"Rated M" Month: The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

Well, Easter has come and gone, and I’m still in “M-Rated" Month… Gotta find some way to combine the two. I might have just the right game to talk about.

Quite possibly THE most famous roguelike
video game of all time.

How do I approach such a massive product… well, might as well start with the beginning. The Binding of Isaac is a game that was developed by Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl, and released in its first version as a Flash game on September 28th, 2011. The game’s popularity quickly rose, leading to an expansion titled “Wrath of the Lamb”. However, the version most people are familiar with is the remake, developed with help from the game studio Nicalis on a new engine, dubbed “The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth” and released to Steam on November 4th, 2014 (this is the version I’m covering today). Multiple content packs were added afterwards, such as Afterbirth, Afterbirth+ and, last year, Repentance. Since there is a LOT of ground to cover, I'll focus on Rebirth and only mention notable differences with later DLCs whenever necessary.

A brief introduction

Though the game is fairly well-known, in case someone reading this doesn’t know, I’ll explain: In short, The Binding of Isaac is a roguelike, meaning that you explore dungeons that are procedurally generated. A run you go through is defined by its "seed", a sequence of letters and numbers that’s randomized at the start of the game. In the case of The Binding of Isaac, it’s a sequence of eight digits and excludes the characters 5, I, O and U, meaning that there are (32⁸) 1,099,511,627,776 possible dungeons. Any more and I would have needed scientific notation. The odds of playing through the same dungeon layout twice (without tools, hacks, or by generating a precise seed by yourself) are so low, it’s practically impossible.

It's also pretty dark, though with the themes
and implications of the place, that's no
surprise.

The player character, a little naked boy named Isaac, has to progress through the dungeon by going down the floors. Each floor has multiple rooms with enemies that must be killed in order to move onward, and ends with a fight against a boss. Items are also randomly generated, meaning that you have to make do with what you find. If the die doesn’t roll in your favor and all you find is items that hinder you, well, that can happen. If you keep getting killer items that can destroy everything in every room, that can happen too. The cool thing with such a concept is that your skill at the game still decides the outcome; if you wanna get to the end, you’ve gotta git gud. The challenge is high and no two runs are the same; as a result, this type of gameplay is incredibly addictive.

Angy Isaac means a bomb to the face,
you ugly corpse flesh sphere boss.

And it has very simple controls, as well. Though many people will prefer to play with a controller, the base controls on keyboard are this: WASD to move around, the arrows to shoot (so you can shoot in any direction while moving in any direction). Use a special item with Q, drop a bomb with E, and use a rechargeable item with the Spacebar. On to what we’re all here for- well, not really, but admit it, such gameplay wouldn’t be as interesting without this extra flavor.

Isaac versus Mom

She should've just tied him up to an altar and waited for
an OK from God. It's called The BINDING of Isaac for
a reason, hasn't she read the goddamned Bible?

The story begins as normally as you could expect, but it takes turns towards fucked-up fast. Isaac lives alone with his mother Magdalene, a devout Christian watching broadcasts appealing to her beliefs. One day, she hears the voice of God claiming that Isaac is corrupted; as a result, she strips him of all worldly possessions – that includes clothing, we’re playing as a naked young boy this entire time, yes it’s creepy as all Hell – but for God, that’s not enough! So she locks him up in his bedroom… but that’s not enough! The voice now demands… a sacrifice. And if you know the actual tale of the “Binding of Isaac” from the Hebrew Bible, well, good for you, but that’s not gonna help here. Upon hearing the sound of a knife being pulled out of a drawer, a terrified Isaac unveils a secret trap door in his room and flees.

Lots of poop, lots of blood - Isaac's worried that his mom
is trying to kill him, he should worry about sepsis instead.

Pestilence leaves a trail of ipecac all over the
place

A naked kid in a dirty basement covered with blood and shit, terrified of what his mom might do to him, just as she is coming for him – we’re playing the video game equivalent of the vilest forms of child abuse. Have fun thinking about that during your next runs through the game’s dungeon! Following that theme, a lot of early enemies are the common vermin of a dark basement: Flies, gnats, worms, maggots, and spiders. Lots of spiders of varying shapes and sizes. It’s a miracle there aren’t any mice as well. However, there’s more: Several monsters are such creepy creatures/demons, you have to tell yourself they’re most likely not real. Or… are they? It’s weird. Either way, the trauma is having a bad effect on Isaac’s dwindling sanity.

