A dark and humorous game that will terrify you and make you laugh at the same time. Although, the humor was great, I had not been too terribly thrilled about “The Binding of Isaac” from the start. You know that saying… “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Well, I did judge it, and rightfully so. This was the second game I tried and as I started playing it, I realized it was nothing to be excited about. You play as a character that’s running from his mother through his house’s dungeon. The reason you’re running from his mother is because she is told by God to kill her son. So as a result, he runs into the dungeon and fights off enemies with arrows (the weapon name). Your first weapons are tears and you upgrade as you go through and unlock more.

The Devious Dungeon

Somehow, I was getting lag on a 2D low-resolution game? Every time I would press the fire button, it would delay my walking ever so slightly. The game shouldn’t have done this, seeing as though the other two bundle games didn’t lag. What happened was: I’d be walking about shooting people with my character’s arrows, and I would hardly be able to move and run away from the NPCs. Aside from that issue, each map in the game is divided up into different sections. It was frustrating and inefficient having to move about levels like this; I’d rather have it all connected so I wouldn’t have to wait for each section to load – at least on a PC of all things. On the contrary, the nice part about the gameplay was all the humor in it! There are objects put throughout the dungeon that I’m pretty sure are poop. You can shoot the poop and it’ll break apart and splatter. There are a multitude of things like this that make the game enjoyable (such as shooting tear arrows).

Crying is the Best Defense

I understand that they’re an indie game and limited at what they can do, but this wasn’t exactly candy to the eyes. I felt like the game was Bomberman all over again; I have nothing against the game, but I expect much more out of games nowadays. As I said before: much of this game is saved by its humor. I enjoyed the cheesy graphics, but I know that most of the graphics weren’t purely for shits n’ giggles. Animations were very simple; something any of our animators at the Banana could do.

Lions, Tigers, and Bears, oh my!

With this one you can turn the music off whenever you like! It doesn’t affect the sound effects, just the music. I enjoyed the music and much of the sound effects because they added to the ambience of the game and how gothic the storyline was; Unfortunately, I don’t enjoy listening to the music for as long as I had. I’d have to say the sound effects saved much of the game though.

Goodies

Easy to say: there was none. I’d have to say it was fairly disappointing seeing that the menu had so few of options to choose from: Story Mode, Credits, and Settings were all it consisted of from what I remember. This would hardly effect my rating the game, but it’s something I’d like to include as a heads up for those of who want to buy it. You get to unlock new weapons and other in game abilities, but there’s really not much more extra content other than that.

Surprisingly and sadly, the sounds saved the game. I really wish they could have done a more comedic storyline and funny ideas. I’d only recommend it because it’s entertaining and cheap. You’ll be donating for a cause by buying this game!

This is part of the Humble Bundle. For more information on the Humble Bundle read Blocks That Matter or Voxatron.