The Binding of Patrick: 02/24/2014

So it begins.

Oh, here it is!

I was half expecting the Spelunky music to start playing when I pressed play.

AND THEN IT DID!

I'll probably pick up the vita release if this series is fun enough

The thumbnail photo looks like someone took a dump on isaacs head

Tried watching this, but boy does this game do nothing for me at all. Might just check in on this feature occasionally as opposed to my religious watching of Spelunkin'.

That would be oddly appropriate.

I'm by no means a christian hardliner, but the blasphemy in this seems just a bit too gratuitous for me to play it. Wish they'd taken a different thematical approach because it looks like something I'd enjoy.

Patrick got me into spelunky pretty deep, but I think I'll sit this one out.

Awesome! I got really into this game for a while, put like 100 hours in it. Kinda burned out on it but I still love watching people play it.

Fuck, that wire hanger power up was a little too real.

Love BOI, some dark shit in this game though.

This is one of those games that never QUITE clicked for me...until it DID. I have no idea what changed, but I went from not even being able to reach the final level to plowing through the last boss and beyond.

I cannot WAIT to see Patrick (and Patrick's reactions) learn the ins-and-outs of this bizarre, grotesque, DEEPLY disturbing game.

I'd been thinking that I'd follow Scoops to hell and back (I actually did, what with catching his entire Spelunky run), but I didn't even make it past the basement in this installment.

I don't get this game, nor what people think is attractive about it. It's very small dimensioned, the "zones" barely spanning a few seconds of sustained movement in any direction, the gameplay simplistic, both of which makes it a monotonous experience to watch.

That said, Patrick could make just about any game exciting, so what's my problem with this here title?

My problem with it is that it's incredibly immature and gross, even disgusting, for the sake of it. There is no substance, just stillbirths wearing their mother's panties. I think it's embarrassing, no offence to all of you who enjoy it. Or at least, not a whole lot of offence.

I don't think I'm a prude, what with movies like "Oldboy" and "Se7en" ranking very highly on my personal favourites list, but I won't watch this again until Scoops picks another game.

I respect the guy who made this but the blood-and-shit aesthetic isn't something I'm willing to engage with.

I burned out on the game when it first came out and haven't touched it since. I had to resort to looking online a lot to figure out what the items do. Looks like like they added a bunch more since I last loaded the game up.

Interesting game on a few fronts that I respect. Pat showing some native skill.

As someone who has played a lot of Binding of Isaac, I wasn't sure how well this game would work as a feature. It doesn't really have the "sudden death" of Spelunky, which was always hilarious. The Binding of Isaac is more a slow burn in that regard. On the other hand, others have been successful with streaming the game. I think this worked pretty well, to be honest.

Also, the soundtrack is excellent. Especially the first few levels.

I would have called the segment Sacrificin' With Scoops.

So many hours in this game, it's ridiculous. There's a lot of learning involved, a lot of different elements, and a lot of re-playability.

So its like zelda dungeons if they were designed by that kid who wore the "I do what the voices in my head tell me to" t-shirts in high school?

Hopefully someday we'll get some spookin' again, hope you guys enjoy this feature. This is 2 features in a row with Patrick I am just not remotely interested in.

haha loving the patrick fro on Isaac

Really looking forward to this feature, but there's no real reason to play without the expansion, it just adds so much stuff.

That whinny sound of the deformed babies is something I always wanted to extract from the game and use as a response when someone makes a pathetically whinny.

Is there a way to play without Wrath of the Lambs if you already own it?

>my experience with roguelikes

Yeah, nah. I doubt you've ever played a roguelike in your life. Maybe when you try Crawl or ToME or Sil or the like, but Spelunky is a platformer and Isaac is a Zelda clone. Neither of which are roguelikes, a genre unto themselves.

...I thought we won this fight already. Strange.

Yeah, that's kind of a hang-up for me, too. And I find myself surprisingly offended by his use of a birth defect, the cleft lip, as a method of making an enemy disturbing.

EDIT:

Rogue-likes evolve like any other genre. The modern stealth game looks little like classic stealth, and the modern FPS looks little like classic shooters. Genres bleed into each other. System Shock 2 is an FPS, survival horror, and RPG without any trouble. I'd say Binding of Isaac is much closer to Smash TV than it is to Zelda(?), but it can still be a top-down, SHMUP, Rogue-like without any trouble either.

Damn this game is unsettling to watch

@mdnthrvst: Screw the Berlin interpretation. Language use evolves and strict adherent to the definition pretty much lost. It always happens when a word becomes popular, even if it's "misused". Sorry. If you really want to keep the term "rogue-like" to real rogue-likes maybe call those "pure rogue-likes" because you're not gonna stop people from using it. I understand what you are going for, but the foot stomping about the term's use makes you sound like twats.

