Babel Rising

Babel Rising, developed by Mando Productions, is an arcade game loosely based on the story of the Tower of Babel.  It is published by Ubisoft for XBLA and PSN, and it contains Kinect and Move support respectively. The game’s original platform was the iPhone, and as it grew in popularity it received a port to both the Xbox 360 and the PS3. In Babel Rising, you become God as you attempt to prevent humans from completing the construction of the Tower of Babel. We were given a chance to review the Xbox 360 version.

For brief, glimmering moments near the end of a stage, when using a Move controller, Babel Rising is a decent game with average visuals. The rest of the time, it's an entirely ho-hum riff on tower defense despite its clever inversion of the Lemmings formula. What's more, it goes from ho-hum to below average with a controller, and from below average to atrocious with Kinect. The campaign is clearable in a couple of hours, leaving you with nothing but an endless mode and some limited multiplayer to extend the life of your purchase. But even at $9.99, Babel Rising isn't terribly worth purchasing ...

As it stands, it's difficult to recommend the game when so many other properties on both downloadable platforms offer much more fine-tuned and satisfying experiences for a similar price. The basics aren't poorly made or insulting, in fact, the artistic design never becomes unpleasing to look at. But the window for deriving enjoyment out of attacking and managing villager movement only gets smaller as the campaign progresses.

The pure evil that is the joy of drowning hundreds of people.