The Binding of Isaac Review: Super Meat Boy Meats Religion

Super Meat Boy was a instant classic when it was released last year. As soon as Team Meat announced their next game a few months back, fans were excited. Team Meat is known for their weirdness and humor. With only Edmund Mcmillen, one half of Team Meat, on this “side project” of theirs, will it be any good?

Super Meat Boy’s humor was the very heart of that game. The gameplay was based around that, rather then just a tacked on gimmick. The main character plays a boy named Isaac who is running from his murderous mother. Religion is a big part of this game, with the title referring to the Biblical story of Abraham making ready to murder his own sun for his god. It’s a story that has captivated people for centuries, who see Abraham’s devotion as perverse and wrong. Isaac is being sought after by his mother for one of her offerings.

The Biding of Isaac is a top-down action-adventure game. You move from one randomly generated room to the other, facing enemies that get worse with each passing room. All you carry is a gun, and powerups later on, to solve the puzzles and defeat the enemy. Along the way you find power-ups as mentioned, as well as a variety of references to other games. Those include, Centipede, Bomberman, Asteroids, Zelda, and more. They put a little light in my heart as soon as I saw them, bringing back memories.

Guts and other such things litter the levels. It gets worse and worse the more the game goes on. The darkness tends to get darker with each passing level, making you feel more unease as you progress. Also, since the levels are randomly generated, no playthrough is the same. It’s remarkable seeing the gory features in each level stay a part in the uneasyness of the game. Levels can range from almost normal to something that wound revival even the worst nightmares from Jigsaw in the Saw movie series. The powerups, enemies, and more are also different. It adds a lot of replay value, making it a game that I will play for the rest of the year.

Super Meat Boy was one of the hardest arcade games I have ever played. However, they could easily be beated with just a little patience. Play the level a few times, sometimes even a few thousand times, and you could get it. The Binding of Isaac works diffrently. Since the levels are always changing, you constantly have to be on your toes. Your reflexes have to be at the top of your game if you want to pass the levels.

Issac’s powerups are probably some of the most badass, yet adorable, weapons I have ever seen. The weapons are represented using hats. Your character can literally be walking around with so many hats. It’s almost sickingly cute. They can range from the sickingly cute that I mentioned to downright disgusting. Who likes poop with a mixture of rainbows? Once Isaac dies, all his weapons are lost, which causes you to start a Isaac with a whole new combination of weapons. It also adds a sense of panic to the game, seeing as the next room could be your last.

This game is going to be another instant classic from Team Meat. I keep making comparisions to Super Meat Boy because, to me, it was just such a great game. I really want this game to do well for Team Meat. It’s adorable, fun, creepy, and probably filled with controversy. It’s already a classic in my book, one that I will play for a very long time.

Score:

10/10

Dead Island: Zombies with glitches

Screw this game. I tried to play it, for a review’s sake, but I just can’t. What’s wrong with Techland? We all know of the famous announcement trailer earlier this year. It starred a little girl and her family. After watching said trailer, it just about ripped the heart out of everyone that watched it. Almost everyone who is a fan of zombies was overjoyed. Finally a game that shows the drama that goes on in a zombie apocalypse. Ever since then, we waited on edge. Is Dead Island  going to be the game to change all zombie games? Will Left 4 Dead be a thing of the past? I can answer that in two little words: Hell no.

Story:

The story is simple. Dead Island is an open world game, played in the first person perspective, with up to four people being able to play a cooperative, heavily interactive world. The game takes place in a fictional island of Banoi, located off the coast of New Guinea. The main characters wake up at a resort after a night of drinking to find that the island is being overrun by zombies. Very early in the game, you learn that you are immune to whatever is going on. You, along with others, must find a way off the island to see what is happening to the rest of the world.

Sounds like a great idea, right? I fell in love with the idea as soon as I knew the plot of the game. However, it fails miserably. The game mostly consists of missions going from point A to point B. You grab the food and run it back. You drive to go get more gas and then go bring it right back. It is true that there are many games out there now, classics even, that use this formula and have achieved success  with it. In Dead Island, this is not the case. That’s all the game really is. I like to think of it as a sorry excuse to make the game at least have the basics of a plot.

The side quests aren’t that much different from the plot. Most of them consist getting items for survivors, such as gas, food, and even teddy bears, and bring them back. You are awarded with experience, cash, and maybe even a weapon. I got very confused early on. That was mostly due to the fact that I got quests from what seemed like the same person at least two dozen times. Each one having a different name, of course.

Gameplay:

The combat feels very broken. All you really need to do is mash the melee button to no end. If your weapon breaks, you switch and keep mashing the button. It gets very repetitive. Part way through the game, humans are added into the mix. They shoot at you with their silly guns, only to be pwned by the melee button. The game’s difficulty just depends on your weapon of choice. If it is durable, you will almost never die. If it isn’t, prepare to be beyond pissed because this game will kill you to no end.

