Recent reviews by spare parts

Do you enjoy the Half-Life series games?
Do you have a decently powerful gaming PC?
Do you have a VR headset or the means to acquire one?

If you answered yes to all 3, you owe it to yourself to experience this game. The interface and motion/touch controls are not gimmicks - it brings in a full immersion that really makes you feel like you're in the middle of this story. So, so, so worthwhile and SO worth the wait for a new entry into the series.

Buy this game. Buy it now, and play it. Why aren't you playing it and buying it and playing it some more?


Seriously, where to start?

If you played the original version of The Binding of Isaac, you essentially know what you're in for. But if you are on the fence about paying for the same game, know that THIS is the definitive version of Isaac. Many more items/trinkets/enemies/bosses/levels and new characters to interact with, it's like a completely new experience.

For the initiated, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is a roguelike dungeon crawler game which pits the protagonist Isaac (or another similarly looking character) in "the basement" of his own home while his mother attempts to savagely sacrifice him, believing she has received devine intervention from God. Isaac must navigate though various rooms of this dungeon to fight off enemies using his tears (which he shoots) while finding miscellaneous powerups to assist in his quest. If you are unfamiliar, the idea behind the storyline borrows heavily from the religious story of the same namesake where Abraham is instructed to bound his son Isaac for sacrifice. If you couldn't tell, the game has many religious overtones and for those not easily offended, it creates an interesting idea of how one's blind faith can cause pain and suffering to an innocent bystander... Very loosely, anyway.

As you wander each room and levels of the basement (Yes, you do deeper), you find new enemies, bosses and powerups. Every playthrough is unique, in that the floor and rooms have different layouts every time. A few differences from the original are the extended or expanded individial rooms - No longer are you subject to one rectangular room to ward off enemies, but double-width or length rooms along with MEGA rooms which are approximately four times the size of your standard room. This leads to MANY more enemies or even multiple mini-bosses. Thanks to the game no longer having Flash's limitations, the game can pump out more action on screen.

Rebirth runs at a buttery smooth 60FPS and doesn't churn when there are a lot of effects/enemies on screen at the same time. Explosions, tears, spiders, flies, various monsters - You name it, and with even a decently configured modern computer, there will not be frame drop-off like the previous installment. Other perks of proper coding? LOADS of new powerups and enemies like I've mentioned, room for later expansion, the ability to save mid-crawl and come back later, difficulty settings, easier bug fixes, ACTUAL controller support, 2 player co-op and other things I'm proberly forgetting to mention. Even included are a "seeds" function, which is essentially where you enter a passcode to start off with a certain powerup or pre-played configuration. Fun, but you cannot earn achievements through entering seeds.

The draw of this game really is all the content, different powerup configurations and replayability. You try and come across the best powerups you can, and when you think "Yeah, this is the run where I'm UNSTOPPABLE! I'm going to take this all the way," you run into some enemy that just barely hurts you enough to make you rage, wonder why the hell this game is so cheap, scamper off to do something else... then come back a few minutes later to do it all again. This really is a fantastically designed game and more people should be playing it, regardless of the religions overtones.

Don't believe me? Check out reviews from people across the internet and read (or watch) their reactions. Destructoid has the best reaction I've seen that accurately describes what you go through with the game, so give it a check out if you have another 5-10 minutes to read.

If you're too cheap to throw down 15 bucks for a game (and clearly didn't hit the pre-sale discount), you will find one of the best valued games when this hits the sales in the coming months. You will not be disappointed. And if you are: You clearly don't like good games.

Update Nov 2016

Buy the Afterbirth DLC, peasent.