The game splits your consciousness in two - the fact that it’s a punishingly difficult roguelike means that the "game-player" side of your brain has to constantly optimize. From the very outset you’re faced with an environment where the standard-issue destructibles are piles of poop, enemies are horribly deformed aborted fetuses, powerups give you various diseases, mutations and mutilations. It’s a game suffused with scatological humor, blasphemy and obscenity. Anyone with the stomach to play that game for long enough - even if you aren’t very good at it, maybe especially if you’re not very good at it - will "get" where I’m coming from when I talk about my childhood. If I wanted to pick a work of art to explain how being raised as an evangelical Christian kid with a strong imagination fucks you up - and can fuck you up even if your religious upbringing doesn’t seem outright abusive - the top pick would be The Binding of Isaac.
You’re constantly being corrupted, contaminated, mutilated and soiled It’s like deja-vu that comes from your soul. It was a surreal experience, being strongly reminded of a feeling that I hadn’t had in so long that I’d forgotten feeling it. The tone and content of the game captures the feeling of being a little kid raised in a conservative religious household. That’s not what’s really happening in the game either, if you listen to fan theories.
I didn’t have a parent lock me in the basement and threaten to kill me as a blood sacrifice - let’s not get too literal. The Binding of Isaac feels like my childhood. Indeed it’s not the gameplay I like it for, it’s the content. Yes, the content can be shocking, gross, ugly, distasteful and arguably gratuitous. I’m sympathetic to these criticisms.īut in the case of The Binding of Isaac I find myself in the same situation as David Foster Wallace when he defended Blue Velvet to his fellow film buffs. I think Steam blew it by letting Hatredback onto Project Greenlight. I certainly roll my eyes plenty when AAA gaming tries its hand at 2edgy4u content, be it the cheap, cheesy blasphemy of Dante’s Inferno or the increasingly numbing, boring gorefest of God of War. Well, I also generally roll my eyes at Newgrounds-style "shock" humor. "The gameplay is awesome but I’m so over the ‘edgy’ theme." "Oh, criticizing religion by associating it with piles of poop, how very /r/atheism."
And yet I feel the need to "defend" this game because of the reactions I get whenever I bring it up among my friends.
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