Quote of note:

The first thing Frichner did was to have one of his Christian characters approach a civilian lazily walking down a midtown Manhattan street in the middle of the battle over Earth and stand next to him for two seconds, which instantly converted him.

The good thing was, however, that as Satan, I of course had the United Nations on my side. As my peacekeeping Hummer and some of my followers rolled down Sixth Avenue, the Christians outflanked me and started firing, immediately taking out several of my nurses.

The apocalypse, I was learning, was a good excuse for Christians to just go nuts and unload a lot of pent-up stuff. Armageddon is like their version of divorce.

By the end, Frichner had 24 soldiers and I had three. Defeated, I asked him if the game had accomplished its objective of making him feel invigorated about the believers' role in the end of the world. "I thought I was playing the devil," he said with a confused look. I took that as a no. 

Joel Stein: Angels with ammo
The Bible gets fully automatic in a new video game offering a dress rehearsal for the apocalypse.
Joel Stein
May 16, 2006

I'VE BEEN LAZY about preparing for the apocalypse.

I have no distilled water, millet, gold bars, garlic or wooden stakes. I don't really know much about the apocalypse.

To teach people like me who are too lazy to actually read about it, a small company is releasing a video game at the end of the year based on the phenomenally bestselling "Left Behind" books, which are based on the book of Revelations. This seemed even more exciting than my idea for a video game based on the books of the Bible that list obscure Jewish laws — the part where you are being chased by a huge bacon cheeseburger is pretty intense.

The game creators agreed to let me learn about revelation by playing "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" at last week's Electronic Entertainment Expo. The company's website bills the game as "the ultimate fight of Good against Evil," in which you use "the power of prayer to strengthen your troops."