Welcome to our review of the first “runner” game on Nintendo Switch called Tower of Babel.
The Runner genre is well-known and spread all over the smartphone eshops, we all know numerous iterations of the genre. One of the most famous recent versions is Super Mario Run, which did take a special and unique approach to the genre. Now, this genre appears on Nintendo Switch under the name the of Tower of Babel.
I played it and I have mixed feelings about it. While it is not your everyday runner, it does bring something new to the table, you run up a tower, avoid obstacles by either sliding under them or jumping over them. You can increase or decrease your speed. As you progress through the “story” and I use that term loosely, you go to harder towers that eventually have 2 or 3 running rows to be on. Swap from one to the other, keeping true to the premise of not running into things. While you run up the tower, you collect gems in order to pass the level. Fail to grab enough gems and you got a game over!
After Reaching the top, you still need to run down in time, this time collecting extra time in order to reach the bottom without running out of time, pun intended. All this is pretty basic gameplay.
So why am I getting mixed feelings from this game?
The third out of 3 towers you face, is basically the only one really offering some sort of challenge. The basic levels are plain boring and I beat the initial first tower on my third time, basically when I got my timing right, timing on how to jump and increase/decrease my speed. It was that easy, regretfully. Even downhill, not a single sweat…
The game is also not very nice on the graphics front and feels more like it belongs on an iPhone 4, rather than my Nintendo Switch. I was really disappointed by the lack of proper graphics, this day and age. I also experienced some frameskips when I had the speed increased and multiple obstacles were facing me. I regret to say that I think this game could be great, but it was not.
In conclusion, I think this game needs to get the proper workover and an increase in difficulty. I often complained about games being too hard, but this is one on the other spectrum. I honestly think it was too easy. Even the three-lane mode never really felt challenging to me. The idea behind the game is actually something that is time-tested, endless runners are a genre that does seem to do rather well on smartphones, but alas, this game failed to impress me.
My rating for this game in its current form and its flaws, I would rate it at a mere 30%.
