In this episode, we're playing The Binding of Isaac for the very first time, courtesy of my friend Undead_Kaiju who gifted the game to me, personally (for play off or on-stream) after I expressed interest in the game. Kaiju streams the game regularly over at http://twitch.tv/undead_kaiju , and I just happened to catch him while he was playing it; it isn't really what I expected from seeing trailers and what-not.
From playing it, it's even more departed from the image that you get while casually watching: yes, it's a shooting game, but, at its core, it's a truly classic roguelike in the vein of Nethack and Angband. The term 'roguelike' gets thrown around a lot, these days, but what really jumps out to me about Isaac is that the game's wild amount of randomization and huge pool of tools causes each playthrough to be its own dramatic adventure.
In this one, we learn a lot about the game's finer mechanics due to tutelage in the chat from Kaiju and other Isaac fans. With their help, we actually beat the game once, even though it's my first sitting! I'm looking forward to coming back to this title at some point in the near future (in fact, I've already got an episode lined up in the YouTube vault. Lemme know if you're interested in seeing it).
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