Babylonian Twins HD on the iPad – A Frustrating Treasure

Ever since we got our hands on the iPad, we refused to touch our iPhones (except when talking to people we don’t hate), the 1024 x 768 screen is just so much nicer than the tiny iPhone and graphics on the iPad almost seemed superior to the PSP and DS (pay attention to the word almost); hoping to find some hardcore gaming experiences on this new gadget, we got our hands on Babylonian Twins HD, after our satisfying experience with Chaos Rings. Babylonian Twins, 16 years in the making from its home Baghdad which was supposed to be released for the Commodore Amiga around 1993 to 94, but never saw the light of release — those who wants a history lesson can go to the developer’s site. Anyway, a decade and then some later, the developer decided to launch this game into the world with totally redesigned graphics.

It is hard not to recommend this game to the hardcore nostalgic gamer who is looking for something deep on their i-Devices — it is indeed a game well produced and well made with a lot of polishes and love. But is it a great game? The answer is that, it isn’t. Is Mega Man 9 and 10 great games? They are not — an archaic design that really belong in the museum rather than your current console; of course the difference is that you have never ever seen Babylonian Twins ever before, so what kind of nostalgia is it revoking within your brain cells? The simple answer is the frustration of dated game design choices — and to make it worse, just relying on the virtual joypad on the screen of your iPhone/iPad makes your problem just about 10 times worse. Mind you, this is a total failure of hardware, and not any of the developer’s failing — for Babylonian Twins features one of the best virtual D-pad control we have encountered, but our conclusion simply is — does this game need to be on the iPhone at all? Wouldnt it have been much better using your xbox controller playing this over XBLA?

Regardless, Babylonian Twins is a memorable game, and of course we feel strong enough to talk about it while ignoring the 2 million other iPhone games out there because they simply don’t cater to our hardcore tastes even if they were downloaded 4 million times. At times we loved Babylonian twins, and more often we hated it to our guts, and almost gave up on the game (especially around level 4, or was it 5?). Babylonian Twins features 2 characters with different abilities, this will sound familiar to those who played Lost Vikings a decade earlier and a bunch of other games that predated Lost Vikings; one of them jump higher, has a shield that don’t quite block anything, but defy physics and dash forward no matter where he is, and dashing forward he can break down walls but not enemies — absolutely not enemies, he can break down castles but dashing into a puny bat he will absolutely die. Oh, did I mention he also has a sword that is quite useless? The other twin holds a mace that can bash down pots and also has a drilling ability that breaks down floors. And when you switch character, the other turns to stone, which is also vital in puzzle solving — whether you need to stand on another twin or leave one at a pressure sensitive plate. Of course what is ridiculous is that why can’t the sword and the dash break any pots? Hack, Link been bashing pots since the 80s with his trusty sword.  Other than the breaking ability of the mace, there’s no reason to swing it at all, for both characters can jump on enemies and Mario stomp them to death, which is a much better attack than the puny range of the melee weapon, oh and did I mention, most enemies don’t die; they fall down dizzy and will stalk you incessantly again. Well you have 3 lives which both of your characters will share, and a health bar that pretty much goes down too fast — this is where the frustration start — other than the annoying enemies which you either can’t see can’t kill or simply you would switch character and get hit right away, there are instant death traps like fire or cliffs or spikes and other goodies. Well when you take into accounts that levels are huge (30 min long at least) with no check points and save state (if your mom calls you and your iPhone runs out of battery you are screwed! — we advice shelling out 500 bucks for an iPad just to get the most out of this game). Oh the frustration doesn’t even begin to end here. The levels are so huge and the lack of an auto-map makes this feel like playing Symphony of the Night blindfolded (forget about the map). This is what I am talking about — this is game design that belongs in the museum and to be studied in a college class of the evolution of game design — the player is expected to keep starting over and over again until he has pretty much memorized where he needs to go, and hoping that the puny 3 lives won’t run out before all the keys to unlock the exit is found.  And not to mention, the failure of hardware will help your death and frustration along.

Oh I know, we have incessantly criticized. But we never said this game wasn’t good. The puzzles are really quite well designed — at least the breakable walls and floors can be visually spotted as opposed to the original Amiga version (imagine the horrors). The music is top-notch and really fits the place and era. The 2D graphics are beautiful but sometimes it will feel like the screen is tearing if the scrolling is happening too fast. The virtual D pad is implemented as well as it can be but will still fail you a lot of times. Thankfully there aren’t any boss fights which will test your dexterity to the limits — we wished there were some kind of ending boss fight though, for the last level didn’t feel like the end at all. There isn’t much of a story to the game, even though it isn’t needed we wished there could have been more. The game will test your patience numerous times — but for retro fans looking for the precious feeling of nostalgia, this game definitely delivers. We can’t NOT recommend this game, especially at the time we got the HD version on sale for just 2 bucks which costs less than a cup of coffee. Seriously people, developers need to eat too and I am tired of people complaining about 99 cents iPhone games not having regular updates or being good enough. Well there’s that — we wished we were playing the XBLA version of this game (we wouldn’t mind paying 15 bucks for it) comfortably with a controller but at the end of the day we have to settle with the clunky virtual controllers of the iPad –  it’s a good game that could have been way better, but totally worth the price and your time, and even your frustration, especially your frustration, if that floats your boat.

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