Hoo boy what a mess this was

Babylon's Fall is an action RPG developed by PlatinumGames and published by Square Enix that is now inaccessible. So what went wrong here? Well, if you've been keeping up with modern gaming, you know the keywords that can potentially ruin a brand-new video game, and that is the deadly plague called live service games

I heard about this game back in 2019 when it was first shown in the State of Play, and it showed some promise. The gameplay and combat were fast and fluid, and it looked fun to play. Fast-forward to 2021, where we haven't received more information about the game until it was shown again at Square Enix's E3 2021 presentation, and it looked like a completely different game. Instead of a single-player exclusive game like how it was teased in the first trailer, it's now a game heavily focused on co-op online multiplayer. And of course, what killed the game entirely was the announcement of the game being live service. As you can expect, this left a bad taste to many gamers' mouths, including mine. When the game finally released on March 3rd, 2022, the game was instantly dead on arrival, calling it one of the worst games of 2022. Continuing with this trend of mine of playing live service games before they shut down, I decided to give this game a shot. I bought a physical copy for $10 plus tax, and I was ready to be disappointed. But enough personal talk, let's get into the gameplay itself

Now I'm not going to bore with you the main plot of the game because frankly, I forgot about mostly what happened in the story; it was uninteresting to me

Before you start, you have to log in to your Square Enix account and then customize your avatar and choose one of the five classes which are called Factions. I went with Geleilion, which relies heavily on ranged combat. The character models are hideous; they look like they belong in an early PS3 game rather than a 2022 PS5 game, and this can be applied to the unappealing visuals of the entirety of Babylon's Fall

There are seven zones with 29 main stages to complete. There are 4 sections in each stage called chapters, in which you fight a wave of enemies before you progress further on until all chapters are complete. You have access to 4 weapon slots which you can mix and match weapons that can correspond depending on your selected weapons. The weapon types are swords, rods, bows, hammers, shields, and guns. Players can mix and match armor which can help improve certain defensive properties and swapping armor almost every time you clear is crucial to increasing your power level. If some of the gear assets seem similar to you, that's because PlatinumGames borrowed some of the assets from the critically acclaimed MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV

The stages themselves are generic and tedious. 90% of the level design is just straight hallways with big rounded areas representing the chapters. This makes the whole game feel repetitive, and the same can be said with its combat. It feels slow compared to what was previously shown back in 2019 and can be narrowed down to simply button mash to win. The combat itself is serviceable, but comparing it to PlatinumGames' previous entries like NieR:Automata, feels like a downgrade

The pacing in Babylon's Fall leaves a very poor impression when booting up the game for the first time. It's slow and monotonous, and the story doesn't get interesting until like 5 hours into the game, and then again, it's still uninteresting to sit through. I beat the main story in like 15 hours, and I did this all by myself, and it turns out I cleared 1 story quest out of 3. Yes, believe it or not, there were additional story quests added two months after the launch with the third one concluding the whole story. I did do a bit of the second story quest before I decided to just give up and go for the platinum

Now obtaining wasn't all too bad. Sure, there was some grinding I had to do since this is an RPG after all, but for most of the trophies, they were pretty straightforward. Upgrading one of the armor, weapon, or accessory was the final few I needed before I can achieve my 44th platinum. I knew I couldn't do this alone, so after a failed gaming session on PSNProfiles and a Twitter post begging for help, I finally found someone who can help me as we were both close to achieving the platinum. Most of our time spent together was blazing through Skirmishes and side quests, suffering in Duels, and lastly, using our combined manpower to clear Sieges. We persevered through the end, and then on February 28th at 1:13 AM, less than an hour before the servers shut down, I finally achieved the platinum. As you can imagine, this felt really good to me, as the 35 hours of tedium I went through with the assistance of an online partner was over, and I couldn't have achieved this platinum without him

Babylon's Fall is not a good game. While the gameplay was serviceable, the rest of the game was more of a slog to get through. Though I can't deny that I had a bit of fun, more specifically with a partner online. This game could've had potential, but was wasted with it being an online-only live service game. If they wanted to ditch the single-player exclusive gameplay and go for a multiplayer-centric game, fine, I can understand that, but don't make this into a live service game. It's a shame that the servers are shut down now, but it’s probably for the best. While this isn't the worst game I played, it's certainly one of the worst games of 2022

Goodbye Babylon's Fall, you won't be missed

Super Mario Kart is the most significant game in the series as it kicked off the franchise as we know it today. But playing the game itself and finally getting to fully experience it, yeah this hasn't aged well

The game features 8 characters featuring all the beloved Mario cast at the time and Donkey Kong Jr.