The game is technically split into chapters, most of them comprised of two floors; Mom is always fought at the end of the sixth floor on Chapter 3, whereas bosses are randomized in the previous five floors. Each chapter is represented by an environment, each with its own type of enemy; Chapter 1 looks like an average basement, but you can unlock an alternative environment called the Cellar by completing some requirements. Same goes for the following chapters. Oh yeah, this game’s kinda crazy on stuff to unlock; I'll get back on that later.

Her foot is in the room, her eyes are on both sides of it.
What, I cannot stress this enough, the actual fuck?

Upon defeating Mom for the first time, we get a cutscene in which a cornered Isaac watches powerless as Magdalene approaches with a knife, only for a Bible to animate itself and knock her out, with Isaac saved by the power of God. Haha, except no. This was just a story Isaac was writing for himself. Then the door to his room bursts open and the rotund form of the matriarch appears in the frame, cutting implement in hand…

Isaac versus What Made Us Go Crazy

Okay, Mom has been defeated – or if she isn’t, one trip down this maddening world and it’ll be done again – but the source of her ill hasn’t been dealt with. That’s why Chapter 4 is The Womb, with Isaac taking a rather… direct approach to curing her monstrous motivation to murder. He’ll go down and fight her very heart and destroy it if need be!

Jesus that's a lot of blood bullets.

And yes, you can in fact do just that. And it appears to work. Things, however, can take a number of unexpected turns after this. The random nature of the game kind of takes over past this point, depending on the items you find and what route the game brings you to. It’s complicated, and that’s before factoring in the changes made to the game with each new version. The TVTropes pages for the game list something like 10+ different “final bosses”, that’s how complicated it gets. For starters, beating the Heart 11 times turns it into a stronger boss called It Lives! (that exclamation mark is mandatory). And beating that new form unlocks further chapters. You can even end up fighting Satan himself. And because the Lord of Hell isn’t enough, how about a further fight against Mega Satan? He’s like Satan, but mega. Or what about a demon known as The Lamb?

Depicted: Not a "final boss". Which... y'know...
ith "final" in the name, it's a surprise the game
has so many!

Later paths (and endings) imply that the core tenet of the game’s plot might not even be true; that Isaac sees himself as a demon and wishes he would die, rather than it actually being Mom coming to kill him. That’s why other chapters end in a boss fight against another Isaac, as though the kid is attempting to cleanse himself. Or, starting with the Afterbirth DLC, he can fight a dead blue baby version of himself, or a giant version of said dead baby, called Hush.

Have all these pics of other bosses in the game,
because I didn't have time in one week to
actually see beyond Mom's Heart.

And that’s STILL not enough, as in Afterbirth+ Isaac can also fight the source of his growing insanity, an entity known as Delirium existing in The Void. And yet AGAIN, the Repentance DLC added MORE “final” bosses, including: A zombie version of Mom called Mother; an entity of static named Dogma (representing the Christian media that pushed Mom’s fanaticism to its murderous extreme, meaning that Isaac is literally fighting what made his mom go crazy); stronger versions of the Four Horsemen, which are regular bosses in the game; and, FINALLY, The Beast.

Wait, how MUCH content???

Only another way to go from here… I discussed the plot, so allow me to say a few words about how mind-blowing this game is, content-wise. It feels like there’s no end!

How about a little deal with the devil?

Okay, so for starters, the number of items in the game is massive; 341 for Rebirth, 436 in Afterbirth, 547 in Afterbirth+, and 716 in Repentance. Jesus fuck. And part of the game’s big drive is to find them all at least once. And there’s also a bunch of categories to those: First are the rechargeable items, which can only be used once every couple rooms, with a gauge that refills at every room you successfully complete. You can even pick up batteries to refill said gauges quickly if needed. Then there are Familiars, items that morph into helpers that either also shoot at enemies, circle around Isaac and block damage, or do a bunch of other stuff.

Then, if that wasn’t enough, many items belong to themed collections. Mom must’ve been open to other forms of mysticism, as Isaac can also pick up tarot cards (with effects fitting the general meaning of the cards they represent) and astrological signs. The weirdest of the lot is the Pills, which are weird even by the game’s standard; the effect of pills is randomized at the start of a run, so when you grab one you won’t even know what the Hell it does, with its description given as “???”. You don't find out till you use it (or find one of the rare few items that will tell you).

On top of unlockable alternate environments/chapters, there’s a bunch of unlockable extra characters. Their base stats usually differ from Isaac’s, even though all of them have been confirmed to just be Isaac in a disguise. Most of them are named after biblical characters (Magdalene, Samson, Cain, Judas, Eve, Lazarus). Some play the same as Isaac, but others are mechanically different. One of them has a life bar comprised solely of Black Hearts, another one has only Soul Hearts (in both cases, those cannot be refilled with regular hearts). Others get… weird. Oh, and Repentance added a Tainted version to every character, which are even harder to play with, bringing the final total to... 34 playable characters.

