Looking at: Binding of Isaac Rebirth

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The Gospel of Isaac

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Insanity, now in .GIF form.

Binding of Isaac is an uncomfortable game. Not to play, no the mix of twin-stick bullet hell and rogue-like dungeon crawling is addictive and hugely entertaining. Rather, BoI is uncomfortable to look at and experience, and it likes it that way. Casting you as a naked little boy you must delve into the underworld to face your fears and escape your mother. BoI is certainly weird, but is it, and more importantly, it's recent re-release any good?

I always find it weird that Christian mythology is so underexplored in gaming. The Bible and related Christian historical books are filled with weird shit that could be worked into games. BoI is, in some ways, one of the most biblical games I've ever played outside of strictly Christian games. Much of it's imagery, bestiary and story are references to biblical mythology. Even the name comes from the story of Abraham almost sacrificing his son Isaac to God as a show of devotion.

Covered in horror

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One of the bosses from vanilla BoI.

Of course, there's also the other imagery of BoI. When it's not biblical, it's horrifying. The levels are littered with fecal mounds, your enemies are twisted monsters made of tumours and scabs, your main attack is crying, there's blood and urine everywhere and many of your powerups seem to do bodily harm to your character. I don't know if this is some sort of political statement, but it's certainly enough to freak out most casual gamers. There's an overwhelming feeling of disgust at BoI's visuals, and the thought of what some items or monsters represent, never mind the fact your own character, is enough to make your stomach churn.

Visually BoI is a mixbag. There's an obvious art style here, mixing childhood drawings with horrifying religious imagery and bathroom wall sketches. It's all pretty part-and-parcel for anyone familiar with Edmund McMillen's art style in games like Time Fcuk or Super Meat Boy. The problem comes down to it's actual presentation. The vanilla version of the game was obviously done with Adobe Flash so it always looked like a low/no budget Newgrounds game. Rebirth was built on a new engine and the pixelated graphics definitely look better then their flash counterparts, in theory. I found that on the PC version the stretched graphics definitly took some time to adjust to, and I can only image the problem is exacerbated on the TV console version. BoI:Rebirth probably fits right at home on a small screen like the PS Vita or the rumored 3DS version, but on larger screens it just looks stretched and distorted, not in the good way.

Chocolate and Vanilla

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BoI now features cutscenes reminiscent of Tool music videos.

The graphics aren't the only difference between the 2011 version of BoI and the recent Rebirth version. Rebirth isn't quite an HD version, isn't quite a sequel. It's more of a standalone expansion pack, that just happens to also be on a different engine. Rebirth adds a wealth of new items and upgrades, new room configurations including multi-screen rooms, local co-op, and gamepad support among other additions. It's not skimpy with the new content, and anyone that enjoyed the original will find more then enough to justify the new price tag. Part of the joy of Rebirth was discovering all the new things added and figuring out how it all works together.

The other part of the joy in BoI is it's sublime gameplay. Like I mentioned, BoI is a strange mix of twin-stick shooter bullet hell mechanics that have you dodging and shoot enemies while avoiding the myriad of things being thrown at you, all while you progress through a ranomized Zelda-like dungeon. It's got perma-death and items to find/buy and secrets hidden everywhere. The moment to moment gameplay of BoI is awesome, especially for fans of shoot-em ups, and the new addition of gamepad support just heightens this. Playing Rebirth with my gamepad was insanely enjoyable, perhaps more so then the Kb+M option that the vanilla BoI was locked with.

Unfortunately BoI is no Spelunky, and for every one good world seed you end up with a dozen terrible ones. It's more balanced then Rogue Legacy, actually dropping health pickups at a decent rate, but there's no denying that the level layout and enemy combinations can occasionally come out as blatantly unfair. It might just be me, but many of the enemies in Rebirth are harder to kill then the original, and I've lost count of how many times I've been blocked in a corner with no way out. It's never game breaking, but it can be frustrating to loose so much progress because of one bad room seed.

Then there's the bosses. Rebirth adds a host of new bosses, but they all have the same strategy: avoid hits, shoot back. There's no real standout bosses in BoI and most of them are only memorable for the way they look. Make no mistake, visually their incredibly memorable, ranging from the bizarre, to the downright twisted to the mortifying. But there's no real heart to them, and a lot of them have similar attack patterns that are to easy to figure out. Most of the fight just boils down to slowly chipping away their health bars as you stay mobile to avoid attacks.

Outta hell

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An actual boss you will have to face.

Binding of Isaac was an interesting, if disturbing game back when it came out. It's unique mix of gameplay mechanics coupled with it's use of biblical mythology and disturbing imagery were enough to hook my back in 2011. Now, three years later I can say that Rebirth is worth the wait, mostly. It's additions and new art style are a welcome sight, and local co-op and gamepad support are almost worth the money alone. It's perhaps unfortunate that so many of the issues from the vanilla game persists, but if your looking for a fun, easy to pick up hard to master game, BoI is definitely not run-of-the-mill.