84 hours, 84 long hours spent playing, "The Binding of Isaac." It took me a total of 84 hours to get every achievement in this game, all 52 of them. It was at times difficult, sometimes extremely frustrating but all the while one of the best games I have ever played.
Isaac is the brainchild of one half of Team Meat Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl. It is best described as a cross between The Legend of Zelda, games like Smash TV and Robotron and the Roguelike genre. You control Isaac who after some unpleasantness with his mother (She hears the voice of God telling her to kill Isaac) escapes into the basement of their home. Once there he has several floors on enemies to fight to try and defeat his mother and save his own life.
The inspirations for this game are worn on it's sleeve. The dungeons and several items are a nod to the Zelda games. From finding maps a compasses to the Ladder you can tell the designers are big fans of early Zelda games. The controls are just like any twin stick shooter you've ever played. WASD keys move you and the arrow keys shoot, these can be reversed for the left handed players which is nice to see. The roguelike features are what actually drew me to this game in the first place as it's a genre that I really, really enjoy playing.
Roguelikes for any that may not know are the spawn of a old game called Rogue. Mainly featuring ASCII graphics you're usually tasked with going through a dungeon of some kind to retrieve some item from the depths. Two tropes for these type of games are extreme difficulty and permanent death both of which Isaac has. If you die you must start from the beginning. There are a few items that can let you respawn after death but they're extremely rare and one is actually a cursed item which does more harm than good.
The first thing that jumps out at you when you see Isaac is the art style. Edmund's dark disturbed cartoon style is seen in all it's glory here. Many creatures look to be the things of nightmares often leaping at you in a fury of bloody projectiles and bodily fluids. It's all really well done and I absolutely love the art style in this game.
Isaac has a definite progression in place. You fight to the bottom of the dungeon, kill all the bosses and unlock a new item, then you do it all over again. On top of that none of the items are explained to you. It's up to the player to figure out what they do, just like many roguelikes. Some of the items (The Pills) even do different things on each play through, so you never know what you're getting into.
With a lot of games the further along you get and the more items you have access to they get easier but not in Isaac. Each time you do a full clear more enemy types are added and some of the older ones are buffed in some way or another. It's a good balance, you unlock the ability to get better weapons and items while fighting tougher foes. The game never feels unbeatable as one simple item or a random health up cam spell the difference between victory and defeat.
But you will die and you will die a lot. The game is extremely tough at first, before you know what all the items do and the enemies patterns you can find yourself dying on the first boss or even before you get to the first boss.
There is hope though. This game's difficulty reminds me of the Souls games. Hard at first but as you learn the game it can get to the point of being too easy and I am at that point right now. I can full clear Isaac pretty much 95 percent of the time. If I pull a bad run with crap items then I may not making it to the end.
I don't want to get to much into the specifics of what can happen in a game of Isaac because this is a game you want to go into as blind as possible, with any roguelike figuring out what everything does is part of the fun and dying and learning from your death is the learning experience you need to get better.
Right now The Binding of Isaac can be bought for 5 dollars and it's worth even more than that. Like I said at the start of this I've spend 84 hours with it. That's a huge amount of game time versus the money spent. There is an expansion coming out in a few months that's suppose to add tons more content to this already content heavy game and it's suppose to be around 3 dollars, still a great deal on fantastic content.
The Binding of Isaac was one of the best games to come out last year, probably the best to come out. It has earned a place on my Top Games of All Time list without question. It's simply fantastic and a great introduction to the Roguelike genre.
Don't waste anymore time, fire up Steam and BUY THIS GAME! It's simply one of the best and games like the is are why I love gaming.
The Binding of Isaac - 10 out of 10
Showing posts with label Roguelike. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roguelike. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Monday, March 14, 2011
Hardcore Mode or The Art of Losing Everything When You Die
The basic idea has been something that's been around in gaming for a long time. Going all the way back to the PC game Rogue, you adventure for as long as you want but if you die you lose everything and need to go back to square one. This is something I love to see in games, I look for any game that has this feature to try out and see how hard it can be. Before I even knew these type of games existed I would play many of my old school games in this fashion. I remember playing may SNES games were I would start over if I died and I always play my scrolling shooters in this way.
