Babylon is lost

 Elden Ring at home:

It's a strange phenomena that sometimes, inexplicably, you can just smell a disaster coming from a mile away. Like watching the songbirds and small mammals quickly vacate the area before a hurricane, or seeing that trailing swirl of death-feeder vultures overhead; there's something about a doomed project that stinks for a mile and which everyone can detect. Even if you can't explain why, you still know it. It's human nature to respond to subtle indicators, and to detect and be repulsed by danger and disappointment. Thus I don't think a single person really sat down and bubbled with excitement, rubbing their hands in anticipation for the release of 'Babylon's Fall', regardless of the accomplished talent helming the project. Platinum Games, and the absolutely huge publisher bankrolling the whole thing, Square Enix. You can't even pretend you didn't know the thing existed, because Square dragged it around to all the trade shows like a Dance-Mom trucking around LA determined to break their kid into an acting gig. But no one ever took the bait onto the decrepit, three-wheeled hype wagon that Square were pawing off-price tickets for; even an unmarked, tinted-window, hype-white-van would have been more appealing.

And I was in the mood for some Platinum Games action, more so than I typically am at any given time, because as you can see from my recent lineup- I just got done playing through and reviewing an incredible title from their library: 'Metal Gear Rising: Revengence'. A true gem bobbing above a sea of tepid middle of the road stocking-stuffer action titles, elevated by truly great writing, over-the-top performances and another neatly slick and stylish combat system from those Platinum veterans. Because they are talented developers; really talented. And they don't typically mess around with average titles, no they put out extremes; it's either the best of the best or a chore upon every waking sense of the body, there is no in-between. Which has encouraged me to develop the 'leap-frog theory' wherein I say it's highly likely that immediately after putting out a good game, Platinum Games must deliver a bad one for the sake of cosmic balance. How does Babylon's Fall factor into that equation? Well, barring some mobile titles which I don't factor into my event chain, the last proper console release from Platinum Games was the rather well received 'Astral Chain'- oh... guess that doesn't bode well, does it?

Indeed, much like it's many lukewarm gameplay tease trailers over the years have implied; Babylon's Fall is a bad game. But worse than that: It's a boring one. A game with no discernible purpose, identity, unique points of interest, initial depth, narrative intrigue or even any unashamed sexual gratification. (All 3DS shovelware titles knew that if you couldn't make a good game, you could just through some huge Anime boobs with ridiculous physics in a prefab map of Akihabara and call it a day. But Babylon's Fall couldn't even manage that.) First impressions don't lie and today it seems they proved more reliable than a card-carrying wiccan Soothsayer; cause sometimes if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, than it's probably a duck. Or some sort of man in a duck shaped outfit, according to world-renowned duck-expert Adrian 'Vigilante' Chase.

I covered this game in the past, and in that little rant perhaps the only positive I had to relay was that I thought the ingame combat looked good. But in hindsight, looking at the finished product, I may have to even revoke that; because in comparison to their own back catalogue these animations are stiff. But at least the combat has animations, because the same could not be said for the cutscenes; good lord the cutscenes! These pre-made artesian narrative-containing nuggets are, quite frankly, all total trash. They're stiff to the point of rigor-mortis, badly choreographed, sometimes feature poor sound mixing, and have the inexplicable trait you see out of some strangled budget Japanese games wherein the style of the cinematic changes drastically on the whim of the wind. The smarter games will hide this with thematic consistency, so that certain breeds of cutscene feature the lower budget approach so you develop a rough expectation of what to expect out of each cutscene you encounter. Babylon's Fall is not one of the clever ones. You can expect to be totally blindsided at random by cinematics that feature an equivalent level of movement to the 1966 Captain America animated show. (I am not exaggerating. Some scenes are genuinely comparable to that, paper-clip budget, show.) 

And that's just the gameplay itself. (I say just as though that's not the single most important part of a game.) Square Enix made the 'inspired?' move of trying to 'Agent 47 garrotte wire' the already-on-life support marketing efforts by revealing very early on that this was going to be a Live Service game. Yes, to put the half-digested cherry on top of this termite-filled rotten sand-cake, (ew, made myself gag a little with that one) Square Enix wanted to pull the ol' 'half finish the game and try to trap enough curious fans with greedy MTX schemes in hopes that they can personally bankroll the rest of development' trick. For some insane reason that sort of announcement never seems to go down well with people. And so it was, that a game which was already looking rougher than a Saturday night in Blackpool, managed to turn-off anyone gullible enough to even view it as a charity case. (Oh to have the traitorous Square Enix marketing team backing you up, all the while trying to shoot you in the rear.)

Now to be totally fair to the absolute troopers who were sent early review codes for Babylon's Fall; some people have stuck this mess out for the long haul. The rest of us just sniffed the trial gameplay and nope-ed right the hell out of there like Vergil from his parental responsibilities, but for some unfortunate souls out there it is quite literally their job to stare slackjawed at a game with the chromatic palette of a mud landslide. (At least they're getting paid for their suffering. No doubt that's one full paycheck for every eye vessel that burst itself in protest rather than enduring this sleepfest.) They mostly report that, incredibly, there is some progress to the challenge and even a little bit of depth in the game if you hate yourself enough to stick out the game for around about thirty hours. I doubt it's nearly enough depth to make the time spent feel even vaguely worthwhile; but there's the silver lining for your overcast day.

Square really isn't cementing the best of track records with their Live Service initiative, now are they? First they helmed a decent game with a seemingly unbreakable franchise behind it, only to ruin the whole thing with a business model that most critics agree is directly hurt by it's Live Service elements, in their Avengers game. Now they're beating a limping, sickly horse with Babylon's Fall. Both times all they wanted to do was magnify the profits of these otherwise singleplayer games with recurrent revenue buttons so they can subsist off the lifeblood of desperate hooked up fans like human batteries out of The Matrix. Is that so much to ask? Now these two financial bombs, (And seeing that Babylon's Fall is struggling to top 1000 concurrent players on Steam sort of indicates that this title is indeed, a bomb) makes it all the less likely that Square will ever deign go down this route in the future. Same with Platinum Games, who also flirted with swearing a deal to the same Milton-esque demon in their own statements.

 

All of this is a prelude to say: stop trying to make live services a thing, because you're just embarrassing yourself and the industry more and more with each attempt. Or better yet, at least try to make sure your game can't be classified as phycological torture in breach of international human rights laws before you tack your life-blood sucking hooks onto the product. Or even better than better; don't try and release your paper-weight action slasher game within the same week as freakin' Elden Ring; are you serious? Babylon's Fall is what happens when all cylinders are misfiring at the same time so that gameplay, writing, marketing, and basic common sense simultaneously break down to create that imperfect storm of 'bleurgh.' My only wish was that this total spew-of-a-game was more entertainingly bad so I didn't have to rely on a hundred similes in order to get through this blog without my brain rotting from lack of oxygen. So in short: 5/5 stars, best game ever, pick it up today!