Babylon’s Fall review – the descent of Platinum Games
The makers of Bayonetta and NieR:Automata release their first live service title and it is already one of the most memorable games of 2022.
We’re really starting to worry about PlatinumGames. The Japanese developer has been behind some of our favourite action games of the last several generations, including Bayonetta 1 and 2, Vanquish, Metal Gear Rising, NieR:Automata, and Astral Chain. We even enjoyed Star Fox Zero, even though nobody else seemed to. They’ve been very quiet recently though and last month’s Sol Cresta was an uninspiring way to break years of silence. Compared to Babylon’s Fall though it’s suddenly looking like a modern masterpiece.
Despite all the talk of not working on licensed games anymore, and moving into self-publishing, Sol Cresta was based on an existing licence and Babylon’s Fall is published by Square Enix. No doubt these deals were made before self-publishing became such a focus but what’s worrying here is that Platinum has said that the other big shake-up to their business is going to be a move into live service games, of which this is their first.
They didn’t say they were going to make only live service games but for anyone that blanched at the mere idea, the fact that Babylon’s Fall is so shockingly awful may, in the end, be a good thing. It’s clear the game has already been a massive failure and so hopefully that will make them think twice about any similar releases in the future.
Platinum may be one of our favourite developers but it’s not like they haven’t made bad games before. They had a brief stint developing low budget licensed games for Activision and while Transformers: Devastation turned out surprisingly well (probably because they knew and liked the franchise) Teenage Mutant Ninja
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