Today we are going to take a look at Babylon’s Fall. This action-adventure game from PlatinumGames promises its signature combat style in a historical setting with up to four-player co-op. Whether it can deliver on its promise is the question we will try to answer today. Babylon’s Fall is available on Steam for 69 Euros and 99 cents or your regional equivalent.
With this review you have a choice of either reading it here in text form or listening to the video review. They both contain the same content.
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Some games are truly legendary. NieR: Automata, Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising, Astral Chain. And all of these have two things in common. First, they are brilliant action fighting games in which you enjoy awesome fights. Secondly, they come from PlatinumGames. It seems that anything these guys put their hands on is at the very least playable. But then tragedy struck. Someone stole the keys to their offices, hacked into their computers, and created Babylon’s Fall with the intention of destroying the competition. Or not? It’s more like someone found some hidden shameful folder and the only thing I can honestly say is that this fall from grace will hurt.
In Babylon’s Fall, you’ll reach the biblical city of Babylon as a prisoner. Yeah… original…. And you will stay a prisoner for the rest of the game even if they sometimes take you out into a tower that stands over the city like a giant phallus. The few sparks of joy of entering an interesting world are quickly quenched with a bucket of illogical story pseudotwists. And it gets worse. The first impression is not great as the graphics if you can call them graphics, seems to come from the past. Welcome back to 1999 when your first Playstation CD entered the tray.
It’s not about the fact that you cannot distinguish males from females but the whole art style (and I’m being quite generous with the word art style) seems to look like a blurred yet somehow boxy image from a first-grader. And that’s what it looks like when it's standing still on the menu. But I want to move, hack and slash enemies in co-op. Create combos, get better weapons, and all the fun things we know PlatinumGames can do well. But that’s where the next nightmare comes in.
From the very beginning, it is obvious that creating your own character isn’t worthwhile. So, let’s instead focus on the weapons and armor and all the stuff we can hack and slash in Babylon’s Falls. Those who have imprisoned you attached a devious device called the Coffin to your back. It allows you to carry two more weapons and use your environment to your advantage. For example, take a piece of a wall and throw it at your enemies. That actually sounds pretty cool right? Sadly, you’ll quickly figure out that you haven’t actually figured out anything. You get close to no information. How good is this weapon? Does it deal more damage than the one I have equipped? And forget about character statistics. While those are available it seems even the devs had no idea what each of them affects.
So, in the end, you’ll just grab two random swords into your hands, put two bows (yes, two bows for some reason) onto your Coffin and let's go on an adventure. But, you actually can’t. There is no system that would allow you to add your friends to your party. And in a game that is focused on co-op… yeah… that’s a bit of a problem. You’ll end up frantically running all over the lobby to activate one of the stupidest online multiplayer systems ever created.
If, for some reason, you haven’t given up on Babylon’s Fall after hearing all I had to say so far, the action itself will be a swift punch into your guts as well. All the happiness is sucked out of what is actually a cool idea in about five seconds after you shoot your first arrow. The vomiting will start in the twentieth second when you attack melee for the first time. The reason? There is no way to know what anything on the screen is. Not even your character is clearly visible. So you just all jump around and hope you’ll hit anything but the wall randomly mashing buttons on your controller to end up with an epileptic seizure in the fifth minute.
To simplify, a typical fight looks something like this: You’ll run through boring, empty corridors into an arena. It gets closed and a certain amount of enemies are released for your to fight with. As the attacks start flying you will lose all orientation. Then, somehow all the enemies die and the arena doors open again alongside the scoreboard. And it’s time to move to the next arena. The only thing that is interesting is the bosses which are actually visually stunning. But once movement begins they too become a blurred mass of something.
Conclusion
If I were forced to compare Babylon’s Fall to a food it would be a hamburger. A hamburger in which something went horribly wrong. The cook left the meat on the stove overnight, wiped his sweaty armpits with the salad, and the bun fell on the ground where he stepped on it with his dirty feet. Nothing works as it is supposed to. Hopefully, Babylon’s Fall will quickly be forgotten and PlatinumGames will continue to make better games.