The Binding of Isaac Review:
You play as a toddler named, Isaac, whose mother heard a voice. While obeying the voice she eventually is drawn to kill her child. While fleeing, he found his way to the basement where he starts out killing monsters that he comes across along the way. Without the use of guns,he kills monsters by shooting his tears. Yes, a toddler killing things by crying. I know it’s kinda weird but oddly enough, it’s what drew me to this game. I love games that are one of a kind, and sometimes bring controversy that isn’t newsworthy, like Halo.
The game has hi content of violence even though it has a hint of nostalgia with the game layout, having a familiar to Zelda fans. A friend of mine once called “Isaac”, “A Zelda game with blood.” The game play is simplified by the “W,A,S,D” keys with either the mouse, or the arrow keys used to shoot, while “Q” is used to take pills and read tarot cards while “E” or “Shift” is used to drop bombs. The number of power ups, and downs, in this game is HUGE. As of the “Wrath of the Lamb” expansion, there’s at least 200 items to help or hinder your way to defeat your mom. That’s not counting the trinkets, and tarot cards you can also pick up along the way. This almost guarentees that with the massive amounts of items, and varients in the floor layouts, you will never play the same game twice. With quite a bit of items being locked during your first, I don’t know, 10 plays through the game, it adds to the charm to figure out how to unlock the items, and see how it affects Issac throughout each time you play.
The characters you can unlock during the game makes the game’s replayability absurdely worth the value. Each character has a unique item with him (or her) and helps out with the game, which adds to the charm of each.Along with the unlockable characters there’s a huge amounts of unlockable items that you start to unlock from the very first playthrough. The community is one of those that I haven’t seen in quite some time. The BOILeR League (Boilr.org) is a community of speed runners, that compete with the expansion (Wrath of the Lamb) with the set up of the NFL regular season, where they compete for cash prises. The community also plays other games, where viewers
can go and watch new independent and full retail games.
The reason that the community is a focus point in the part of the review, is that it’s the reason why I personally got into the game to begin with, and this review wouldn’t be possible without them.
There’s a high amount of religious overtones to the game. Making deals with the devil and gifts from a faceless angel, Bible, Necronomicon, a coat hanger (From the ever ongoing abortion issue.) and reading tarot cards, might be unsetteling for some people. For me, this was easy to look past as I realize it’s just a game. Even though while talking to my father and brother about it, they quickly shot down the idea of watching me play to grasp the consept of the game due to the religious tones.This could be anything between minor to a major issue, due to one’s ability to look past it to just enjoy the game. This is the only dowside to the game, and I was able to look completely past it, so it wasn’t much of a issue with me.
UPDATE: “The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth” will be the newest update to the game that, for the first time ever, will bring the 2 year old IP to consoles! You can pick it up on Steam or PS3. At the time of this article, it is unknown to me if “Rebirth” will be available on the Xbox360, PS4, or XBoxOne.
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