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The Binding Of Isaac (Afterbirth Plus)

Started by Shay Chaise, March 25, 2017, 02:19:36 PM

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Shay Chaise

I've been playing this on the Switch and - no hyperbole - this is as good a computer game as anything I've ever played. It's a distillation of the oldest, most fundamental elements of computer games, with a very modern sense of what keeps us coming back. I didn't always feel this way.

I never really got on with Super Meat Boy, though I rather admired its singularity and commitment to its thing. I initially saw the likes of madhair60 raving about it and then Isaac and I thought the aesthetic was horrible, the kind of thing you like if you stink. I only got into it at all because I went mad when I first got a 3DS and bought everything. That version gets absolutely slammed but I thought it was fantastic, and put in 50 times more than I did on PS4. When I heard Afterbirth+ was a launch title for the Switch (and ultimately it wasn't), I was absolutely psyched.

It's still not out in the EU but it's easy enough to order via the US eShop, and since I got it, I've played probably thirty hours this week, maybe forty, compared to the five or so I've put into Zelda, Voez, Fast Rmx and everything else I bought. It's incredibly addictive and every run is inherently different, even though it's the same stuff again and again, essentially. I love its approach to secrets and overt RNG, and its commitment to both shafting you and being extremely generous in the same room.

I have beaten Mom's Heart once and died to Ultra Greed twice, as a rough idea of my overall progress. I feel like I've done loads, unlocked loads and yet barely scratched the surface. I've not got this far on any previous versions and I'm trying not to just look up what to do to unlock various things, and just taking it as I come.

Is anyone else playing this and have you got any tips?

brat-sampson

Bomb tinted rocks to not be a scrub. Curse rooms (spiked door) are worthwhile, sacrifice rooms (spikes on the floor) aren't. You have a long way to go ;)

Shay Chaise

OK, let's get into it then. I can spot the rocks with an X on the them and they seem to give soul hearts (?) quite often but then I'll rag through the entire level once I've beaten the boss and half the time I can't find one with an X. Is that RNG or guaranteed? Or are some just tinted? I certainly can't recognise them beyond the Basement, it seems.

Black hearts (evil?) seem to do damage to everything on screen when I lose one. Soul hearts are just gone. Regular hearts leave an empty to be refilled.

I can kind of figure out where secret rooms might be, but I'll need to work on that more. I find that the more I jam up the shop, it gives better stuff but the shop doesn't seem to appear on every level, either.

Azazel is possibly my favourite character to play, but I have no idea how I'll ever beat Ultra Greed with him to unlock Lilith.

brat-sampson

Yup, the x ones are the ones, there's a different design for every floor (area), they're rng but give soul hearts or sometimes Small Rock (damage boost item, needs unlocking, I think by destroying enough rocks any rocks)

Junglist

Yeah keep blowing rocks up until you get the small rock unlocked. X rocks can also gives chests, or a combination of keys and bombs. Also there will be a crawl space under regular rocks on some floors, there are powers that let you see them, otherwise its pot luck. If you have enough bombs, or Dr. Fetus/Epic Fetus, its well worth looking for.

If you get a clean bedroom and bomb the rug in the centre, its a guaranteed good crawlspace. If a dirty bedroom, you'll get a trapdoor direct to the next floor.

I've put in around 1k hours across Rebirth and the DLCs and still play it every week. Phenomenal game.

As for challenges, do High Brow, Solar System, Slow Roll, The Family Man and Waka Waka first. They're all worth doing (bar one or two that give you troll rewards) but I find the ones listed give the best rewards.

Junglist

Quote from: Shay Chaise on March 25, 2017, 02:37:17 PM
I can kind of figure out where secret rooms might be, but I'll need to work on that more. I find that the more I jam up the shop, it gives better stuff but the shop doesn't seem to appear on every level, either.

Azazel is possibly my favourite character to play, but I have no idea how I'll ever beat Ultra Greed with him to unlock Lilith.

RE: Secret rooms, there is a formula which means you can normally pin down exactly where they will be, but I'll leave you to figure it out. Shops appear on every floor pre The Womb, but again there's a trinket that can change that. However sometimes some shops will not have items but 'something else'.