My only advice? This is important but not spoilery or anything:

Don't play this damn game in the middle of the night. You'll have the weirdest fucking dreams.

I'm excited for this series, Patrick.

Can't wait to see you play more Patrick. I've always been too intimidated to jump into this game, watching you start makes it seem more approachable.

Don't forget the abundance of satanic imagery! Yeah. I can't say I'm a fan of how completely grotesque and disturbing this game is. Probably doesn't hurt that I never really "got" how it played the same way some people seemed to. I'm not sure if this game will hold my attention the same way Patrick's Spelunkin' did.

well there is an item in the game that does that anyway (puts poop on your head, its a pretty good item actually).. Just wanted to point it out because its supposed to be an afro for patrick.

uh ohhhhhhh!

dig deep my brother! DIGGG DEEEEEEPPPPPPPPP

Roguelike is marketing bullshit for a game that has randomly generated elements and permadeath. That was the agreed upon conclusion to the great roguelike definition argument of 2012/2013

I've awaited this moment for a long time.

These are all the hints you'll ever need Patrick:

Haha, I was wondering what kind of reaction this game would get from the Giantbomb community. I love it, and it's kind of sad to see it getting such a lukewarm reception. I wonder how far he'll get before he quits. Here's hoping he makes it to the Chest and fights the final boss. Also, the song that plays during that boss is great:

Seriously, this game has a fantastic soundtrack.

I do agree that the game is pretty damn disturbing at times though.

Wow, people have put way too much thought into the classification of a tiny subset of games.

I was into roguelikes way before they sold out and went mainstream man. Now I only play underground rouguelike games like REAL fans of the genre. I'd tell you what games I'm playing right now but you probably haven't heard of them. You can't even google them, you have to access them via the deepweb, that's how undergound they are. I guess I just care a lot more about the developers and the sanctity of this genre more than the common gamer.

I was kind of hoping for something a little more interesting than BoI. I've probably got about 8 hours into it, but ultimately found it to be a fairly shallow experience. Played it until I beat Mom, and didn't find much interest in it after that. Plus the aesthetic really doesn't do anything for me. I'm a big fan of Edmund's- I loved the hell out of Super Meat Boy, played most of his earlier titles to completion (and enjoyed them), and I'm really looking forward to seeing what Mew-Genics turns out to be. Isaac just didn't appeal to me nearly as much as his other projects. Hoping that Patrick burns through this game in about a week and jumps into a better game.

All of this is true. I used to wake up to Repentant all the time. Made mornings... well, made mornings calm but sinister.

It's a different foreboding flavor. It's not really an upbeat fast go crazy game, it's a calculated noir beautiful mess. So not everyone digs that style.

@clush said:

Hate to break it to you buddy, but if you find this "blasphemous" to the point of not watching it.....you are a christian hardliner.

I look forward to seeing this series develop. I was addicted to this game and watching Let's Plays of this game all last summer. I put over 200 hours in the game itself, and probably the same amount in watching others play it too. Kind of weird, really... I don't normally delve that deep into most games, but the simplicity of the gameplay itself, along with the nuance and depth of the item pool/room layouts/enemy interactions, just really did it for me unlike any other game before it. More so than Spelunky, even, every single run is different. While you may get an occasional OP run and feel great about it, finding success in a drastically underpowered run is equally as exciting.

It's too bad the community doesn't seem too in to it at this point. The themes of the game may be off putting to some, but it's the gameplay that makes this worth it... and then once you see what this game is really all about, then you can understand why the themes that are being used are there. I don't want to get in to spoiler territory with all that though, but it's more clever than it appears on the surface.

i recommend using WASD and mouse for aiming / shooting

also try this dark souls radio Evil Moon Prophecy broadcast while you play http://www.mixcloud.com/jokeb4serious/

good sync

All genres are are marketing bullshit. Genres exist to simply classify products to market them to target demographics - this is their primary usage. You go to the jazz section to get jazz music, go to the science fiction to get sci-fi books, you go to the platformer section to buy a platformer, etc. The enthusiast's classifications and archival doings are secondary at best. Obviously Roguelike turn-based RPGs and strategy games are different from "roguelite" action and platforming games.

The creator himself says he hates the graphics and they were done as a rush-job, and it being done in Flash caused the game to have rather large limitations in the end. He's working with professional pixel artists to redo all of the art for the game completely, overseeing everything that goes into the game. He's going for a more crisp, GBA-esque direction for the remake. The remake will much more sound graphically, technically, and content-wise like Spelunky's remake. Though he has not released anything concrete about how it will ultimately look, just a bunch of rough mock-ups from what I know (though development seems to be moving at a steady rate, just holding it to their chest.)

This game is messed up. That's why I have 200+ hours of play time :)