The Binding of Isaac

So, late last year - around the time of that Mayan calendar explosion thing - I’m looking though the ever-tempting Steam sale and catch sight of ‘The Binding of Isaac’ going for a mere £1.99. I sort of remembered seeing some of this game upon its release, but for some reason my 2011-self was all “This probably isn’t for me”, despite the fact that

A. The game was going for like, 3 shillings or some shit, and

B. The game was co-created by one of the dudes responsible for Super Meat Boy, which was super great…boy. (sorry)

Anyways, my poor decision making aside, I finally bought the game as well as £2 of DLC, because it adds more stuff and stuff = Fun! And fortunately, the game ended up being a much deeper and more surprising experience than I could have hoped for.

At its core, Isaac is largely a game about shooting stuff while avoiding being shot at. Except instead of bullets, you’re firing your own tears at foes, which could come off as pretentious in a more earnestly-told story, but more on that later. You control the titular Isaac as he scrambles through a nightmarish, labyrinthine basement while fighting monsters and fleeing from Isaac’s mother: apparently brainwashed by evangelical Christian TV broadcasts (the game’s words, not mine) into thinking Isaac has a bad case of ‘sin’ which can only be cured with a dose of ‘multiple stabs’. Pretty dark stuff to kick off a game with, but the game’s cartoonish, almost cutesy art style lends the action a lighter tone. Although, that doesn’t stop some enemies being downright gross looking, both visually and conceptually.

Anyway, back to mechanics: you be movin’ & shootin’ with the WASD & arrow keys respectively. At a glance, the game looks a bit like a modern take on a dungeon from the first Legend of Zelda, complete with hearts(health), keys(doors) and bombs(…explosions). The game is broken into floors each of which is a nonlinear series of rooms, culminating in a boss battle. As far as rooms go, most of them present you with a bunch of enemies but some will present you with, say, a present, or a grip of cash, or a cheeky wee bomb which chases you down(a.k.a. ‘YOU FUCKER!’).

The mechanical glue bringing all this together is that this game is a ‘rogue-like’, meaning that the game has a strong procedurally-generated aspect. Also, there are no checkpoints or saves: when you die that’s your run finished. Isaac really commits to this punishing randomness, randomly serving up not just layouts but also enemy configurations, enemy behaviour modifiers, pickups and the occasional ‘special’ item. Even the bosses you face are semi-randomized, picking your would-be murderer from a hefty stable of scumbags.

And some of these bags are far more scummy than others. Awkward paragraph linking aside, procedural generation will inevitably give you a few unpredictable difficulty spikes. But for every big ol’ spider-that-spawns-blobs-that-spawn-spiders-who-are-assholes (Yep), you’ll get the odd chance to turn the tides with a ‘special item’. Following the rest of the game’s mantra, any item you get is chosen from a vertigo-inducing stack of potential candidates. The breadth of effects they can have is equally impressive, with effects ranging from basic stat upgrades to alternate weapons to outlandish character transformations. Crucially, many of the pickups you find will work together, and combining many effects/companions/whatevers into an insane looking tidal wave of death is a satisfying thing to behold. The other awesome part of this is that each special item will add a little visual quirk to Isaac - and they stack just like the effects. Maybe you’ll get a cool hat and snazzy glasses! Or maybe you’ll be a disembodied head surrounded by flies! By the end of the game you could very well have BOTH of these things plus a slew of other gnarly/stylish gear.

Of course, all these aesthetic niceties would be pointless if the game wasn’t fun to play and I think it ticks that box handily. I heard it said that the shooting can feel imprecise and, while I definitely get some of that at times, I’ve grown to appreciate the nuance you can apply to a shot by moving while you shoot. It’s like tennis! Kind of! Anyway, since you generally can’t shoot a lot without someone shooting back (ain’t that the truth), a significant chunk of time is spent weaving between enemies’ attacks and around traps. For me, some of the most memorable times in Isaac have seen me inches from death while battling three kinds of monsters at once, in constant danger. The permanence of your death definitely heightens the tension of any dicey situation until finding even just a sliver of health is a - ‘woke up from that nightmare and WHEW your exams aren’t all tomorrow after all!’ - kind of feeling.

But every triumph against adversity must come with a brief discussion of Isaac’s shortcomings (because this review is balanced, damn it) and the most glaring one has to be the performance. When things get too hectic on-screen some fairly intense slowdown will occur, plunging the frame-rate dangerously close to single figures. I hear this is due to the game being coded in Adobe Flash so I’m not sure how much blame the developers deserve. I don’t think it’s rendered unplayable, but still, it’s always disappointing to see good games marred by issues like this.(Note: I hear there’s a remake slated for PS3/Xbox later this year with an entirely new engine, so maybe hold out for that if slowdown turns you off)

I mentioned earlier on that Isaac’s mother is a Christian. Thematically, this plays a big part in the game, with many items having some heaven/hell affiliation and some bosses personifying the seven deadly sins. Thankfully it doesn’t fall into the trope of ‘choose your alignment: blue = good; red = evil’, it plays to the game’s strengths to have all kinds of items available to the player. As far as whether this game is saying Christianity/religion is bad? I don’t think so, though I believe it exemplifies the dangers of religious obsession and ‘hearing the voice of God’ very well through the clearly delusional mother.

I don't see religious commentary as being what The Binding of Isaac is really about, though. For me it is about assembling your character’s offence with whatever you can find and charging into hundreds of possible enemy and room combinations. The game is eminently replayable, with a variety of starting characters and specific challenges widening an already obese set of possibilities. There is a ton to do if you’re after all 100 of those per cents, but if not there’s still plenty of enjoyment to be had from just trying to make sense of the various item effects and discovering the weird shit tucked away in there (of which there is no shortage). There’s a lot more I could get into - the hubris-stoking ‘health for treasure’ tradeoffs, the quality soundtrack - but I’ve probably rambled enough. This game is great and you should buy it.