The Binding of Patrick: 02/25/2014

Now the game can really begin

The true Binding of Isaac starts here.

Woah, this is a cool game!

Giantbomb is the new twitch.tv or something...

Hey guys, I'm as surprised as you, but I think Patrick may actually be pretty good at video games!

I wonder how successful he would be without the help of the chat.

Excited about this feature. Kinda hope Patrick doesn't finish the game once and move on like Risk of Rain - there's a lot of variety to be had in Binding of Isaac, especially with the expansion.

Spectral tears bad? Dat chat trolling.

Every item in Isaac is good for something, the only items that might be considered "bad" depending on your synergies are Ipecac and Brimstone, which is something Isaac does really well: Items that appear bad at a glance can become amazing when paired with some items and absolutely terrible when paired with others. That said, the only flat out bad item in the game is Lemon Mishap.

Yay Patrick! You handled The Fallen fight really well for a first attempt and managed to defy expectations after picking up 9 lives, very good.

@Vulkans I would argue there are a few actually bad items if for no other reasons than how many bad synergies they have. Holy water's bug where it turns a familiar into brother bobby until you take a hit (and only for that room) makes it pretty damned bad. Also how Little Chad makes at least some dropping familiars drop less often breaks that in many cases (namely the relic).

A lot of these issues are bugs, but they still exist in the current game.

Patrick gave a dude the finger.

People need to stop giving so many hints to Patrick, it ruins the discovery aspect. For instance in the last feed someone told him to bomb the rocks...that took me hours to realize and was a big discovery once I pieced it together. Patrick just being told that right off the bat ruins the moment where we get to see him figure it own on his own, as would eventually happen.

I never really cared for this game, just didn't hook me. So far I'm not enthralled in watching Patrick play it partially because of that.

I try to be careful about what I look at. I'm not going to pretend the chat isn't there, and I can't pretend this stream will be a 100% pure experience because of that. But I'm doing my best.

Jeez, I really struggled to even reach mom after so many hours of playing it myself. I really wonder how much the expansion ramped up the difficulty, because that's what I started with. I kinda gave up after awhile.

I've played way too much Binding of Isaac. Cannot wait for Rebirth, especially if it ends up on the 3DS.

The expansion makes the base game a LOT more difficult. I find especially with the addition of the Cellars making it through the early levels unscathed is a lot harder.

Nice final battle - Mom can be annoying since so little of the room is safe. And if he died he would have revived with one heart and no unicorn horn to use, so he would have been really screwed. Super tense.

And Patrick, do NOT install the expansion anytime soon. There's a lot more in vanilla Isaac and the expansion destroys the difficulty curve. It's not just items - the expansion adds harder variants to all the levels and bosses that will appear at any time. As is, vanilla Isaac will unlock new challenges, items, and levels over time at a proper rate.

For Rebirth they're reworking the difficulty curve so new players don't get destroyed when starting the game by the expansion levels and bosses, and the developer has admitted its a problem as is.

@alexandersheen: Meh, the hardest part about this game is actually playing it. Getting help from the chat is like reading a FAQ about what some of the items do: I think it's fair, some people don't think it's "playing the game right". Whatever.

Also really enjoyed Patrick giving that one guy the finger. You can't just say "Patrick and Brad are bad at games!!!" in the chat and expect no comeback.

Congrats, Patrick, you did a good job at finishing the tutorial. Now onto the full game :P

So much for "keep hints to a minimum."

Watching risk of Rain just doesn't do it for me though. Binding of Isaac and Splunkey seem easier to watch because the characters are so big.

Indeed, I always play binding of isaac with the item, trinket and card wiki pages open. Grabbing items that will make your run turn poor is just no fun. The game is still difficult anyway, getting an actually good build is part of the fun.

@vulkans said:

Plenty of items are bad. Ipecac is just bad, Dr. Fetus/Megafetus can be bad against fast enemies because you lose basically all knockback (so you can't slow them down), and those fast enemies will stay so close to you that they'll always run past your bombs. The mirror item that basically cuts your range in half because the second half of your shot arc is wasted on the shot returning in your direction is near useless. Nine Lives is almost always a downgrade, though Patrick managed to barely salvage that run with some timely health items. If he had the Womb unlocked, then Nine Lives absolutely would've ended his run there since any damage would be a one-hit kill.

You're crazy, Brimstone is totally rad, though if you have no damage upgrades it isn't nearly as effective. Patrick lucked out by already having Max's Head, which is one of the better damage boosting items.

Patrick is doing extraordinarily well, given that I definitely took a few more playthroughs than that to beat Mom the first time.