The game that really showed me other people liked this concept was Diablo 2. It had the Hell mode where you lost you character if you died. I can't remember if this was in the first Diablo as I didn't play a ton of it due to hardware issues at the time. I was blown away they included this mode, it adds a tension that at the time I had never experienced in a game. Yeah I was playing games like that before but actually being forced to lose your character and start over was just awesome to me.
We're starting to see this type of mode in more and more modern games. Torchlight has it and games like Spelunky and Dwarf Fortress take the roguelike approach to them. One big name game coming out, The Witcher 2 has a mode like this. You can save as often as you want but if you die it's game over, I cannot wait to try this mode out it holds so much potential for a challenge.
I want to mention another game that didn't feature a mode like this but it has a following in the "no death run" method of playing and that's Far Cry 2. I loved Far Cry 2 even with it's flaws but this is an interesting way to play this game. Exploring the jungles and forests of Africa never sure if there's someone waiting in the bush to snipe you it adds to the game play. Add to this if you never buy the upgraded weapons and just use the crappy stuff your enemies drop and you have an experience a lot of games can't offer you. Another game series that get's ever more exciting to play with this restriction are the STALKER games. They're already pretty unforgiving so add in the fact that your first death is your last and you get a real sense of how brutal the Zone can actually be. Try playing Shadow of Chernobyl with one of those realism mods on Master difficulty and only give yourself one death, you'll be going through the game at a snails pace just fearing death. It's can be so much fun, I want to see more of this in gaming.
I would like to see more titles ship with this option. I don't think games should only offer this as a game play choice because it will turn off some players but I would welcome challenge and I'm sure there's plenty of other people who would love to see this too.
The game that really showed me other people liked this concept was Diablo 2. It had the Hell mode where you lost you character if you died. I can't remember if this was in the first Diablo as I didn't play a ton of it due to hardware issues at the time. I was blown away they included this mode, it adds a tension that at the time I had never experienced in a game. Yeah I was playing games like that before but actually being forced to lose your character and start over was just awesome to me.
We're starting to see this type of mode in more and more modern games. Torchlight has it and games like Spelunky and Dwarf Fortress take the roguelike approach to them. One big name game coming out, The Witcher 2 has a mode like this. You can save as often as you want but if you die it's game over, I cannot wait to try this mode out it holds so much potential for a challenge.
I want to mention another game that didn't feature a mode like this but it has a following in the "no death run" method of playing and that's Far Cry 2. I loved Far Cry 2 even with it's flaws but this is an interesting way to play this game. Exploring the jungles and forests of Africa never sure if there's someone waiting in the bush to snipe you it adds to the game play. Add to this if you never buy the upgraded weapons and just use the crappy stuff your enemies drop and you have an experience a lot of games can't offer you. Another game series that get's ever more exciting to play with this restriction are the STALKER games. They're already pretty unforgiving so add in the fact that your first death is your last and you get a real sense of how brutal the Zone can actually be. Try playing Shadow of Chernobyl with one of those realism mods on Master difficulty and only give yourself one death, you'll be going through the game at a snails pace just fearing death. It's can be so much fun, I want to see more of this in gaming.
I would like to see more titles ship with this option. I don't think games should only offer this as a game play choice because it will turn off some players but I would welcome challenge and I'm sure there's plenty of other people who would love to see this too.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Realm of the Mad God
Earlier this month I was browsing the past entries in the IndieGames blog and I came across a game called "Realm of the Mad God." Reading about the game I saw it was a top down roguelike RPG. Being a big fan of any Roguelike I decided to try it out but it was not yet to be. I forgot all about it until a few days ago. A friend showed me a list of the top downloadable indie games of 2010 and there was the Realm of the Mad God and according to this list it had online play! I was not aware of that when I first saw the article from back in January of 2010. Yeah it says it's online in the post on the IndieGames blog but I totally missed.
I decided to finally try this game out and I am really glad I did. It's a fantastic little browser game and I cannot recommend it enough.
