Babel: Tower to the Gods

This is super fun, and for being graphically simple it's very polished and a wonderful commentary. It also doubles as a really fun experience for other observers in the room. I recommend it.

This a great example of a room scale game (requires at least 1.5x1.5 I'd say) that is simple yet fun, due to the audio narrative and the excellent haptic feedback you get while working on your Yenga style monuments. Highly recommended, since everything is stationary and one moves around the 1x1m tower in the middle the risk of getting motion sickness is really small. Runs well on a GTX 970 with an i5-2500k.

TL;DR- Fun game, great physics, feels "immersive" (not quite as good as Budget Cuts and Job Simulator, but still really good), funny and light-hearted, some cons. I really like this game so far. there seems to be a lot of content, especially considering the cost of this game compared to others. This game is usually compared to to Jenga, which I can totally see for the one gamemode, though the shape of the structures is more than a 3 stick/row tower. There are other gamemodes, such as building a tall tower using some blocks, taking out specific blocks, or taking out X number blocks. The simplicity to understand and use the game makes it really strong compared to the more complex games (eg Modbox). The humor combined with the simplicity makes it an easy game to show off and play casually. Finally. the cons: SDE is more noticeable in this game than most games, due to the nature of the gameplay & graphics. I had some difficulty with using both hands to try to pick up stones. Also, be aware of the space requirements; if you have a small space, this game is extremely uncomfortable. The more space the better.

At a glance, Babel might just look like a cheap land grab, like a phone game turned VR to make a quick profit. But once you get a few stages into it, it's surprising how fun and addicting it is. The gameplay is sort of like Jenga, except your hands are replaced with various tools and weapons like axes, swords, chisels, and hammers. Some levels task you with knocking out a certain number of blocks without knocking off the top totem block, while others ask you to construct a stable tower using the blocks strewn about the level to hold up the totem. It's a great demonstration of the extreme precision of the Vive controllers, and encourages you to try things like sticking the blade of a sword through a gap of equal size between two blocks to wedge them apart. It's fun to play, fun to watch, funny, and also comparatively cheap for a VR launch game, so if you're planning your list of games to buy when you get your vive you might consider sticking this one in for a try.

This game has better polish than many of the other games. The voice actor added to the feel of a more mature effort and was quite funny. The levels are all really different and dynamic. The only issue is the gripping in this game. Sometimes the blocks spin around like crazy which makes stacking hard. Definitely worth playing though!

This game really shows the accuracy of controllers, you need to carefully disassemble tower piece by piece and playing with physics puzzle like this, proper tracking is really important.

So much potential, but it seems the devs have exhausted their ideas. It was a great example of good haptics and immersion (and making you break that immersion to solve the harder puzzles) at vive launch, but it has gone nowhere in a year. abandonware

Played for about an hour last night, it's good, I think one of the better values for Vive so far. Great production quality, and funny. And the puzzles stay interesting by continually introducing new quirks. All in all, I enjoy it and think I will easily get my money's worth from this game. Nice job devs :)

Ok, so I've played a few levels of this now and I think I have enough to form an opinion. It's basically 3D VR Jenga with an Ancient Greco/Roman/Babelonian theme to it. The game starts out with an annoying tutorial and I say annoying because I didn't see any way to skip it once I had been through it already. It's not so bad the first time around since you're going to need someone to explain how to play, but after that? I should be able to skip the tutorial. Once you're past the tutorial it gives you the option to pick your levels though so that's nice. Completing some of the levels requires you to get down on your hands and knees so you can see the blocks you're trying to remove, and sometimes they give you a long spearlike tool to remove blocks and other times you have a sword, or a hammer and chisel. You CAN use both hands though so you can use the shield hand to steady the blocks while your sword hand pokes a block out. Eventually you're given a pile of rubble (loose blocks) and you are told to build a tower as high as possible. This kinda sounds interesting...like playing with building blocks in VR. Unfortunately, grabbing each block feels clunky. You never have a firm grasp on it... instead it's like you're picking up a concrete slab with just your forefinger and thumb to hold it. OK, so you need to use both hands right? Well now you're holding it the same way with both hands...or you're using an open hand to steady it while the other hand awkwardly grasps it. Either way it does not feel like I'm grabbing it...it feels like I barely have control over it, and when you're building, it's a pain. Removing blocks with the various tools feels OK but sometimes even those are a bit awkward, especially on the parts where you have a long thin block to remove from the center of a pile and you have to kinda poke it out from under everything else. I don't know if my virutal hand was banging the sides or what. After playing it for a bit though I kinda decided it was far too bland to keep playing. It's Early access so it's got room to improve and add to the game, but right now I'd say pass unless you're just desperate to play jenga and don't want to clean up the blocks. Things I liked: [list] [*] there are people walking around the tower as you're removing blocks. You can actually interact with these people (drop a block on them and kill them, smash them with your hammer, grab them with your hand and set them down on the top of the tower) [*] It's entertaining for at least 10 or 15 minutes. [/list] Things I didn't like: [list] [*] At one point the narrator blathered on way too much about "ha ha, you don't speak very much". The Gordon Freeman jokes are old dude... I know this is a game set in ancient times but do the jokes have to be ancient as well? [*] At ANOTHER point I was frustrated and so I just slamed the beacon at the top off the tower. At this point, the narrator yelled very loudly "DISAPPOINTED!!!!" which caught me off guard. [*] Ther's no way to exit this game outside of hitting the steam menu button and saying "EXIT" and even then the game may hang instead of exiting [*] There's absolutely no music. The graphics are PS1 level as well, so there's really not much to say about the game's presentation at this point. I presume they're working on the game mechanics before they polish the graphics and sound. [*] Mostly I was disappointed in how awkward it was trying to manipulate some of the blocks. Removing them wasn't so bad since all you had to do was pry it out and make it drop. Putting them in place though was awful. [/list] So yeah, pass on this. It's got room to grow but it's still a "toddler" in terms of the life of a game.

Do you like Jenga, do you like to laugh, well if you do you will like this game.