I'll also say, I don't blame Patrick at all for taking tips from the chat about items. The most frustrating thing about this game is the lack of in-game database you can reference between runs. Many items are entirely unclear as to what they do even after you collect and use them, such that a wiki is almost required. The expansion made this issue a lot worse, and from what I've heard Rebirth is going to double the item list again.

It would be much better if after collecting an item for the first time, it gave you some indication as to what that item did in that collectible list on the start screen, similar to Spelunky and Risk of Rain. I don't mind learning by trial up front, and they don't have to explain everything, but some indication or reminder so I can learn from my runs would be better than forcing me into a wiki to figure out what the hell an item did.

"I don't have enough money for that... juice."

The lack of a journal is going to kill me in this game. I'm not so great at remembering long lists of items, so I'll eventually have to start consulting a wiki on my iPad in order to double check my brain.

Good run, I think this will be a fun feature.

I had a lot of fun with Isaac back in the day and I'm looking forward to whenever that new version will come out.

I figured that this aspect of the game is a callback to the rouge-likes of yore, like NetHack, where items are unidentified and you don't know what they'll do if you use them. You don't even know if they're good or bad. So then every time you take a pill or whatever, there's a tension and sometimes a sense "wait, what the fuck just happened?"

It's a game-play choice, and I don't personally know whether I like it or not. I find this aspect less rewarding than being able to carefully plan out my moves knowing what stuff does, but that's not to say that there isn't some value in the choices Binding of Isaac makes. I also don't think it's unintentional.

Yeah, I've put over a hundred hours into Isaac and the expansion over several hundred runs, and I still have trouble with the items and have to use a wiki at times.

I understand, but his skill is good. And he constantly has to look past some people trying to slap him or even troll him. He just might play it the other way now that he knows the game. But with decent people it is kind of hard not to want to interact with also.

Great job, Patrick, and thanks for another installment of this feature!

As a person who has put 100+ hours into this game and has almost every ending (dont have ending 13) watching this is slightly infuriating. Still cool that he's doing it.

@patrickklepek:

Yeah, I've got about 100 hours in and I still pull up a wiki just to check the tarot cards.

@gkhan: I can see that with the pills, where it's just a roll of the dice akin to drinking from a random fountain in an old RPG and hoping it does you good. And no amount of wiki-looking will change that. But the other items have defined effects such that you should be able to learn what they are and if they're useful or harmful. I've done that with a lot of items, but with tons of similar-looking items and outright palette swaps that do different things it's just way too much to keep track of, especially with the expansion.

@patrickklepek: I just wanted to let you know that your method of learning/streaming/entertaining is fantastic. It's open and exciting and many others could learn from you.

Have you ever considered doing a "this is how I do my 'thang" video?

It may be too "behind the curtain," but I think it would benefit streamers and the gaming community as a whole.

Anyway, great job Patrick and thank you for all your hard work! <3

Man, I didn't expect a successful Mom run for at least another couple of episodes. Well done. Of course, I've been playing Wrath for so long that I forget how much simpler vanilla BOI is. Still impressive, though, especially with Guppy's head. That could have gone really bad.

Great job man! You are great at games unlike Brad who just dies and dies.

P.S. Brad sucks lol, jk

It all comes down to personal preference. Dr Fetus is one of my personal favourite items, and I have a friend who does ridiculous things with Ipecac. It's worth remembering that you can always use them to get out of a room in a pinch. It really does depend what suits you though - although if you're talking about Epic Fetus then I'd say it's unquestionably the game's strongest item. It's the only one I'd say can pretty much guarantee a win by itself.

I'd also highly recommend anyone enjoying this checks out BOILeR, the Isaac racing league. It's a really fun way to watch the game, because racing against another player forces you to abandon the caution that makes for the safest way to play the game normally.

Wiggle Worm is just Uncle Fester's Quest bullshit all over again!

And people told him to start over in that last run.

Hopefully this showed Patrick what makes BoI awesome: getting attached to your character.

Great run Patrick!

Praise Satan!

I reinstalled the game after being reminded that it existed by this feature. Nope. I still don't like the way it plays, to not even get into the disturbing visual aesthetic and tone.

Still, kudos to Patrick for "beating" the game after only two sessions. Now he can do all the hard stuff or whatever. Not sure if I'll stick with this the same way I did with Spelunky. Maybe every few days or when the comments suggest that something momentous happens.

Ipecac is amazing, you just have to be careful with your positioning when you use it.

I did not expect him to get that far on day 2! But as he said, there is so much more to the game. Only scratched the surface at this point.

I played with the wiki and I'm not nearly as good as Patrick is, considering the time committed.

people need to give him a break

The way I played Isaac was to just have the wiki up at all times. After a while you remember what everything does.