Yeah, if you thought the Womb was a creepy
idea for a level, wait till you see the stuff
in there.

Oh, and because that’s not enough, sometimes the game will make things harder on a single floor by activating a Curse; the odds are low at first, but the more time you spend playing the game, the more often they’ll happen. Darken the entire floor? Remove the mini-map? Turn items into question marks, meaning you won’t know what they are until you pick them up? Yep.

And because the basic game isn’t tough enough, you can also play through the game’s various challenges, which are runs that Isaac begins with a specific item loadout, usually detrimental (but some actually givc him good stuff from the get-go instead). Beating Challenges unlocks new items as well.

Just in case you weren't challenged enough
by finding everything. Now, it's
"catalog 'em all" too.

Oh, and for the record, the game keeps track of the endings you’ve found; the items you’ve discovered; and from Afterbirth onwards, there’s even a Bestiary keeping track of all the enemies, how many you’ve killed, how many killed you, etc.

And… Phew… That’s it, at last.

Final words

Hoooooooly shit. I wanted to keep this review to just one part, but it was difficult. Hell, I still feel like there’s a dozen things I forgot, that’s how much stuff is in this damn thing. And full disclosure, at time of writing I only defeated Mom’s Heart once, so there’s a lot of content I’ve read about but haven’t seen for myself. Then again, it’s apparently not rare to take well over a hundred hours to beat this game, if not several hundred hours; I’ve got a little over 27 hours, personally.

....freaky as fuck, but fun!

It's even got the occasional fully-animated
cutscene!

I do like the story here, though it takes a lot of weird turns; and I’ve tried my best not to spoil the most important reveals, many of which are done in later endings – meaning that unless you become really good at the game, you might not see them. (Good thing other people upload them online, then!) Despite the prevalence of religious imagery, the game doesn’t shy away from having poop, blood, vaginas, fetuses… all of them, either implicit or explicit. No wonder I reviewed this for “Rated M” Month! It can get really gory, creepy, freaky even.

Compare how Isaac looks... to how the
bosses look.

Next, the graphics. The graphics for cutscenes are fine, often delivered as paper drawings, other times fully animated. As for graphics in the gameplay itself… well, let me put it that way, everything has exactly the right amount of detail it needs. Let me explain: Isaac (and his alternate personalities), as a little naked child, only has the bare minimum of detail, which is understandable; though several items will add something to his appearance, meaning that much like the runs he’s a part of, no two Isaacs will look quite the same at the end. This also applies to bosses and enemies; if something is supposed to be creepy, trust me, you’ll know soon enough. It will be super-detailed… and gross as fuck. The music is also excellent, adding to the vibe of each Chapter and environment.

Some challenges add interesting flavor
to what would otherwise be a regular run.

Finally, the gameplay. Oh, that is so addictive. I had tried a few runs before properly playing this game for the review, but once I set my mind to it, I swear I was looking for any slice of 30 minutes where I could squeeze in another run, to see how far I could get. Whether, maybe, I would actually go beyond Mom, maybe even beat the Womb, this time. It’s a common thing for roguelike games. This one further encourages replayability and doing several runs, for several reasons. First is the sheer number of different items, several of which won’t just add to Isaac’s stats but can also radically change the way the game is played. I can think of several upgrades that change the way your tears work. Second is the sheer number of things to unlock: Endings, of course, but also new environments, playable characters, bosses/enemies and items. The game changes constantly based on your own successes and achievements, encouraging you to play more so that you can find more so that you can unlock more stuff. It’s kinda crazy. Third is the ability to input your own seeds in order to play through a seed someone else has done, or to retry a seed you failed previously. On top of that, the game has a section that shows off all the items available, multiple challenges to play through, and later DLCs even add extra stuff like a Bestiary. That said, the game is tough as Hell; challenge is definitely present, with just getting to the end of the game being tough, but then there are tons of optional challenges on top of playing through the game with mechanically-different characters.

Oh, and of course - poop everywhere. Poop all over,
just shit and crap and feces and dung of all sorts.

Oh fuck yeah, I definitely recommend this one. But if you do try it, don’t blame me if you end up hooked. Do I recommend getting the DLCs? Well, I don’t own them at the moment, but if you want the fullest Binding of Isaac experience you might want them as well. Rest assured, though, that the base game has plenty of content on its own!

And with this, “Rated M” Month is over. See you soon for more articles – it’s about time for a new set of Quick Reviews. Maybe I can throw in another Wii game review, too.