Review: Babel Rising 3D (Xbox Live)
Score:
43%
Ubisoft's Babel Rising 3D has already picked up some rocky reviews through its Xbox Console version, will the jump to Windows Phone take the opportunity to improve the God-game where you need to stop the terrible tower of Babel reaching into the sky? The short answer is no.
Version Reviewed: 1.0.0.0
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Babel Rising is a fascinating concept for a game. You play an un-named 'Angry God' and the people below you are in the process of building a huge tower to reach into the sky, where the top of the tower "may reach unto heaven" (I suspect a few readers may recognise this story). That's not going to be good for your health, so you need to slow down the construction of the tower using the powers only a deity has access to. That includes thunder claps, lightning, fireballs, and floods, all under your control if you are patient enough to exploit them.
Yet after all this build up and brilliant source material, Ubisoft go and spoil it all with a game that over promises and under delivers.
Let's start with the graphics. This is a 3D game (the clue is in the title) with a free floating camera that you can spin around the tower being built. Actually it's not that free, the camera will do it's best to keep the centre of the tower in the centre of the screen, so all you can do is rotate around the tower with a left to right swipe of your finger, with a bit of zoom through a vertical swipe.
In theory that should be enough, but in practice it's not. The humans running to the tower to help build it must be stopped, but you never get far enough back from the tower to actually lay down a decent wave of damage to slow down the building of the tower. And it would be nice if the humans looked a bit more, well, human. Most zoom levels have them as nothing more than simple stick men, and that's not enough to pull me into the gaming world.
What about the destructive powers on offer? Any action takes manna power to activate and use, and that means you have some time management involved, as manna builds up over time. Use up too much of it at once, and the humans are free to carry on building up the tower without any interference.
You also have a power meter. As you create havoc through your furious use of the basic powers, the power meter fills up until you ultimately have a huge power reserve and can unleash a rather spectacular bit of godly rage on the pesky humans, which should stop a fair number of the construction workers in their path.
Short taps on the screen target the power, a sliding move with a finger touching somewhere else will start a 'trail' version of the power (e.g. a wall of fire, rather than a falling fireball), or a shake of your phone will release the power reserve - alternatively tapping with three fingers will let you do this if you'd rather be discreet.
I never felt that any of these offensive moves were accurate and placing their destructive energies where I wanted them to go. This is compounded by the issues around the camera and the 3d view of the world.
There's also a nagging doubt in my mind about the gaming world. I can hurl down rocks at people, but not at the tower being built? I can burn the workers but not the wooden scaffolding? It seems that however vulnerable the humans are, the tower is invulnerable. It's a small thing, but I find it very hard to 'get myself into character' when playing Babel Rising.
All the elements are here for a really interesting game which would be relatively unique. But nothing gels together to create a cohesive title. It looks the part on screenshots, but not when you start to play. The weapons available to you sound great, but are tricky to use and there is little variance between the different choices. It sounds suitably bombastic, but a good backing track doesn't change the nature of a game.
Most of all, it's boring. Stop little people running up a tower, and keep doing this, in the knowledge that you can't actually stop the tower being built. It takes a deft hand to make that prospect appealing and addictive... a touch that Ubisoft simply don't have.
It may have limited appeal and some fanatical supporters, but I'm struggling to recommend Babel Rising. Not because there is anything wrong with it, just that there's nothing right with it.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at