful gaming system. I tried playing it on a system with the minimum requirements and I could not get through the tutorial. Whenever I got close to the side of the screen everything would slow down and I could never crawl over to the edge. Which meant that I couldn't get to the building which the tutorial wanted me to get to.

So I moved over to an AMD 2600+ with GForce 6600. I could now get to the edge, but it was still slow. Heaven help you if you need to take action anywhere other than the center of the playing field.

Now, if all that wasn't bad enough, just when you think you might have things under control – you have everyone busy doing what they need to be doing. Then you notice that you are losing units all across the board. What's happening?

It turns out that each unit has a Spirit level. Your units have a high level. The enemy has a very low level. Innocent passers by are in the middle. But your units don't stay there. Your high Spirit will slowly drop with time until the unit becomes neutral and you have to recruit and train them all over again. To prevent this from happening, you can order a unit to pray. This raises the meter by 3%. You can't order units to automatically pray and they can't do anything else while they are praying.

So much of your precious time must be spent going around the board and clicking on every unit to make sure they are prayed up. Over and over again.

Now, to be fair, Eternal Forces brings several interesting variations to the game.

First is the concept of Spirit points. You must recruit all of your units from the general population. This raises their points initially, but you have to keep on them to keep the points up.

In the same way, you don't have to kill the enemy units to get rid of them. Your units have powers which raise the spirit and if the enemy gets too high, they break ranks and become neutral. This is encouraged in the game as killing an enemy costs you a spirit point, but “saving” them wins you two points.

Conclusion

Eternal Forces is an RTS with a couple of interesting variations. It is written in a religious setting, but is not preachy nor does it condone violence against the heathens. If anything, it discourages violence and intolerance.

The game was just too complicated for me to enjoy. But, to be fair, I am an Old Fart and the game was written for the young, gamers crowd. It is entirely possible that a younger player with quicker reflexes would love this game. But I doubt it.

You need hair reflexes with manic speed and control to play the game, but the action does not follow at the same pace. You are expending much more effort than the action on the screen would seem to indicate – clicking wildly around the screen just to make sure that your units stay put. I have a hard time believing that this mix will work for anyone.

So, we have a professionally crafted game, but with significant flaws. It comes close, but I just don't think it's going to make it with either the Gamers, who will want more screen action, or the Adventurers, who will want less adrenaline. That gives it a C+.

Final Grade: C+ (find out more about our grading system)

If you liked this game, then Play: Warcraft 2 Watch: The Left Behind movie when it comes out Read: The Left Behind series

System Requirements:

• Windows® XP SP1¹,
• Pentium® IV 2.0GHz processor or faster,
• 512MB RAM,
• Minimum 1GB hard disk space,
• 8x CD/DVD-ROM drive or faster,
• 32MB DirectX9.0c compatible GeForce MX440 or ATI Radeon 8500 video card or higher,
• DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card,
• TCP/IP for LAN or 56 Kbps modem (2 player games) or Cable/DSL modem (3-8 player games) and an Internet service provider account required for Internet multiplayer²,
• Microsoft compatible keyboard and mouse.

This may require minor adjustments to the configuration of your system and/or updates to the hardware component drivers.
¹ Administrator privileges are required.
² User is responsible for all Internet access fees and phone charges