When comparing Babel: Tower to the Gods vs Catlateral Damage, the Slant community recommends Catlateral Damage for most people. In the question“What are the best HTC Vive games?” Catlateral Damage is ranked 26th while Babel: Tower to the Gods is ranked 31st. The most important reason people chose Catlateral Damage is:
The gameplay is centered around being in a cats shoes, knocking objects off of shelves and other areas. This can be quite fun to basically role play as a cat at its worst.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Variety of blocks and tools
There are a number of different blocks to be interacted with ranging from ones that can explode, ones made of ice that are slippery and ones that are invisible that you will not be able to manipulate. In order to interact with these blocks you are given a bunch of different tools such as spears, hammers, swords, axes etc. These different tools each have different interactions that can help the player, depending on what they need to do, but is still left up to the player in the end on how they want to accomplish that task.
Pro Good price for amount of content
The content in the game should last the player for a good while, as many current VR games tend to be more proof of concept over full fledged games. While this is an early access title, meaning it is not complete, for the price of $10 the content should last even in its current state. On top of this most VR titles are priced a lot higher than this, even when containing less content, so as far as a content for price comparison is concerned, Babel is a good choice.
Pro Fun theme
A Greek God like theme where the towers resemble greek structures, complete with little worshipers surrounding the towers. It can be fun to interact with the tiny people by moving or crushing them. This of course is the power wielded by a Greek God, which can be fun to decide to be a kind or vengeful one.
Pro Fun to pretend to be a cat
The gameplay is centered around being in a cats shoes, knocking objects off of shelves and other areas. This can be quite fun to basically role play as a cat at its worst.
Pro Good for letting out your anger
You knocking everything you want to the ground by making the motions in real life. It's a great way to let out your anger.
Pro Longevity through procedural generation
Each level is procedurally generated, while each level will maintain its overall theme there will be minor changes to the setup that allows for an experience that will be slightly different upon each playthrough. This allows for the games levels to stay fresh due to never being exactly the same.
Pro Choice of gameplay modes
There is a free play mode called Litterbox Mode, where there is no time limit, you just choose which level to play, to then free roam and do as you like, much like a sandbox experience. Then there is the objective mode, where you are given a time limit in order to knock off a certain amount of objects within. There will also be optional objectives given, which can make for a more intense experience when trying to complete them all at once.
Having these two modes allows for a good balance of hectic gameplay as well as free form having fun by messing around gameplay.
Cons
Con Interface feels clunky
Actually grabbing blocks feels a bit inaccurate and is difficult to perform. Not very natural feeling, which can throw the player off. While not the main meat of the game, grabbing blocks, the portions that do have this interaction could use more polish.
There is also a tutorial that plays before starting a game, every time, which can not be skipped, this can become frustrating too and shows the lack of polish when it comes to the interface and navigation.
Lastly there are not many options to quit the game other than using the Steam menu button and even that may leave the game hanging. While this is an early access game, meaning it is unfinished and all of this may very well get fixed, it is something to keep in mind as it could also stay in this state.
Con Awkward to play in small rooms
The gameplay may be more difficult to perform if being played in a confined area as the player needs to be able to walk around the outside of large towers, which will of course be centered in ones room. This leaves the player to having only the outer areas of the room to traverse while playing, which can be difficult in smaller rooms as you may hit the walls of that room quite often.
Con VR controls are not precise
When using the same amount of force to swing your arm holding the controller in order to knock off objects in the game, there can be a variety of outcomes. This is due to incorrect balancing of controls, as the same amount of force in a swing should result in the same amount of force being used in game, problem being that it does not, sometimes objects will go flying, other times they will barely move.
Con No difference in cats other than looks
It would have been interesting to see each cat have their own special ability, sadly there is no difference between them other than looks.
Con Gameplay gets stale fast
While from the outset it can be fun knocking objects over, after a while this does get stale as there is little lasting appeal to the mechanics themselves.