Displaying items by tag: Babel Rising
Babel Rising is loosely based on Genesis 11:5-8 – yes, a little something from the Bible, that goes like this…. ‘But the Lord came down to look at the city and the tower the people were building. “Look!” he said. “The people are united, and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them! Come, let’s go down and confuse the people with different languages. Then they won’t be able to understand each other.” In that way, the Lord scattered them all over the world, and they stopped building the city’. On the surface it doesn’t sound like much of a premise for a game, but the game does interpret the Bible a little differently, with God choosing to smite those who would choose to build such a tower rather then confusing them with different languages, essentially creating what is probably the old Old Testament Tower Defense game.
Much like Angry Birds, Babel Rising is a simple game with a few options that turns out to be fairly addictive and enjoyable. At the start of each level you have to choose your Godly powers, which for some unknown reason – seeing as you are God – are limited to two. Then you use these powers to prevent the people from completing the Tower of Babel. Each power comes with three levels, the first being a simple power like throwing a rock to squash individual workers, which has a quick recharge, to a medium power that can kill a handful of minions but takes a while to charge up and a super power that has the ability to kill everyone on the tower in one swoop, though this typically can only be used once or twice in a level.
The fun is in the detail. As far as simple games go, Babel Rising is beautifully rendered in your typical cartoon style, but it’s the sound effects and animations that make you smile as you smite as many worker drones (and the occasional priests) as you can. Who knew that being God could be so much fun?
Of course to keep the fun going over many levels, new things are introduced – such as some priests being immune to some of your powers and being able to protect their workers, and some levels have different goals than others.
Occasionally the game throws a totally different level, one of which has you sinking ships before they can get into port.
Babel Rising can be played with a controller or with Kinect. Because this was a game I wanted to play, and I had to choose where to download it to, I choose my XBox and not the kids, which has the unfortunate side effect of not being able to test the Kinect controls as my gaming room is not suitable for Kinect – having a low roof and small floor-space.
The controller was easy to use and worked fast enough in all situations.
Babel Rising is an ‘Arcade title’ and as such might not be a game that you settle in for a two hour gaming marathon with, but it’s an enjoyable time waster for those in-between times when you just don;t have a couple of hours up your sleeve, but you just want to have a quick game of something.