Azazel is a fantastic character to start with, flying plus mini-brim makes him very, very OP to start with. My personal favourite is Isaac, once you've unlocked a certain something for him, but every char is entirely viable if you play to their strengths.

QDRPHNC

Why are people so into this game? I tried it, it was kind of like Smash TV with deliberately nasty aesthetics. Beyond that... ? Am I missing something?

Junglist

Quote from: QDRPHNC on March 25, 2017, 05:11:49 PM
Why are people so into this game? I tried it, it was kind of like Smash TV with deliberately nasty aesthetics. Beyond that... ? Am I missing something?

Because it has an incredible amount of depth due to RNG. Millions of potential synergies, all interesting. Thousands of floor layout combinations, enemy combinations and so on. I'm still seeing stuff I've never seen before. That, plus the gameplay is superb and its the perfect game for a quick 20 minute blast.

madhair60

i like the binding of isaac i think its good

Shay Chaise

Thanks very much for these tips. I recognise some things you've mentioned, like the bed, but had no idea about much of that, even though it's probably mostly accessible to me already. I'll have to reread the crawling under rocks...I'm baffled by that!

As for Q, yeah, as I said in the OP, I found the aesthetic awful at first; it seemed like any other twin stick shooter, but really ugly and puerile. The game starts to click when you see the way different power ups interact (or synergise). It's that feeling of doing crazy damage in unusual ways. You always feel vulnerable but you can sometimes build up to absolutely wreck whole rooms and bosses in a couple of seconds. The first couple of hours are a bit mild before you start to unlock a decent number of items, and then it gets more interesting and intense. It can get a bit bullet hell, except you're the one dishing out hell.

And on top of that, as you can see I'm finding out here, there are absolutely loads and loads of secrets and things to unlock which potentially change any future playthrough. You will 'beat' Mom probably after a couple of hours, but since I've done that, I've probably unlocked another ten bosses and another ten areas. It's a pretty mad game but it's got a pretty robust set of rules and the level design is based heavily on the original Zelda.

Final thing is probably just to say that although I sound like I'm speaking with some authority, I know that it goes much deeper than I can begin to understand at the moment. There are about five hundred different power ups and items which can interact with each other and stack and stack.

Junglist

If you're interested, Shay, a mate of mine has done a load of Isaac run videos. He streams it on twitch too, he's not an elite player but he loves trying to break the game. His Youtube is here:

https://www.youtube.com/user/Roujkan

There will be some spoilers of stuff you don't have but he's a good streamer. A lot of his more recent runs are basically unlocking the harder stuff in the game. This is a superb video of him completely messing the game up, but there are level spoilers and such:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9KePJJ0YXw

Also, as contrary as it may sound, I recommend playing on Hard from the get go. You can unlock stuff via Normal, but if you complete a run on Hard you get both of the unlocks for finishing a Normal and Hard run at once.

Platinumgod is also a fantastic resource, lists what everything in game does. I recommend avoiding it for a while to begin with though, unless something looks intimidating!

http://platinumgod.co.uk/

Shay Chaise

Thanks for that, I just watched one of his Lost runs, where he beat Ultra Greed. Seems really tough even with a very thorough knowledge of items and synergies and so on! Really looking forward to getting deep into this game. PlatinumGod will be my bathtime reading for the foreseeable future. Cheers.

Barry Admin

Arrange by colour tends to make things easier. It is an amazing game, you've got me to dig it out again. Maybe the best rogue-like ever.

brat-sampson

Yup, for me this is basically *the* Roguelike. You're tempting me to rebuy it on Switch even though I own it (Afterbirth) on PC, I've heard mixed things about +[nb]Admittedly including that it's significantly improved now compared to on release[/nb] and it's, like $40 :o

Portable Isaac...

Shay Chaise

For me, Isaac is so great on portable because you can even just do one room and put the Switch to sleep. It's why I caned the 3DS version compared to the PS4. It's a perfect fit.

madhair60

Ah, don't read Platinum God. It's fun to just stumble across things, see what works, and piece together your own experience that way.

