King of Kings

So there's this game, and it's called King of Kings. And I played it. It's a Bible game. About the Bible. Yes, that Bible. You may have heard of it. The one with that Jesus guy in it.

This game was made by v. v. venerable developers Wisdom Tree, who decided that since everybody loves Jesus, a game about him would be a big hit with discerning gamers. No, make that three games. For you see, King of Kings is, in fact th-th-three games in one!!

The importance of this cannot be overstated. Where other, lesser companies would have given us one crappy game, Wisdom Tree have given us three. It's like Christmas. No, it's like three Christmasses.

"But how do you know they're crappy!?" I hear you cry, "you haven't even played them yet!". True, true, but I tell you what. If they're not crappy, I owe you £4. Okay? We'll see. I'll be right, mostly because this is my website and I'm always right on my website.

Now, I'm a heathen. This is obvious to everybody. So it may be argued that I can't appreciate the "message" of these games, since I'm filled with the Sin of Heathenry and all that good stuff. To which I counter: shut up. It's either a good video game or it's not. "Messages" in video games are dumb and ridiculous, and in no way affect the quality, especially not positively.

So let's get on with this. I chose to play Wise Men first, not because I have any particular fetish for old guys who give oddly-named perfumes to baby messiahs, but because it was first in the list and I'm too much of a lazy arse to move the cursor down.

So I'm a guy on a camel. I can work with that, I guess, but it's not particularly exciting in the way that, say, a robot would be. Especially not if the robot had some sort of laser. Lasers are awesome.

Anyway, in spite of the dire lack of lasers or similar things such as beams and rays, the game doesn't seem too horrible yet. Sure, the sprite flicker happens to a pretty ridiculous level, but it's nothing I can't deal with. That sand even looks pretty nice, although the trees are kind of shoddy.

But the flicker is pretty awful. The wise man looks like he's phasing out of existence, which I wasn't aware was a problem for wise men. Maybe he's a time-travelling wise man. Anyway, the the flicker in the screenshot makes it difficult to appreciate the fact that the floating things to the right kind of look like some strange combination of a dildo and a candle. But they do, and flashing ones at that. That's pretty kinky for a Bible game.

Although now that I think about it, the Bible as I'm aware of it does contain a rather large amount of sex and violence, so maybe a candle-dildo wouldn't seem too out of place.

On with the game. The camel jumps pretty high, which is probably due to the little-known fact that the wise men actually lived on the moon. Check page 606, it's 100% true. So you can collect the candildo things, and they go flying up into the air. Which, I would say, really shouldn't result in you actually having collected them at all. But this is a video game, so I'll excuse a little bit of impossibility.

What I won't excuse is the music. It's an incredibly repetitive, upbeat tune that quickly becomes irritating. Bah.

The camel can spit rocks, which are probably for stoning heathens with, but they move in an annoying curve pattern that doesn't seem particularly useful for hitting anything. They should've given the camel a laser. Lasers hit things.

Watch out for the birds. They can smell your wisdom and holiness, and these are heathen birds so they'll do anything they can to prevent you from getting to that place with that guy who does that thing in that book. Anything they can basically translates to flying in a straight line and taking off some of your health if you touch them. Which I guess is not really trying that hard.

If you touch one of the scrolls that some guy has carelessly left lying around, you have to answer a question about the Bible. I guess they figured that people wouldn't want to play a Bible trivia game on its own, so they hid it behind that age-old camouflage called "generic platform game action". Or, alternatively "thrilling camel-riding, bird-dodging action".

But how am I supposed to answer these questions? I don't read the Bible. Have you ever seen me read the Bible? The answer is most likely no. If I read the Bible I wouldn't have time to play these thrilling games and write my very witty, non-boring articles about them. So be thankful.

So if you answer 'em correctly you get more health. I guess this is suppsosed to represent how the more you know about the Bible, the less susceptible you are to being killed by a bird flying into you. Well done, Wisdom Tree. Your talent for symbolism truly amazes me.

There are lizards after you as well, not just birds. I guess they're heathens too, or maybe they just don't lie camel-riding old guys who collect floating phallic candle-things. Or maybe they're just having a bad day. Who knows?

Then there the cacti that rise out of the ground to block your way, so you have to time your jumps to get over them. I wasn't aware cacti did that, but you know. It's a video game. It's not supposed to make sense. Anyway, these are Biblical times on the moon, cacti were different then. They were more aggressive and I guess they were heathens. Then Jesus came along and gave them the Word of God and they stopped acting like uppity biznatches.

I completed the first level and it told me that the phallic candles were frankincense or however the hell you spell that. Fine. Ruin my fun, why don't you? By the way, where's the gold and myrrh? And what is myrrh?

So I'm in the the next level and I'm bloody sick of taking screenshots...

I mean, I'm in the next level and there are these floating red grapes and the camel eats them and I guess they do something because they go on my status bar next to my health. They wouldn't put them there if they didn't do anything, right?

Practically the entire animal kingdom, plus some giant lego blocks, seems to be out to get you in this game. I guess they're Satanists or something. I dunno, where in the Bible does it say that the wise men were attacked by birds, hedgehogs, lizards, and some sort of red canine on their way to see Jesus?

I died and I'm sick of this game. Time for Flight to Egypt.

Wisdom Tree, you jerks. This is just the same game with two people on a donkey instead of one person on a camel. Y'know, when it said "Flight to Egypt", I was kinda expecting something that involved, uh... flight. Well done, Wisdom Tree. You are truly the masters at thinking outside the box. Only you could give us a flight to Egypt that does not, in fact, involve flight.

And then the next level's just the same as the first one with a palette swap and some snakes and goats. If Jesus is so great, why doesn't he get a game with different levels, huh? Mario does. So that settles it, Mario is better than Jesus. I always suspected as much.

On to the next (and final) club! I mean game. Game is what I meant to say, not club, because games roxx0r. Except this one. Because this one, though titled "Jesus and the Temple", is just an impossible Super Mario Bros. 2 ripoff with more bees and more Jesus. I guess.

It's weird, because the last time I was thinking about things that would have made Super Mario Bros. 2 better, I didn't even think of adding bees, making it Bible-related and making it impossible. Well done, Wisdom Tree. Truly you have surpassed anything my feeble heathen mind could imagine.

In conclusion, the shoddy quality of Bible merchandise these day (or, uh, several years in the past, I guess) is truly shocking. I can only speculate that this game caused many people to become Pagans.

Well done, Wisdom Tree.

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