It's been quite a few years since I last wrote a blog here on Giantbomb. You might be wondering what type of game could bring a one time active blogger out of a five year long blog hiatus. And the answer is not one but twenty one games brought me here. Those games being the titles so far released by Classics Digital. Now with a name like that you might expect some real gems to be included here. Maybe even forgotten ones. But no, these are some really crappy games. You might also expect even a base level of effort to have gone into making them run on modern operating systems, but that also is too much to expect. So what you have are a bunch of forgotten, abandoned games picked up on the cheap by some homebrewer in Texas who has (incorrectly) configured some DOSBox settings and released the games for $5 a piece on Steam and GOG.

Now before you worry for my sanity, no I did not in fact spend over $100 on a bunch of 30 year old shitty games. Game bundle website Fanatical was kind enough to bundle all but a couple of Classics' library together for a much more reasonable price of $1. At over 99% off I decided it would be fun to see just how bad some of these titles are. And since I obviously hate myself I decided to start at the bottom of the barrel and play not one, not two, but six different Wisdom Tree games.

If you are unfamiliar, Wisdom Tree was a development studio in the early 90's that made games loosely inspired by biblical stories or principles. In fact maybe its most famous game is Bible Adventures. This game is actually a collection of three different games all using the same mechanic. That mechanic is picking stuff up. In the game based on Noah's Ark you pick up animals. I assume you take them to the ark but with limited in game instructions and no included digital manual I actually have no idea what the objective of the game is nor how it is supposed to be played. I know you can pick up animals and there is what looks to be an ark in the level but what do I have to do to get the animals into the ark? I have no idea. Maybe that isn't the goal at all. I don't know. The second game is based on the story of baby Moses. You play as his mother (at least I assume considering there is again no story and no instructions in game) and carry baby Moses somewhere. I would tell you where but that would have required me to be able to make it past the first screen which would require me to understand the basic mechanics of this game, which I very obviously don't. The last game is based on David and Goliath. It plays identically to the other two games in that you pick things up and bring them somewhere. And like the other two games I couldn't for the life of me tell you where that place is or how I am supposed to know what to bring. Or maybe there is another mechanic in the game I am missing. But Classics Digital couldn't be bothered to set up joystick support or a semi-modern control interface. They just drop it in DOSBox and move on.

Speaking of poor DOSBox efforts, let's move on to our fourth, slightly less awful, game. This game is called Spiritual Warfare and in this six game collection it is the marquee title. You can tell why. Unlike Bible Adventures which is barely playable, Spiritual Warfare resembles an actual video game. You play as a nameless bible warrior who must preach the word of Jesus, turning gangsters, drug dealers, and other sinners into pious men of the cloth. At least that is what I imagine the story to be, as there is yet again no actual story given in the game and no manual included with the download. The actual game is fairly complex. You defeat enemies by throwing holy fruit at them, and as you progress you gain more powerful fruits, which you buy in a shop with piety points. You earn said points by answering questions posed by an angel about various biblical topics. Don't know your bible quotes? No worries. The answer to almost every question is obvious. If the words faith or Jesus are within an answer then just select that answer and you will be good. Still can't get it right? Well you occasionally get piety points for defeating enemies as well, but considering you need hundreds of these points to progress through the game, getting one or two per every fourth or fifth enemy is not a good way to go.

Like in a Zelda or Metroid title, you must gather additional items which give you abilities that allow you to progress further into the game. A holy belt of some sort allowed me to push objects blocking my path for example, while I need some sort of holy boots to get past the roads of fire and brimstone blocking my progress currently. Nothing here is remotely unique or especially creative, but I've played a lot worse. Of note, the original game even included controller support way back on DOS and my Xbox One controller was immediately recognized and seemed to work more or less. Some options still required me to make use of keyboard controls (hint: to open the menu you need to press F1 for whatever reason), but this was a more or less playable game. While there were still no instructions, there were characters in the game that offered some hints on how to progress and I was able to get through the first two areas without much issue. While far from recommended, at this stage, with four games under my belt, Spiritual Warfare currently takes the prize as the best game in Digital Classics' clearly lacking library.

As this is getting fairly long, I will hold off on discussing the final two Wisdom Tree games included here until next time. For now, I hope you enjoyed my first blog in half a decade and I hope you look forward to additional blogs going forward.