Indie Game Review: The Binding of Isaac Rebirth

The little indie game which I'll be reviewing today is called The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. This game is a very, very odd one with not only its narrative, but almost in every aspect of its design. It is a remake of a 2011 flash title which was also called The Binding of Isaac, and was remade with a much better game engine that didn't have such large limitations like they did with the Adobe Flash platform. While the original game was released in 2011, this remake was put out on Steam, Xbox One, Playstation 4 as well as each of the Nintendo consoles from recent years in November of 2014. The version which I am writing about is the version available on the Steam marketplace. 

The Binding of Isaac Rebirth was developed and published by a small studio based out of California going by the name of Nicalis, who's previous work on games consist of Cave Story and a few other titles. The game was designed by Edmund McMillen, who also did the artwork/artstyle for the game as well. The genre of the game could be considered to be a dungeon crawler with some role playing elements which are referred to as roguelike in the gaming community, and also has some psychological horror elements to it almost as well, at least in my opinion after playing it. It has some strange, bizarre and flat out creepy imagery and designs to it, and as I mentioned before, it is really one of the weirdest games I've touched to date. 

So, if you're unfamiliar with this game or the previous iteration that was released in 2011, you take on the role of a small naked guy named Isaac, who's mother is trying to kill him according to the voice of God she hears in her head. As I previously mentioned, this is a very, very strange game. Isaac quickly and quite desperately flees from his mother and heads into his basement where he begins encountering a multitude of lethal insects, diseased pieces of flesh that have different types of effects, not to mention his mutated siblings who just want to give him a big old hug. Oh wait, no, they want to kill him. 

Isaac's way of handling these monsters and mutants? Well, of course, what better way to fight them but by using your own tears! That's right, instead of getting a gun or some kind of magical ability like throwing fireballs or shooting lightning, you use your own tears to defend yourself and defeat your enemies. Again, I can't stress how wonderfully strange this game is to you. There are items which you can pick up to power up your tears in a bunch of different ways, such as giving you the ability to shoot out 3 tears at a time, or have your tears have a homing effect on the enemy. 

Now, each playthrough is going to give you a different type of experience. (Though, most of them are pretty going to be pretty weird.) You can certainly expect to do at least a few playthrough's as well, as this game shows it's roguelike influences effectively and openly with it's death and rebirth system giving you only a single chance. Yes, that's right, when you die it's literally game over. You have to restart all over from the beginning of the game. This might be frustrating to some people, but you should know what you're getting into with a game of this type of genre. 

If you're one who aims to finish a game 100 percent, trying to get every achievement and piece of gear possible then you're in for one hell of a time with this game. There are 16 possible endings that you can get within this game, 8 unlockable characters besides Isaac to play with, a couple of bonus levels and lets not forget the insane amount of items that are available within the game, numbering well over several hundred. This leaves a lot of room for discovery and experimentation, which is good news for anyone who wants a good amount of content. This game can certainly suck away quite a bit of your time if you let it, let me tell you. 

For anyone who hasn't played this but got to play the old flash version, let me tell you about the biggest difference between the two, the graphics. The graphics of the original had a cartoony look to them, which I can't deny was pleasing to the eye with it's smooth look. However, flash isn't a very reliable engine to work with and there was a lot of issues with the game due to it. With the new engine they're using, they've ditched the cartoony look for a more retro 16 bit style, that provides more details and no longer has the horrible glitches and bugs that the flash version had. 

Now, the graphic changes aren't the only thing different between this game and the old version. We've also got some changes to the actual gameplay, which shouldn't come as any huge surprise to people. Compared to the flash version, this one has a more solid shoot em up type feeling to it, as they've adjusted it a bit. Having the new engine that can handle a much bigger load allows for some intense bullet ridden battles, which you can expect to deal with. 

Another change are not only some of the base enemies, but pretty much a huge majority of the bosses have been changed as well. You'll be quickly introduced to some new faces, that are faster than the previous iterations, and also much more aggressive and prone to wanting to blast you in the face upon meeting you. This especially gets more noticeable with the later end game bosses, who are much more willing to spew out shots constantly at you non stop, giving you no chance to breath and you try to survive and fight them off. 

The Binding of Isaac Rebirth isn't afraid to show you some insane item combinations either, and you really have a lot of room for experimenting with combining the hundreds of items and stacking their effects on top of each other. Depending on which items you encounter, you can literally fill up your entire screen with tear bullets and obliterate everything within distance of your character. While they've made the bosses in the game a lot more difficult than in the old, they've definitely stepped up their game with the item combo's which can help reduce the stress on you. 

Something else which is a bit different from the original Binding game are the actual level designs of each room you enter. Things have been changed up from just the singular rectangle shaped rooms from the first game, and this time around you'll be entering into long, narrow hallways laced with traps, larger rooms which host tons of enemies at once, and multi screen areas that scroll alongside you as you move. These changes definitely lead to some really tense, nerve wracking moments with mini bosses and traps spread about, just waiting to send you back to the start screen. 

Oh, and how can I forget one of the other bigger changes to the game compared to the old version, the addition of having a two player mode. At the cost of one of your hearts, you can summon a small ghost baby to your side which the second player can take control of. While not being able to do anywhere near as much as the first player can do as Isaac, such as picking up items or opening doors, the second player still benefits from the items that player one has equipped and shares the abilities. So, while doing 2 player mode won't become the popular way to play this game, it still provides a way to have a friend play and give you some fun gameplay at the same time. 

Now, while not exactly new additions or changes to the game there has also been some minor tweaks to improve the overall quality of the game compared to its past self. One such tweak (For the PC version) is that now you can use a controller to play if keyboard/mouse isn't your thing, which for me it really isn't. You can also choose what difficulty you want to play on, so if you want to make things even more insane for yourself on the hard difficulty you can! Plus, the hard difficulty has its own set of items and enemies that only spawn when playing on it, so if you again want to try out everything you'll probably find your way on that mode. 

Something else which is honestly great to have is the ability to quit and come back to your game if you have to leave in the midst of your playthrough. While not being like a save system exactly, it at least lets you pick back up where you left off if you had a good thing going and had to stop. For those who are obsessed with wanting to complete the game and not lose anything, it's a great addition. Though, unless I had a good amount of time to play this I wouldn't even start it up, as it can become quickly addicting. 

And, while being probably the least important tweak to the game, they've also made the item combination far less conflicting than it was previously. What I mean by this is that Isaac takes on certain characteristics when he picks up items, and previously one would replace the other on his physical appearance or just not change anything at all. Now, however, they stack on his appearance to a certain extent so you can see a few different alterations to his appearance depending on what you have equipped. 

Otherwise, the game is still very similar to what we past played in the original version. The games story centers around Isaacs point of view of dealing with the abuse of his mother through the eyes of a child, which is part of the reason why I feel there there are some horror like elements in this game. There is some gory, creepy backdrops and enemies in the game, and just some other weird nasty elements. There's always quite a few hints of comedy scattered throughout, though most of it involves poop or dead babies. While these might bother some people, I never had an issue with it and just thought it was all pretty silly most of the time, besides the sad story of the game. 

This game is definitely a huge improvement over the original game, which was already an interesting, fun dungeon crawler as it was. The amount of new content in this game makes it almost feel like a sequel rather than just a remake of the game, and fans of the original will definitely be happy with this. I can't really say there's much I dislike about the game, and I would definitely recommend it for anyone who enjoys drop down shooters and dungeon crawlers. So, in short, just get down in the basement already and prepare those tears, because you're gonna need them! 

Thanks for checking out my review! Hope you've enjoyed it!