Game review: The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth for PS Vita
I’ve been playing The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth off and on between other games, with about 20 hours put into it at this point, and I still don’t know how to feel about it. Once I’ve got it started, I might play until I drain the Vita, or I might just play one seed and put it away for later. The controls are simple enough, and the enemies have a lot of variety. But the game’s setting is…well it’s a bit awkward.
Isaac is a young child of indeterminate age, but given his dream sequences in between levels, I’m not really sure if he’s a toddler or somewhere around 5 or 6. In any case, Isaac’s mother hears a voice that says he’s God, and he doesn’t like Isaac much. So after a set of severe punishments, “God” tells her that Isaac must be sacrificed. Isaac somehow figures out that he’s about to die, and he finds a trap door into the basement level of his room and must fight through a bunch of monsters and bosses, eventually leading to a fight with his mother using his only available weapon, his tears.
Right off the bat, I find myself asking what drugs the dude who made this must have been taking. There’s a kind of biblical tone to this story, and a little bit of Carrie as well, given the “they’re all going to laugh at you” dream sequences. I find myself asking if Isaac’s mother is delusional or really hearing God. Because if all these demons and monsters are hiding out in this woman’s basement, maybe the God of this world is petty enough to ask for a child as a human sacrifice. Then again, maybe’s she’s insane and it’s just a coincidence that her house seems to be sitting on top of a hell mouth.
Isaac’s controls are simple enough to grasp. You can move using the left stick or the d-pad, and you can fire in four directions using the right stick or the face buttons. Bombs and items can be used by touching the screen or by using the shoulder buttons. It’s very simple to customize the controls to suit your own preferences as well, and I liked having the option to shift some of the controls around.
The layout of the levels is similar to dungeons in Zelda games, but with a darker, fecal-strewn theme. There’s piles of shit everywhere, and Isaac can break these open with his tears to occasionally find coins or other items. (Again, what drugs was this guy taking?)
Along with items that can be held and used with the buttons, there are also rooms with upgrades for Isaac, some of which are more useful than others. Some items give Isaac more hearts for health, while others give his tears upgrades to do more damage. Others give him an ally to help in his fights with the monsters. The placement of these items is random, so on some runs, you might get a combination of helping items that make a basement crawl less difficult. But you also might get a run where nothing is useful, or worse, where the items weaken Isaac and make fighting much, much harder. A number of items claim to increase Isaac’s luck, but if this does anything useful, I don’t know what it is. It doesn’t make finding coins or spare hearts easier. Since there’s no manual, it’s all a guessing game what any of this stuff really does. The tear upgrades at least give some visual clues to their upgrades, but a lot of the other items leave me wondering if they’re useful or harmful.
It doesn’t help that the game feels extremely stingy with items. There might be four or five locked doors or chests in a level, but you’ll only find one key. There will be dozens of places a bomb might be useful for getting extra items, but you only start off each seed with one bomb, and you might go two or three levels without finding another. This is true whether you select normal or hard difficulties, and to be honest, I couldn’t tell any difference between the two modes. They both feel equally difficult. At one point, I shifted down to normal from hard, and it actually made the bosses harder by giving them all companions. Maybe that’s a bug, or it’s a feature. I don’t know.
The game’s bosses are randomly generated, and with more runs, more bosses are unlocked. This and the randomly generated layouts of the dungeons ensures that no two runs will play the same. Additionally, many seeds will start with a handicap, like losing the Zelda style map in the corner of the screen, or making every room darker and more difficult to see enemies. It’s the kind of indie game meant to abuse the player, and there are very few seeds where you’ll find a collection of items that level the playing field. In all the seeds I’ve played, only one stands out for being generous with upgrades, giving me three companions, a large number of hearts, and a really useful tear upgrade that let me shoot through walls. More often than not, however, I ended up heading into the third and fourth levels with no tear upgrades, no companions, no extra hearts, and nothing but items that supposedly increased my luck.
Which is a big reason why I don’t know how to feel about the game. Most of the time, I feel like I’m woefully ill-equipped for a run. I still see it through to the end and hope the next seed is maybe slightly less cruel, but rarely do I feel rewarded for my perseverance.
There’s supposedly other characters to unlock, but I’ve never seen a seed where it would be possible to fulfill any of the stringent requirements to unlock them. One for instance requires holding 55 pennies. But I’ve gone this whole time without making more than 20 cents in a full run. (Most of the time, I can make it to the last level with 10 cents.) Another requires not picking up hearts for two levels, but I can’t manage to do it. Still another requires not taking damage for two levels, something I fear may never be possible no matter how often I play.
In some ways, the game feels like Spelunky for the difficulty level, but even Spelunky’s worst level still feel more generous with item distribution. This is particularly notable with the shops. In Spelunky, you’ll hit a shop that has five items, and at least one will be really useful for keeping you alive. And by the time you get there, you’ll have enough gold and gems to afford it. In The Binding of Isaac, the shop will have three items, none of which do much of anything. It’s a moot point either way because you won’t have any money to buy them anyway.
Therein lies a great deal of my difficulty in rating the game or suggesting it for others. It’s not a terrible game, but it feels like it’s been tuned to the cheap end of the gaming curve, making almost every seed feel grossly unfair. I still play them through, and I still want to play another round just to see if maybe I can get a seed that’s less painful.
But…am I having fun? Um…sometimes? Maybe? I don’t know.
I’m giving The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth 3 stars. It’s put together well, and if you’re the kind of person who likes hopeless odds and unfair cheap tactics, this might be for you. As for me, I think this will continue to be something I take in small doses between other games. Because if I tried to play this longer than a single charge on the Vita, I might find myself extremely depressed by the idea that a guy on drugs thought a story about murdering children in a shit-filled basement was a great idea for a video game.
