(no subject)

[theweaselking]

I would just like to review, in the most negative way POSSIBLE, "The Binding Of Isaac".

It's The Legend Of Zelda, Abusive Christian Edition.

It is an offensively terrible game in every respect, starting from the lousy gameplay and ending about 30 seconds later at the offensively stupid story, and I say this as someone who is entirely convinced that all religion is insanity to begin with.

It should never be played, ever, by anyone.

You should not under any circumstances buy this game.

I feel robbed of the $1.25 I spent on it.

This is, without hyperbole, the worst game I have played in years. And I play a LOT of lousy games - I've played Super Meat Boy, and it was nowhere near this bad. I've played Left Behind, it wasn't this stupid. The developers should be ashamed of producing it and Steam should feel bad for carrying it.

Comments

[drcuriosity]

I almost bought it out of morbid curiosity. You're making me glad I didn't.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The abysmally unfun gameplay is the main reason to not play it. The fact that it's basically offensive-for-offensiveness in the process of delivering anti-fun gameplay is icing on the dogshit cake.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

What's your theory on how it got an 84 Metacritic score?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Theory #1: Limited reviews, focusing on publications that give inherent bonus points for indie games and view terrible gameplay as a feature that enhances selective cred.

Theory #2: Dumb stupid luck and lousy reviewers.

This is without a doubt the worst game I have ever played. And I have played several of the more traditional "worst game ever" games, and this one is worse than any of the other "playable" games. Sure, games that cannot be played are worse - but games that cannot be played don't count.

[falconwarrior.livejournal.com]

I was about to say "What about 'The Polynomial'", but that's a game that cannot be played.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The closest comparison I have to The Binding Of Isaac is "I made this. You play this. We are enemies <- yes that is the title" (http://www.secrettechnology.com/madethis/enemy6.html)

Which is to say, sure, yes, it's technically a playable game, but.

[drhoz.livejournal.com]

was it the Left Behind game that had the 'Dead Cat Bounce' because people were buying it to see if it really was that bad?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I don't know about "buying", but I certainly would never have played it if it hadn't been so thoroughly reviewed.

(It *did* have one really new and different technological thing, though: the ads on billboards and things in the game changed. They were downloaded from the internet as you played, meaning the makers of the game sold ad space *in the game world*)

[drhoz.livejournal.com]

heh

[skington.livejournal.com]

Out of interest, what didn't you like about Super Meat Boy?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Mostly that the gameplay wasn't fun - the controls were made artificially difficult so the timing had to be absolutely perfect, and the slightest slip meant restarting the level entirely from scratch. Which means it turned into "practice the same long series of commands over and over again until you get it perfect, and your reward is a new long series of commands to learn again".

There was no payoff, and the stuff you had to do to earn the no-payoff was boring, not fun.

[skington.livejournal.com]

Fair enough - it's an old-school platform game in that respect.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I understand that some people liked Super Meat Boy. Those people were wrong, but, hey, shit happens.

I brought it up here as an example of a game from the same developers, that was terrible and yet *not this terrible*.

[thornae.livejournal.com]

You know, I kept reading people saying how great this game was, and how it was a must buy at this price, and I'd think "Maybe I got the wrong impression last time I decided I didn't want this game."

Then I went and looked at the screenshots and read the gameplay description again, and realised that I hadn't got it last time because it sounds like a game with no redeeming qualities.
So many commenters were lauding the sick and twisted nature of it, and call me odd, but I only enjoy sick and twisted when it's got a definite point and preferably a sharp edged sense of humour behind it. I have no interest in the Saw films and their ilk, and this game looks like a similar outing, being dark and edgy and disturbing simply for the sake of being dark and edgy and disturbing.


It's like the developers realised they enjoyed Ren & Stimpy and South Park and Tim Burton, and tried to make a game about it without understanding any of the qualities that make them good.



In brief, thanks for validating my decision.

(And given that I generally trust your reviews, I suppose I should get around to playing Borderlands...)

[andrewducker]

You really should. It's great, with lots to do, bags of atmoshpere, solid gameplay, and generally feels like fun the whole way through.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

hey fuck you - Legend of Zelda had skilled people make fun to play dungeons with interesting puzzles that also (in theory at least) seamlessly acted a a rolling tutorial system for the game's various interesting weapon and item mechanics; Binding of Isaac is a game where they went for the cheap route of having all the dungeons be randomly generated like Diablo, which instantly eliminated the "puzzle" element, and they didn't put the effort that Blizzard did to make sure that the randomly generated levels didn't routinely and constantly place items and chests in totally unreachable places, AND there's no interesting item mechanics.

The closest thing to compare BoI with is the old Lucasarts Yoda Adventures thingie... except that was still better than BoI because its random generation system for maps wasn't pants on head stupid.