Realm of the Mad God tasks you with defeating the mad god Oryx having been summoned to his realm to be killed by his army of monsters. You start the game with selecting from classes which make up the standard RPG stuff, Rogues, Wizards, Warriors and a few others. Some of the classes are locked and to unlock them you need to get the starter classes up to the level cap which is 20. Once in the game you show up in a hub world which leads to various different realms. Each realm has the same content but they're at different levels of completion depending on the amount of killing done by the players.
As mentioned above this game falls into the roguelike category of games. When you die you're done, you lose everything, forced to restart and begin the level grind all over again. One thing that takes away some of the pain of losing your progress are none of the gear has level requirements. Meaning if you fall in battle and a friend can grab your stuff your new level one guy can use all your old gear. This makes starting over easier as you have more power at a lower level. I've had several characters die some at the level cap and I've only wanted to jump right back in and do it all again but I like the whole roguelike thing so your mileage may vary with this as to the amount of starting over you can take. Though at 20 you can take a good amount of punishment and if you're in a group you should be good to go.
The game is very simple to play, it's a lot like the various twin stick shooters we've seen in the past like Robotron, Geometry Wars or Smash TV but this uses the keyboard and mouse. WASD move you around and the mouse aims the direction of your shots. It works really well but I would love to eventually see support for a controller to be able to play this like a twin stick shooter but only time will tell about this.
Each class has a four equipment slots, main weapon, special ability, armor and a ring. Each class has only one type of weapon they can use and they all have unique special items they can find. Such as the Priest finding a better healing Tome and the Rogue acquiring a new clock to make his stealth move better. It's all very simple and this makes the game very enjoyable.
Like many RPG's this game has you gaining experience to level and as you go along you fight stronger and stronger enemies until you get to the end but the monster killing this is handled in a different way. When the realm starts fresh there are 25,000 monsters that need to be killed. These are a mix of trash mobs and bosses or as they're known in this game Gods. Arrows will point you in the direction of level appropriate gods for you to kill so you never intentionally go to the place you can't survive in. Mindless wandering can get you jammed up but that's another story. So in the end it's the entire realm of people working together to kill all 25,000 monsters to summon Oryx The Mad God. When the enemy count is reached everyone in the server is summoned to fight Oryx regardless of level or what you're doing. I like this but it seems a little unfair if you're just starting out and all of a sudden you're in this fight with something you have no chance of beating, if you survive you stand to get some good loot but it can confuse you at first if you don't know exactly what's happening.
That's the game in a nutshell and I have to say it's a lot of fun. It plays in the browser and is free to play. I believe it has some microtransactions for gold and some other stuff but I haven't seen anything about it so I'm not 100 percent sure on that.
I'm going to share some thoughts I have to improve this game and that will be in the below video that will accompany this article so you can check that out as well.
Link to play this game, also has the link to the forums and the wiki -
http://www.realmofthemadgod.com
I decided to finally try this game out and I am really glad I did. It's a fantastic little browser game and I cannot recommend it enough.
Realm of the Mad God tasks you with defeating the mad god Oryx having been summoned to his realm to be killed by his army of monsters. You start the game with selecting from classes which make up the standard RPG stuff, Rogues, Wizards, Warriors and a few others. Some of the classes are locked and to unlock them you need to get the starter classes up to the level cap which is 20. Once in the game you show up in a hub world which leads to various different realms. Each realm has the same content but they're at different levels of completion depending on the amount of killing done by the players.
As mentioned above this game falls into the roguelike category of games. When you die you're done, you lose everything, forced to restart and begin the level grind all over again. One thing that takes away some of the pain of losing your progress are none of the gear has level requirements. Meaning if you fall in battle and a friend can grab your stuff your new level one guy can use all your old gear. This makes starting over easier as you have more power at a lower level. I've had several characters die some at the level cap and I've only wanted to jump right back in and do it all again but I like the whole roguelike thing so your mileage may vary with this as to the amount of starting over you can take. Though at 20 you can take a good amount of punishment and if you're in a group you should be good to go.