Rev

Afterbirth+ has killed it stone dead for me, after years of playing it at least every other day.  So many of the things it adds are just slight variations on existing things, but not as good, and there's piss-takery like the items in the gold rooms sitting on spikes.  They shouldn't have done this expansion, as they were clearly out of ideas.

brat-sampson

Aye, I read similar things around launch, but then more recently saw posts claiming the patches since December have done a good job of re-balancing things so now don't know what to believe...


:'(

gabrielconroy

I played the original Binding on PC incessantly, but the original incarnation of Afterbirth really put me off. I just couldn't be bothered to play it, for some reason.

I think those much bigger rooms made the whole thing seem a lot more like a chore, and the fact that most of the new stuff wasn't very exciting.

Are these new patches for the PC as well?

Barry Admin

This thread has got me right hooked again, bastard thing. And happily, the slow-down problems seem to have been addressed on the Xbone. I've stuck Afterbirth on, I used to just flirt with it occasionally, and wanted to try and get all the Rebirth stuff done first, but that'll never happen. It's great to have the Daily Challenge and Greed Mode anyway.

Rev

Quote from: brat-sampson on March 28, 2017, 06:17:45 AM
Aye, I read similar things around launch, but then more recently saw posts claiming the patches since December have done a good job of re-balancing things so now don't know what to believe...


:'(

They sorted it out a bit - you don't get the enemy-spamming portals in every other room now, and when you do they're a lot weaker than they used to be.  It's still a massively half-arsed effort though, and if you're the kind of person who likes to have your character's dance sheet full up, be aware that all of your hard mode achievements will be stripped from you as there's now a ridiculous harder mode.  Greed mode was a bastard as it was!

Is Afterbirth+ automatically included in console versions?  At least on PC you can disable it, and reconcile yourself to lighting a fiver on fire.



madhair60

Quote from: Rev on March 31, 2017, 12:41:45 AMbe aware that all of your hard mode achievements will be stripped from you as there's now a ridiculous harder mode.

This is incorrect

Rev

It's vaguely correct.  It's correct enough.

I'm disabling Afterbirth+, anyway - it's a half-arsed and disinterested shitshow that was putting me off the rest of it.  Not that it's something I'd have been interested in really, but even the much-delayed level designer and modding tools seem to have been flung out contemptuously without any kind of documentation or tips.  Afterbirth+ is just a fucking shame all round.

madhair60

It's not really correct at all. If the game's been beaten with a character in hard mode, you'll keep the stamps for clearing it. Unless they've patched something in recently. Greedier mode is a harder Greed mode, not the base game.

Sorry. I'm not meaning to harp on about it.

I'd say that every expansion for Isaac has ultimately hurt the flow and focus of the game, as much as I've enjoyed playing them.

touchingcloth

I'm going to download this oddly named thing for my phone. If it's shit, you'll pay. You'll all pay.

touchingcloth


Junglist

The DLC is fine, its just fannies getting into a twist because they don't always get an OP devil room item within three rooms.

Shay Chaise

I'm still absolutely loving this game. Today I had several very good runs, unlocked a few more bits and bobs and killed Satan for the first time! I had one Eden run where my shot power was 60-odd but I eventually succumbed in the Womb. Great fun, firing flaming beachballs, though. I've also just been pumping cash into the shop to try to level that up to the max and blowing up every arcade and machine and stuff. Unlocked a couple of bits that way now.

Probably played five hours today, which is mad, but great fun.

Shay Chaise

Believe it or not, two days on and I'm still enjoying this game, I've unlocked a few more things, nothing special but I feel like I'm on my way, picking up some momentum, I even did my first boss rush and still had time to twat Satan before afternoon tea. I have to say it makes me feel a little bit grimy afterwards, like all gaming does I suppose. I need to reign it in a bit, no exercise today so far.

How does one stop playing this?

Junglist

Quote from: Shay Chaise on April 11, 2017, 06:41:09 PM
How does one stop playing this?

You don't. I've been playing Isaac for about three to four years and did three more runs of it about an hour ago.