Each one has its specific weight class, but I couldn't feel the difference in playing any of them, so I just select whatever character I want to switch things up a bit

The controls are tolerable enough. They aren't the greatest Mario Kart-wise, but they're decent enough to get used to. To accelerate, you use the B button while you use the A button to use an item. This'll be weird to someone who has played more of the modern Mario Kart games like 8 Deluxe, but it’s not the end of the world. But what can throw people off is the drifting

Drifting in Super Mario Kart isn't the most dependable when playing through something like the Grand Prix. It can feel like I drifted too much or haven't drifted enough when using it on tight turns. I never fully grasped the drifting controls and most of the time relied on decelerating to make a tight turn without making a fool out of myself. I never fully grasped the drifting controls, but it was something I've gotten used to later on after experiencing the horror that was Donut Plains 3

Speaking of which, the game features 20 tracks spread across 4 cups with 8 types of courses with the good majority of which are based off of Super Mario World, like Donut Plains, Bowser's Castle, and Choco Island. Most of these tracks have multiple variants like three Ghost Valleys, two Choco Islands, and four Mario Circuits. This makes the whole track selection feel repetitive, and while they have different tracks, they're just more of the same. Now stage hazards are where you have to be cautious when playing the game, as let's say you were flattened by a Thwomp or have fallen off the ledge for example, it takes forever for you to recover and makes it difficult for you to get back into the position. Why? Because the computer players in this game loves to fucking cheat

Rubber banding AI is the term here, and it's when no matter how far you are ahead of the CPUs, they'll be granted faster speeds so they can catch up to you. They do this to make the game more enjoyable so you won't have a heavy on everybody, but it’s just way too much in the game. No matter which character you play, the CPUs can be aggressive and annoying to deal with. They also have access to special items that you cannot use. Mario and Luigi can activate invincibility at any time they want, Peach and Toad throw Poison Mushrooms, Yoshi can throw eggs, and Bowser spits fireballs. Now this doesn't mean you're completely defenseless however. You can nab an item by touching one of the panels on the ground and give you some sweet sweet randomness, from mushrooms to green and red shells, and the feather (SMK exclusive) that is effective for shortcuts. But no matter how you hurl items at them, they'll always find a way to come back and be right on you. They're also aggressive when it comes to bumping into you and can easily ruin your run when they push you off the track

Every time you start a grand prix, you'll be given lives. If you lost a race or just decided to restart, one of your lives gets taken away. If you lose all of your lives, it's game over and you have to restart. Now this wasn't all too bad for me when I played through the entirety of 50cc and most of 100cc, but for the Special Cup of 100cc and the entirety of 150cc, I just gave up and used save states due to how aggravated I was with the CPUs

Another thing that I found to be annoying was the coin system. Now I don't have a problem with coins in general in Mario Kart, but how they function here is what I have a problem with. Every coin held slightly increases your top speed depending on the character, but losing the coins and draining it down to 0 is an issue. When you're coinless, you are vulnerable to the other players and can easily spin your kart out. Remember how I said earlier that the AI loves to bump into you? Yeah, because of this, they can take away the precious coins you've collected and can easily drain you down to 0, and I was not having it

Super Mario Kart isn’t the most accessible Mario Kart game out there, but it has its own charm that it can be worth revisiting to some or just playing for the first time. While there is some fun to be had here, it isn't the first Mario Kart game I'm gonna be jumping to

Tetris on the Sega Genesis is fascinating. This is one of the rarest Sega Genesis games of all time, and it was a shock that in 2019, SEGA and M2 brought the game over to the Genesis Mini, which was where I played it

The gameplay here is your standard Tetris; it's self-explanatory at this point. However, I find the controls here to be quite clunky and delayed, and that is not something you want to hear when you play a Tetris game. Also, the speed at which the Tetrominoes fall goes really fast. It's standard that the speed of the fallen Tetrominoes goes up when reaching the high levels, but it’s just way too much in this game. The max level I can go up to is like 10 and combining this with the clunky controls just hinders my experience with this version

The visuals haven't aged the best. They go for highly-detailed backgrounds of realistic landscapes (At least I think) that looks so pixelated and not pleasant to look at nowadays. The music is also a huge miss. They don't have the iconic Russian songs like in the Nintendo versions and instead have their own original songs (I think). I'm not a fan of the music here, and there are only two songs that play in the background; one is the normal version and one is the version that plays when you're close to reaching the top

There's just no variety here, and I think summarizes this whole game up for me. It's completely barebones, and while it's neat that it's on the Genesis Mini, it's just more of a novelty than anything, and the legacy surrounding the game is overshadowed by the actual game itself

Just like Columns, it's fun in short bursts, but it isn't something I want to back to from time to time. While this isn't a bad version of Tetris, I just feel like you have better options