‘Binding Of Isaac’ Has Serious Mommy Issues, Serious Fun
Welcome to Indie Spotlight!
Today we’re diving into a messy title that’s equal parts gross and ideologically provocative — The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth!
WARNING: This game is (very loosely) based on an artistic interpretation of religion and involves no shortage of eyebrow-raising oddities. The content of this game, and thus what is discussed in this article, may be controversial and/or discomforting to some.
So! The Binding of Isaac is a randomly generated roguelike dungeon crawler. Like a few other games I’ve reviewed, this is the kind of game where you die once and only once. Each time you jump in will be completely new (so the replay value is high)!
You control a young boy named Isaac. He has escaped from his mother through a convenient secret door in his room that has thrown him into the depths of the world. Why is he running from his mother, you ask? Well, it turns out she believes to have heard the voice of God, and He has commanded her to sacrifice Isaac as a test of faith. So it’s up to you to find a means of survival for our terrified little adventurer.
The mechanics are fairly straightforward. You use one set of directionals (like the arrow keys) to move, another set (like WSAD) to fire your tears as projectiles (yes, you read that right, he’s terrified okay?). You can also make use of bombs to destroy rocks or find secret passages, keys to get through locked corridors and spare change to get extra items along the way. The spice of the game, however, is a catalog of hundreds of items, randomly spawned throughout a playthrough, that affect your damage, health, firing rate, or offer special powers like levitation or followers.
There’s a whole slew of monsters that get in your way at every turn, each one weirder than the last. You’ll start with some flies, undead and unusually happy poop swirls (oddities, remember?), but as you go along it’s nothing but spider sentries, exploding bees, poisonous headless jumping mannequins and all sorts of demons, fleshy corpses and traps!
Every floor has a boss fight that is (usually) required to advance to the next level. You can also occasionally find a mini-boss trying to make your life a little harder. These enemies range from segmented snakes that feel like a game of Centipede to a massively fat person that pukes at you. I’ve even seen the seven Deadly Sins personified and the Four Horsemen. Seriously, everything is REALLY weird in this game.
Should you survive the onslaught long enough, you will face your ultimate fear: Mommy. A very warped, demented mother that has become the walls and ceiling around you. Yikes!
I put in over 70 hours into the first game (Rebirth is a remake, mostly a graphical overhaul and big mechanical improvements) and was still finding new things to unlock. At one point even angels got involved in the fray! Today I still bring up Rebirth for an occasional hour of struggle, and it never gets old.
Like I said before, this isn’t for the faint of heart. The monsters and dungeons have no shortage of blood, guts, babies/fetuses and even twisted parodies of inappropriate body parts. You have to keep an open mind and take it for what it is. If that’s no problem, you have a fun, rather challenging game that keeps things fresh for a very long time.
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is available on Steam and all latest-gen consoles (Wii U, PS4, XBox One).
