Hearing about Nintendo's decision to reject The Binding of Isaac from their eShop piqued my interest. I think Sw0rdfish gifted me the game during the Steam sale and I never touched it. All I can say is wow, I can see why Nintendo would have issues with this game. Between the amounts of cartoon blood everywhere to making deals with the devil, it was probably a good move considering their image. Think about what would happen if Timmy's Dad decided The Binding of Isaac (if they didn't pick up on the religious reference right away) looked like a cute game for his son, only later to overlook Timmy's shoulder to see him playing a game where the main character resembles Satan with the power to vomit blood-lasers at underdeveloped, fly-spewing fetuses. Nintendo would be my hero, that's what would happen.

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I love the game. It's a dual-stick shooter that's imaginative, disturbing, and funny. I like that when you die, you must restart the game and the Zelda-like dungeon is completely randomized, from its structure and secret rooms to the power-ups you can find on any given level. Everything seems hidden with meaning and the cut-scenes of Isaac's nightmares always make me at least grin if not giggle no matter how many times I see them. What ultimately sells me on the game's replay-ability is the music, starting over just means you get to listen to a different music track again, and they're all great. I'm really happy I finally played this, it's a game that combines many different familiar game play elements with a very unique and adult story.

Bastion

Bastion is another game I barely played after picking up during the Christmas Steam sale. At the time I just couldn't get into it, with the familiar problem of having Skyrim, Battlefield 3 and Uncharted 3 to play. Since then I've gotten my fill of the first two and beat UC 3, so I don't have those weighing on my mind as things to spend my free time on. Bastion also sits right above The Binding of Isaac in my Steam library, so after playing a good two hours of TBoI I decided what the Hell. Two hours later of that, and I'm kicking myself for waiting so long to play it as well.

I thought a lot of the hype for Bastion was more about cheerleading Greg Kasavin and Supergiant Games, rather than celebrating a really good indie game. I really liked Greg at Gamespot, I always thought he wrote great reviews but questioned his move toward making games. Steam says that as of this weekend, I've put 5 hours into Bastion, and now I think it's one of the best, if not the best Indie game you can buy. I don't think of Supergiant Games as a Greg Kasavin company, but as an entity of its own like Valve or Epic Games. Sure those developers have their public faces, with Gaben and CliffyB, but at the end of the day they're more than just their figureheads. Supergiant Games is now one of my favorite developers, and I hope they continue to show the industry how to make games that are not just fun, but have soul.