The game is very simple to play, it's a lot like the various twin stick shooters we've seen in the past like Robotron, Geometry Wars or Smash TV but this uses the keyboard and mouse. WASD move you around and the mouse aims the direction of your shots. It works really well but I would love to eventually see support for a controller to be able to play this like a twin stick shooter but only time will tell about this.
Each class has a four equipment slots, main weapon, special ability, armor and a ring. Each class has only one type of weapon they can use and they all have unique special items they can find. Such as the Priest finding a better healing Tome and the Rogue acquiring a new clock to make his stealth move better. It's all very simple and this makes the game very enjoyable.
Like many RPG's this game has you gaining experience to level and as you go along you fight stronger and stronger enemies until you get to the end but the monster killing this is handled in a different way. When the realm starts fresh there are 25,000 monsters that need to be killed. These are a mix of trash mobs and bosses or as they're known in this game Gods. Arrows will point you in the direction of level appropriate gods for you to kill so you never intentionally go to the place you can't survive in. Mindless wandering can get you jammed up but that's another story. So in the end it's the entire realm of people working together to kill all 25,000 monsters to summon Oryx The Mad God. When the enemy count is reached everyone in the server is summoned to fight Oryx regardless of level or what you're doing. I like this but it seems a little unfair if you're just starting out and all of a sudden you're in this fight with something you have no chance of beating, if you survive you stand to get some good loot but it can confuse you at first if you don't know exactly what's happening.
That's the game in a nutshell and I have to say it's a lot of fun. It plays in the browser and is free to play. I believe it has some microtransactions for gold and some other stuff but I haven't seen anything about it so I'm not 100 percent sure on that.
I'm going to share some thoughts I have to improve this game and that will be in the below video that will accompany this article so you can check that out as well.
Link to play this game, also has the link to the forums and the wiki -
http://www.realmofthemadgod.com
Thursday, September 23, 2010
I finally finished Spelunky this morning!
If you don't know what Spelunky is then you need to just stop reading this and go here to download and play this wonderful game.
Spelunky World
Okay now that you've done that or you've played Spelunky before we can continue. Spelunky is a 2D platformer done in the "RogueLike" style, made by Derek Yu. What is a roguelike you ask? It's a type of game where usually the game is entirely randomized at the start and when you die that's it. No other chances no extra lives, one life and then it's the end. It all started with an old game from 1980 called Rogue and then moved on to games like Nethack and Dwarf Fortress and more mainstream with the Diablo games and their hardcore/hell modes. I've of course played Diablo 1 and 2 to death and liked my trips into the hardcore mode but they always ended in death and me quiting. I've messed with Nethack and Dwarf Fortress a little bit but I've had a hard time getting in to them.
It was probably sometime last year when I first played Spelunky. After seeing some videos of it online I decided to try it out. After a few very quick deaths at the hands of an arrow trap, a spike pit or just straight falling to my death I kind of stopped playing it. This wasn't any real fault of the game I just had to many other games on my plate at the time to spend the needed time with it. Lately I've been without a main game to focus on other than Team Fortress 2 so I decided to give Spelunky another go. Well here I am about a week or so later with 250+ deaths and I finally made it to the end of the game. I know others have had way more deaths and have been probably trying way longer but I'm proud of my win. I did it without robbing a shop and without a jetpack or a shotgun. The last boss was a dangerous adrenaline filled battle and one of the best boss battles for me in recent gaming memory.
One thing I learned as I played and did some research on Spelunky is it's never the game's fault you die. Some games are cheap with cheap pitfalls and unfair deaths. Not Spelunky, if you die it's because you screwed up. It reminds me of Demon's Souls as that was a game where the cheap deaths were minimal if there at all. When you first start playing Spelunky you need to take it slow, watch your surroundings. You have to look out for the arrow traps, the spikes all the enemies out to get you. It's one of those things that's hard to really explain but if you spend any time with Spelunky you'll see what I mean. The game is winnable at the start every time it's just up to you the player to make it to the end.
