Babel Rising 3D

According to the book of Genesis, God stopped his people from building a huge tower reaching the sky by giving them all different languages and scattering them across the globe.

AMA and Ubisoft's game - a souped-up sequel to a 2D iOS hit - takes a less literal approach to the Bible story, with the Almighty just pelting heathens with rocks and setting them on fire.

Across 15 missions of vastly increasing difficulty, you turn from creator to destroyer by playing God as he fights to stop the persistent humans from ferrying construction materials up the spiralling tower of the title.

It all looks rather grand on a roomy-screened Android tablet or iPad, too, with near console quality 3D visuals and a suitably booming soundtrack, but the actual action feels rather tame and unrewarding - like pelting Godless heathens with balls of tissue paper.

While the touch controls take a while to get used to - especially the somewhat imprecise aiming - the concept of firing lightning bolts by tapping on victims and dragging out walls of flame with two fingers to fry disrespectful heathens has a mildly sadistic Populous-style appeal that encourages you to master the basics.

There are some tactics at play, too, as you have to flick between skills (by tapping on either side of the screen) to take out Priests that can protect their followers from one of your powers until they're squished, burned, or drowned. You'll also have to constantly pan around the tower -especially once enemies begin using multiple routes.

Quickly, however, you'll notice that God's supposedly wrathful powers (Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water) are actually rather weak and the cooldown period before even the simplest ones can be used again is far too long - especially considering how ridiculously fast the workers can put up the tower.

Unsurprisingly, you need to upgrade your powers to really lay the smackdown on the pesky humans, but every buff comes at a cost - especially if you're playing the in-app heavy freemium version.

Annoyingly, though, even if you've bought the premium version of Babel Rising 3D cash is always in short supply. Even worse, you still have to save up to unlock the latter two of the trio of worlds by repeatedly playing levels and the Survival mode to scrape coins together, which feels like a cruel trick to extend game life.

There's an enjoyable, lighthearted god sim here, but the grinding needed to counter the overly steep difficulty makes you feel like a pretty impotent omnipotent force.