Noahs Adventures Review

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 Graphics themselves are outdated by about four years.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