There is a line in the
movie This is Spinal Tap, where the director of the “mockumentary” reads a quote from a review of
the Spinal Tap album “Rock ‘n Roll Creation”: “I
don’t know what day the Lord created Spinal Tap, but why couldn’t
he have rested on that day?”. There is a certain application
of this quotation to the game Noah’s Adventures.

The designers of Noah’s
Adventures describe their game as
suitable for kids aged 5-13. “Kids will have fun exploring
the Biblically scaled Ark and also learn and be amazed at the creatures
and their realistic sound and animations”. Apparently, “the
majority of the 3D animal models [were] courtesy of Dedicated
Digital but although varied they could
hardly be described as realistic. Some of the animals you had to
think about to recognize them. Graphics themselves are outdated by
about four years. The version I played was the downloadable shareware
version (according to the documentation) which features fifteen different
creatures and eight songs. These individual crappy muzak versions
of hymns and choruses are accessible through the menu-YIPPEE! Apparently
the full version includes thirty-two different creatures, eighteen
songs, and a movie depicting the story of Noah’s Ark. My version
had this movie but only eight songs so I’m not sure what version
I had. The full version retails for $13.99.

Although it is not completely
the case, in many cases, a Christian equivalent of a mainstream
product is an inferior one. I am a Christian
but for me sticking a Christian label on something is not enough
to make it a better quality product. It seems many Christians are
willing to put up with poorer writing, dated graphics, and dull gameplay
just because it has a Christian label on it. It’s a shame,
because unless Christians demand quality material, there will never
be a change to this situation. Doubly a shame, given the wealth of
source material to draw on. Watch the game introduction for the biggest
laugh of your life. The dialog and acting is camp and pathetic, as
though written by a child. The woeful acting, to put it in perspective,
easily makes the acting in The Watchmaker seem Shakespearean. I think
all the voiceover acting was performed by one person. The part of
Noah is played by what sounds to be an out of work Bob Dylan impersonator
(and out of work for good reason) and his delivery is one word punctuated
by a second of silence before the next word is uttered!

This is not to say that
this game is completely without merit. The game installs completely
to the hard drive, thereby eliminating the
need for the disk to be in to play. I especially liked the use of
voiceovers in the menu to help children. When the mouse is hovered
over the different choices, the voiceover says it aloud, allowing
a non-reader to choose independently. Although there is text throughout
the game, there is no literacy requirement which is a good thing
considering the literacy level of the author. There are numerous
examples of poor punctuation (possessives, anyone?), unusual use
of capitalization, and even spelling errors. The comments throughout
the game modes are varied so there is no sense of receiving the same
ones repeatedly, which can become irritating and boring. There is
randomness inherent in all game modes, allowing replayability for
anyone interested in suffering through the myriad problems with the
game. The moving sky, although obviously outdated graphically, deserves
a mention as it shows a nice touch for detail. It would have been
more beneficial to the game to have put more effort into other aspects
but a non-static sky shows the developer has is mindful of the importance
of small touches.

For one, there are three
game modes: “Hide and Seek”, “Creature
Quiz”, and “Animal Adventure”. Hide and seek is
a very simple “search for the creature” in the ark’s
four levels. My four-year-old son thought this was quite entertaining,
especially when animals were teetering precariously on beams high
above the ground level of the ark! As soon as all ten animals are
found, a very simple cutscene showing the ark floating at sea (with
some interesting examples of large scale advertising on the side
of the ark). Unfortunately, this is the same final cutscene for all
the game modes.

Creature quiz is easily
the poorest of the game modes, lacking any real points of interest.
An animal walks to the front of the screen
and a question relating to the animal appears. It is unfortunate
that the structure is one of a never-ending quiz. The only way to
leave the creature quiz is to press ESC! The designers missed a golden
opportunity by failing to include a score book or anything that might
encourage competitive learning. Be sure to check out the mundane
quiz questions. Here are a couple of examples: “An African
crocodile is from (A) Australia (B) Europe (C) Africa (D) North America”.
Another: “A rabbit eats (A) leaves (B) deer (C) zebra (D) all
of the above”. Yes, we are truly catering to the lowest common
denominator. But, there is something truly funny that occurs in the
varied responses to any quiz answer. I could not suppress my mirth
when a voice answered “yes” in a voice akin to that of
a zombie calling out “brainz” or the questionable “praise
God!” in the same zombie voice! It was a little off putting
also when some questions appeared and then disappeared as another
animal appeared on screen. Glitches galore.

Which brings me to “Animal Adventure”, though the voiceover,
I swear, says “Animal ventures”! I listened to this several
times to be sure. This is the mode that is most adventure-like. It
entails seeking out animals that need to be boarded on the ark. Each
one needs an item before it will agree to follow Noah. This mode
has both easy and hard settings that govern the number of animals
that need to be found. It is bizarre that some of the animals seem
to want items for no perceivable reason: a horse requested a bowling
ball, a fox wanted a picture, and another animal wanted (wait for
it)…a computer monitor! It takes about thirty minutes to finish
finding all the items and then you are treated to the same boring
cutscene with an added feature: you are treated to a message with
a time message telling you how long it took to finish! Wow!

There are numerous other
problems with this game. The movement keys are not configurable
which is a real pain. They -ought to be the
usual “WASD” setup to be used in conjunction with the
mouse but unfortunately you are stuck with the arrow keys. There
was no way of manually changing them either. There are huge variations
in sound levels throughout the game. Almost every time something
different happened, I had to leap for the volume control on my keyboard.
Watch the introductory movie to see people hovering in the air while
they talk! And what is up with the way the animals walk? At some
points, the animals were walking on top of one another and my wife,
who happened to walk in at that moment, asked, “are they having
sex?”! You can see from one of the screeenshots that graphical
clipping is also a frequent problem in this game. The A6
engine seems to have lots of bugs that need ironing out. I had long loading
times at the beginning of the game but little in the way of delays
throughout the game. Perhaps a faster processor would have helped
me here, but I am inclined to believe it is the A6 engine.

At the end, I asked myself, “what was it all for?”.
Yes, the game cited appropriate Scripture but I did not feel I learned
anything or felt I had achieved anything. The only take home message
I gleaned was that following the lessons of the Bible was important
to prevent being killed on God’s whim. Perhaps if the end scene
had shown the Ark arriving at Mount Ararat, with animals and people
disembarking and being fruitful and happy may have reinforced a more
positive message than showing a lonely Ark floating in a sea of nothingness.

This game deserves a D, though for children I might consider being
a little more generous: C.

Final Grade: D for
adults; C for children

System Requirements:

• Pentium 3 800 MHz processor (Pentium 4 1.6 GHz recommended)
• Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
• 128 MB RAM (256 MB
  RAM recommended)
• 110 MB Hard drive
  space
• DirectX compatible
  sound and video cards
• DirectX 8.1
• CD-ROM

  Testing System:

• Athlon 600 MHz
• Windows 98SE
• 192 MB RAM
• Plenty of hard drive
  space!
• DirectX 9.0b