Star Bright
Right behind you.
- 2,786
- 2010
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- Credits
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Warning: This whole review is spoiler-heavy. If you don't want to know what happens, buy it and play it.Â
At its core, the Binding of Isaac is basically a rogue-like dungeon crawler that revolves around a young , naked boy trying to run from his liberally religious mother or else die in the process.Â
Sounds messed up, right?
The plot is this:
As you can see, this storyline seems to draw inspiration from the similar biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. This connection also establishes a huge religious theme throughout the game, especially when you start receiving items such as the Pact with the devil, the Mark of the devil, the Angel's Halo, and especially the final boss fight with Satan himself.Â
As for gameplay, think classic Zelda, but randomly generated everything involved. When you start out (with the normal Isaac, you can unlock more characters later on [all of which are actually just Isaac wearing wigs or eyepatches]), your normal attack is to fire tears at enemies to damage and kill them. However, as you progress, you receive different randomly generated items at various points (assuming your have keys to unlock doors / chests), virtually guaranteeing you will not get the same game twice. Examples of items include items that increase your health, items that give you extra firing speed, an item that gives you a triple shot, an item that replaces your shot with bombs, and so on. Some items carry a certain cosmetic change to Isaac which stack with others, so in later levels your character starts looking more and more demented.Â
Level layouts are always randomized on each floor, following a basic pattern of: 1 item room, 1 shop, 1 "secret" room, sometimes a "challenge" room, and 1 "boss". You must defeat the boss in each level to progress to the next. Did I also mention the bosses are randomly generated from a pool of potential bosses for that floor?
What's interesting, though, with all this random generation is that, generally speaking, the game is fair about all the elements up for consideration. Sure, once in a while you'll come into a situation where you, say, can never find a key to unlock a treasure room door, but it adds to the challenge and replayability of the game more than anything.Â
Speaking of challenging, this game is FREAKING HARD. The penalty for dying at any point is having to restart the whole game over, and some monster / boss patterns require a lot of dodging prowess (bullet hell is not terribly uncommon). Don't expect to reach Mom on your first ten tries or so.Â
Also, the game doesn't stop when you've killed mom. (The first epilogue might imply it, but that's actually a trick, according to the popular explanations.) In fact, there's way more to explore than the first 6 floors. On a good run, you potentially have to deal with 9 floors of increasingly tough challenges, with a monster load of replayability involved in the sheer numbers of things to unlock.Â
Oh yeah, and it doesn't stop there. The newer DLC, "the Wrath of the Lamb", features tons of different enemies, items, bosses, and alternative versions to floors, just to name a few things. Curses, trinkets, and a challenge mode ensure that you won't have any free time left if you want to fully enjoy and clear the game.Â
Regarding graphics, this game is kind of graphic in nature. There is blood. There are guts. There are flies. There's Gurdy.Â
Yes, it's disgusting. But yes, it's awesome.Â
Also, props to Danny Baronowski, the guy who makes the music. Some of these tracks are awesome.Â
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zD0EoDWyxA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L55nDF9c_M0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il6qYTRXg1w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShZtl3M4UtI
All in all, if you can stomach the content and the disturbing theme, this is one real gem. It's cheap too.Â
Go get it. 9.5/10
At its core, the Binding of Isaac is basically a rogue-like dungeon crawler that revolves around a young , naked boy trying to run from his liberally religious mother or else die in the process.Â
Sounds messed up, right?
The plot is this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHBzz2zKthYIntroductory cutscene said:
As you can see, this storyline seems to draw inspiration from the similar biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. This connection also establishes a huge religious theme throughout the game, especially when you start receiving items such as the Pact with the devil, the Mark of the devil, the Angel's Halo, and especially the final boss fight with Satan himself.Â
As for gameplay, think classic Zelda, but randomly generated everything involved. When you start out (with the normal Isaac, you can unlock more characters later on [all of which are actually just Isaac wearing wigs or eyepatches]), your normal attack is to fire tears at enemies to damage and kill them. However, as you progress, you receive different randomly generated items at various points (assuming your have keys to unlock doors / chests), virtually guaranteeing you will not get the same game twice. Examples of items include items that increase your health, items that give you extra firing speed, an item that gives you a triple shot, an item that replaces your shot with bombs, and so on. Some items carry a certain cosmetic change to Isaac which stack with others, so in later levels your character starts looking more and more demented.Â
Level layouts are always randomized on each floor, following a basic pattern of: 1 item room, 1 shop, 1 "secret" room, sometimes a "challenge" room, and 1 "boss". You must defeat the boss in each level to progress to the next. Did I also mention the bosses are randomly generated from a pool of potential bosses for that floor?
What's interesting, though, with all this random generation is that, generally speaking, the game is fair about all the elements up for consideration. Sure, once in a while you'll come into a situation where you, say, can never find a key to unlock a treasure room door, but it adds to the challenge and replayability of the game more than anything.Â
Speaking of challenging, this game is FREAKING HARD. The penalty for dying at any point is having to restart the whole game over, and some monster / boss patterns require a lot of dodging prowess (bullet hell is not terribly uncommon). Don't expect to reach Mom on your first ten tries or so.Â
Also, the game doesn't stop when you've killed mom. (The first epilogue might imply it, but that's actually a trick, according to the popular explanations.) In fact, there's way more to explore than the first 6 floors. On a good run, you potentially have to deal with 9 floors of increasingly tough challenges, with a monster load of replayability involved in the sheer numbers of things to unlock.Â
Oh yeah, and it doesn't stop there. The newer DLC, "the Wrath of the Lamb", features tons of different enemies, items, bosses, and alternative versions to floors, just to name a few things. Curses, trinkets, and a challenge mode ensure that you won't have any free time left if you want to fully enjoy and clear the game.Â
Regarding graphics, this game is kind of graphic in nature. There is blood. There are guts. There are flies. There's Gurdy.Â
Yes, it's disgusting. But yes, it's awesome.Â
Also, props to Danny Baronowski, the guy who makes the music. Some of these tracks are awesome.Â
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zD0EoDWyxA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L55nDF9c_M0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il6qYTRXg1w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShZtl3M4UtI
All in all, if you can stomach the content and the disturbing theme, this is one real gem. It's cheap too.Â
Go get it. 9.5/10