The only thing about Spelunky's randomness that is a big negative is sometimes items you want to find can spawn off the map. One example and a small spoiler is in the first level. In one of the levels in the first area a Key and a gold chest will spawn. You need the key to open the chest and get the Udjat Eye an items needed to enter the City of Gold later in the game. On rare occasions either the key or the chest can spawn outside of the level and you will never be able to get to them. It only happens every now and then but it is kind of game breaking but, you can still beat the game if this happens you just can't make it to the City of Gold. In playing over 250 tries the happened to me maybe 3-4 times and none of those times did I make it far enough to even think about the City of Gold.
In the end though Spelunky is fantastic and needs to be played by more people. I know I'm preaching to the choir on this game as it's been around for awhile and I'm late to the party on playing it like crazy but here it is. I have finished it and I plan on playing it like crazy for the foreseeable future. There is still a City of Gold for me to find and I will find it!
Right now Spelunky is available on the PC at the link I posted above. It is also coming out to the XBLA sometime in the future but I have no idea when exactly. Which ever way you play it you need to it's great!
Spelunky World
Okay now that you've done that or you've played Spelunky before we can continue. Spelunky is a 2D platformer done in the "RogueLike" style, made by Derek Yu. What is a roguelike you ask? It's a type of game where usually the game is entirely randomized at the start and when you die that's it. No other chances no extra lives, one life and then it's the end. It all started with an old game from 1980 called Rogue and then moved on to games like Nethack and Dwarf Fortress and more mainstream with the Diablo games and their hardcore/hell modes. I've of course played Diablo 1 and 2 to death and liked my trips into the hardcore mode but they always ended in death and me quiting. I've messed with Nethack and Dwarf Fortress a little bit but I've had a hard time getting in to them.
It was probably sometime last year when I first played Spelunky. After seeing some videos of it online I decided to try it out. After a few very quick deaths at the hands of an arrow trap, a spike pit or just straight falling to my death I kind of stopped playing it. This wasn't any real fault of the game I just had to many other games on my plate at the time to spend the needed time with it. Lately I've been without a main game to focus on other than Team Fortress 2 so I decided to give Spelunky another go. Well here I am about a week or so later with 250+ deaths and I finally made it to the end of the game. I know others have had way more deaths and have been probably trying way longer but I'm proud of my win. I did it without robbing a shop and without a jetpack or a shotgun. The last boss was a dangerous adrenaline filled battle and one of the best boss battles for me in recent gaming memory.
One thing I learned as I played and did some research on Spelunky is it's never the game's fault you die. Some games are cheap with cheap pitfalls and unfair deaths. Not Spelunky, if you die it's because you screwed up. It reminds me of Demon's Souls as that was a game where the cheap deaths were minimal if there at all. When you first start playing Spelunky you need to take it slow, watch your surroundings. You have to look out for the arrow traps, the spikes all the enemies out to get you. It's one of those things that's hard to really explain but if you spend any time with Spelunky you'll see what I mean. The game is winnable at the start every time it's just up to you the player to make it to the end.
The only thing about Spelunky's randomness that is a big negative is sometimes items you want to find can spawn off the map. One example and a small spoiler is in the first level. In one of the levels in the first area a Key and a gold chest will spawn. You need the key to open the chest and get the Udjat Eye an items needed to enter the City of Gold later in the game. On rare occasions either the key or the chest can spawn outside of the level and you will never be able to get to them. It only happens every now and then but it is kind of game breaking but, you can still beat the game if this happens you just can't make it to the City of Gold. In playing over 250 tries the happened to me maybe 3-4 times and none of those times did I make it far enough to even think about the City of Gold.
In the end though Spelunky is fantastic and needs to be played by more people. I know I'm preaching to the choir on this game as it's been around for awhile and I'm late to the party on playing it like crazy but here it is. I have finished it and I plan on playing it like crazy for the foreseeable future. There is still a City of Gold for me to find and I will find it!
Right now Spelunky is available on the PC at the link I posted above. It is also coming out to the XBLA sometime in the future but I have no idea when exactly. Which ever way you play it you need to it's great!
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