 

Visuals and Sound:

I can’t even begin to describe the graphics or sound. It’s just down right horrible. The game is so incomplete. Bushes in the middle of the road, flying cars, invisible zombies, etc. There is pop-up everywhere, and because of that, the waypoints are constantly shifting, even though your character might not be moving. Zombies can literally appear out of walls. It’s annoying almost finishing a quest only to hit a zombie with your car, causing the zombie to glitch into the car and explode instantly.

The sound also frequently cuts out. Occasionally, a scream or something similar will repeat over and over again. I even saved and reloaded and it was still there. Shutting the game off didn’t help that often, either.

Online:

Adding co-op makes this game so much better. When prompted, anyone can shift in and out of the game and help out. By adding more people, the glitches almost get forgotten as you are having too much fun with your friends. You also have to work together to survive. It gets annoying when someone takes the wheel of a car and leaves you to die.

Overall:

This game wasn’t done when they released it. No amount of patches will make up for that mistake. I can’t review this game on what the game could have been like. I have to review it for what it was at launch. What it was at launch was a complete mess. I had some fun here and there, but it didn’t make up for my frustration at the glitches, horrible acting, and everything else that went wrong with this game. Just another game that didn’t live up to the hype.

Resistance 3: A Satisfying Disappointment

There are very few games that have this kind of atmosphere. Resistance 3 is set four years after the second game’s ending and you take the role of Joseph Capelli, who has been discharged for (censored for spoilers). The Chimera have basically taken over the world. With most of the world either killed or turned into a Chimera, things are looking pretty bad for the humans. Will they win this war or end up dying at the hands of the Chimera? I strapped in for this ride with a close gamer friend of mine in split-screen to give you the details.

Story:

As I have mentioned already, the humans are about to be entirely wiped out. No matter what they try to do, it almost seems like it’s completely worthless to try and stop the Chimera. While trying to save the world, Joe has been off in Oklahoma getting married and having a kid. He only cares about them now and would do anything to protect them. However, soon after everything feels like its safe, Dr. Malikov shows up. The Chimera are up to something big in New York, and its up to Joe to stop them. You, and almost you alone, are supposed to save the world from destruction.

The game does a brilliant job making you feel like you are there. The atmosphere is one of the best I have ever seen. The colors are dark, almost no humans to speak of, and every major city is destroyed. What little humans that are left live in small towns or underground. You literally feel like you are going to die at any minute.

The story itself is very blah. It almost seems tacked on. It’s a shame, considering how good the atmosphere is. It uses the same old plot lines as every other sci-fi movie or game, “Something big is going on in New York! I must go save us all!” The final scenes in the end are also blah as well. It could have been a better ending to such a great trilogy.

Gameplay:

The gameplay is top notch. It has all the mechanics of a great first-person shooter. Epic set-pieces, amazing and interesting boss battles. Just with almost every other Insomniac game out there, the weapons are to die for. Each one of them is unique from one another. Each weapon can also level up, going up three levels to add even more awesome to what they originally offer.

The game itself isn’t that hard. You will die at certain spots a lot, but with the numerous checkpoints throughout the game, you won’t have to worry too much in terms of dying. Also, despite how little food and humans you see in the game, there is ammo everywhere. You will almost never run out and with numerous guns in your weapon wheel, you will always have  a weapon to shoot with.

The one main problem I had with the gameplay is that the waypoints were horrible. I spent a great deal of time running around trying to figure out where to go. That can easily be fixed with a patch, however.

Visual/Audio:

The visuals are stunning. The cut scenes are some of the best I have ever seen, while the visuals during gameplay are pretty good as well. There are some horrible spots of lag throughout the campaign, but for the most part, it ran rather smoothly. It surprised me how much stuff was going on screen and it was still running just fine. With all the Resistance games, I have loved the environments that you play in. The environments certainly look destroyed and overrun with Chimera, but all the locations felt uninspired and boring. Oklahoma was easily the best designed. From there, it was nothing but levels taken from other games. The ending will especially remind you of the ending in Half-Life 2.

The sound effects are pretty good. There are the Chimera battle cries, the guns, snow, and more. It feels like you are the one holding the gun. Turning up the TV during this game will definitely scare the neighbors.

Online:

Resistance is always a series that does co-op right. You can do split screen and online co-op. Split screen is rare these days, so any game with it is a great game in my book. However, certain animations such as ladder climbing are horrible in split-screen. I laughed so hard when I saw my friend climb up a ladder. It really takes you out of the experience. Insomniac also changed co-op in a big way. There is no separate co-op story, just a player added on to the campaign.

The multiplayer is nothing special. It lags a lot online. There are also numerous shutdowns and hit detection errors. Looking past these, you will find your standard Death match, Capture the Flag, etc. The levels in the multiplayer are well done, beating the campaign levels almost entirely.

Overall:

The Resistance series has always been a good one. I will say that I’m disappointed in the third installation. The campaign was average, with levels taken almost directly from other games. The combat was nice, the guns were amazing, the graphics were gorgeous, but I still didn’t have as much fun as I wanted to. Co-op was also changed from the others in the series. Where were the things we loved about the series, Insomniac? It’s a great game, but it could have done much better.

 

Score:

7/10