The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

I’m Going Straight To Hell, Just Like My Mama Said

By Brad Sewell on November 8, 2014 at 12:25pm

“The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth” launched this week as a remake of “The Binding of Isaac,” this time with designer Edward McMillen handing the reins to indie developer Nicalis. Although there are some major changes within the game itself, it does remain (and deeply true to the original production) that “Rebirth” is a remake. Even the opening story is a word-for-word reproduction, but bear in mind that neither game is about having a commanding narrative. It is a game about having fun and being challenging for no other purpose than to play a challenging game in a day and age of constant auto-saves, do-overs, and press-X-to-win mechanics.

If you’re not familiar with the original, both games are darkly comedic representations of the Biblical tale of the Binding of Isaac, as seen in Genesis 22:1-14. Like Abraham, the modern Isaac’s mother is commanded by the Almighty to sacrifice her son (though interpretation is left open to mental instability from over-consumption of religious television programming). Isaac learns of the plan and flees to the basement to escape her madness.

Throughout the basement, Isaac faces many challenges between both the environment and the horde of demonic enemies seeking his destruction. It is obvious to even the casual gamer that “Rebirth” is heavily influenced by old single panel dungeon crawlers such as the original “Legend of Zelda.” Rather than traditional weapons such as crossbows and swords, Isaac is armed only with an unending supply of projectile tears. These can be modified to deal more damage, shoot faster, slow or poison enemies, or any number of other effects. Some upgrades even allow for Isaac to charge and focus his tears into a single beam, but I found myself avoiding those as it interrupted the flow of the game. Personal choice.

As an improvement over the original, “Rebirth” even makes it possible to alter tears so that they make enemies flee Isaac or fight their comrades on his behalf. Bombs are necessary to find secret rooms and the occasional power-up as well as dealing significant damage to enemies. Keys open special rooms that provide Isaac with powerful upgrades, as well as opening locked chests. “Rebirth” even includes a beggar NPC that accepts keys for bribes rather than currency.

Although “Rebirth” is a remake, there are noticeable differences over the predecessor. “Rebirth’s” appearance is much darker than the original. In my experience, I had to turn up the default brightness by 30% to 50% to even make sense of what was happening. This doesn’t even address the Curse of Darkness, which, well, I suppose is meant to make the game that dark. However, it’s still to be noted that I found myself blindly spraying tears into a blackened room in the hopes of maybe possibly hitting a dark enemy. There is much to be said for moody ambiance in a game such as this, but too much is overwhelming.

“Rebirth’s” frame-rate is vastly improved over the original as well--nearly double to 60 fps. This was an original issue I had with the game, however, as some of the settings were bugged on my system upon installation. The game was laggy and took forever to load, but luckily a Reddit user had the same issues and posted a solution that fixed everything. I’m no programmer, so I don’t know what happened, but be aware that you may have these issues as well. The solution is very simple, but it wasn’t the kind of fix one would expect to need to make. That being said, once the problem was resolved, animations were seamless and beautiful. Controls became responsive and everything on the screen moved with pulse quickening speed.

“Rebirth” includes a revamped store as well. Now stores include Donation Machines, which gradually unlock new game features when more money is deposited. The stores initially do not (or rarely) offer passive collectibles, but then those items are included once the player has donated enough money to level the store up. The first level up occurs at a relatively low number of coins, and the second upgrade comes with 100 coins donated. The donated money is recorded across multiple play-throughs, but the donation machine will malfunction and no longer accept coins in each playthrough to keep players from maxing out the store in one go.

“Rebirth” has nearly 200 passive and activated items, and the Steam version comes with a whopping 178 possible achievements. The draw and replay-ability comes in part from these achievements. It’s the kind of game that is easy to play through casually but becomes brutally difficult if you decide to try to 100% the game. “Rebirth” seems easy enough to hunt that final achievement, but this level of trophy hunting is only for the most dedicated. As an example from the original “Binding of Isaac,” I am still 7 achievements away from the perfect game after 192 hours of gameplay, and the original only had 84 achievements.

As with the original, “Rebirth” features yet another phenomenal soundtrack from Danny Baranowsky, who many fans will recognize from the “Super Meatboy” score. Music on the early floors is light and melodic, but it becomes more chilling and piercing as the play descends through the dungeons. There were several tracks I preferred from the original, but “Rebirth” has its own charm throughout and the soundtrack stands proud.

In spite of “Rebirth’s” many qualities, the game will still require you to do some out-of-game detective work to find out what each item does. As in the original, “Rebirth” offers only vague descriptions of most pickups. For instance, the Cancer trinket tooltip only gives the player a message that says, “Yay cancer!” and mentions nothing about its true effect (decreasing the time between tears fired based on the player’s current fire rate).

The truest dividing line I’ve seen among gamers is whether or not you think religion is something that can be joked about. If it’s sacrosanct to you, “Rebirth” will be very offensive in a number of ways. If you’re more casual about it, it’s very much a quality game. Of course, you may also have to be more accepting of enemies who are made entirely of feces.

If you’re looking for an addictive, entertaining, and challenging game with a budget of fifteen bucks, “Rebirth” should be on your list. It’s even one of the monthly free games for PS4 users. Just watch out for the red poop.

Review Score: 9/10

Pros

Fast-paced, addictive gameplay
Tons of achievements
Huge improvements over the original in every possible way

Cons

Some users may need to dig a little deeper to tweak the necessary options
Religious humor and parody is not for everyone
Though moody, the game is at times unnecessarily dark