Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

[Bjorn]

They seem to have set it up exactly the same way that I programmed Joy2Key for the original. It was a nice surprise to be able to just play like I always have.

 

Also, the PSN version is cross-buy and cross-save on PS4 & Vita, and is free this month for PS+ members. I can play BoI on the bus now! Crazy!

 

I'm not sure that they aren't just running Joy2Key or a homemade equivalent in the background. My left joystick tends to wander to the left a hair, and at one point I alt-tabbed out to message someone and my message field just started filling with "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa". They're just mapping the controller to keyboard controls.

 

I played this for an hour or two last night. I never touched the original so I have no idea what's going on. I'm still not sure what half the items I picked up even do. Figuring it all out is pretty compelling though. And for all you pros talking about how it's easier, the furthest I got was the 3rd level.

 

I don't even want to admit how many hours I played the original, which is realistically the only reason Rebirth doesn't feel harder.

[TurboPubx-16]

I'm not sure that they aren't just running Joy2Key or a homemade equivalent in the background. My left joystick tends to wander to the left a hair, and at one point I alt-tabbed out to message someone and my message field just started filling with "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa". They're just mapping the controller to keyboard controls.

 

 

I don't even want to admit how many hours I played the original, which is realistically the only reason Rebirth doesn't feel harder.

I'll admit mine, 100 hours!

 

A big part of the game is getting items, reading the mysterious text, and trying to figure out what they do. After that you find out what they actually do and you feel smart or dumb. There's also the moment when you get the joke. I laughed pretty hard when I got the "R U a wizard" pill. When I first picked up Number One I was like, "Nice, gold tears! And Isaac is smiling! This means I got, like, the best item, right? Yeah!" 

[undermind9]

ive some 500 hrs in the original, i platinum'd it but with the silly flash format i had to do all the secrets twice

 

It took an embarrassingly long time to get competent at the game to consistently get into cathedral/sheol.  but once i got it felt great and could sit down for one really good game into the chest rather than a half dozen crap runs to barely the womb

 

 

the new aesthetic is going to be a tough adjustment, i feel like the hit box is a little different on projectiles & especially on the beam weapons (there looks like a few frame lingering element that does damage)

 

the wall mounted spider shooters are the worst.  random bullet patterns, open/gapped floor tiles, skulls/rocks in the way - these things are going to be my number one damage taker for sure (the zombies with disjointed chain/neck heads were my bane in the original)

 

 

 

i saw they put in seeded runs, was there plans for future leaderboards / daily challenge?  im sure reddit will come up with a clever way to post "best time" screen shots & create one externally

[Bjorn]

I'll admit mine, 100 hours!

ive some 500 hrs in the original, i platinum'd it but with the silly flash format i had to do all the secrets twice

 

Huh, I was sure that I was up over 200 hours, but Steam is telling me 81 hours. Of course, I'm not sure if that counter is always accurate, or if it fully accounts for time played offline.

 

i saw they put in seeded runs, was there plans for future leaderboards / daily challenge?  im sure reddit will come up with a clever way to post "best time" screen shots & create one externally

 

I was sure that it was going to come with a Daily Challenge with leaderboards and everything, but now I can't find why I thought that (maybe it was just wishful thinking). Seeded runs are cool, and will support the racing groups that popped up around BoI, but I really would like to have that same Spelunky type integrated DC to chase every day for awhile.

[Treasure Goblin]

So the graphical glitch I encountered makes mom's heart impossible, because the screen stays black the whole time.  I guess for the mean time I can stick to the challenges that end at the first mom fight and hope that it's a bug that gets fixed pretty soon (I think this is a mac-specific bug, I havent had the chance to boot it up on the pc yet) 

[TurboPubx-16]

I beat Satan!

 

Not the best pic, mostly because my followers and orbitals were super-sized this run.

 

The original game got pretty stale as I closed in on the last few achievements. Restart until you get a good first item, get a soul heart, then go for devil deals. I am so happy to be playing casually again and unlocking tons of things every run. I am also ecstatic that amazing synergies are happening naturally as well as through some careful consideration. 

 

Flying seems to be very hard to obtain unless your character starts with it. Bibles are everywhere. There are so many more things to bomb than just secret passages and tinted rocks. The map and the compass are missing from the shops and are replaced with totally awesome stuff. The Luck Foot doesn't guarantee good or neutral pill effects.

 

Basically all of my old strats are useless and I have to find new ways to bend the game. I'll never be the best at dodging so getting deep into the mechanics is the only way I survive in Isaac.

 

I should have mentioned, I have 100 hours of play time in the original game, but I've probably watched another million hours of people play the game on Twitch. I really want the two Isaac racing leagues to keep going. It remains to be seen if this game can be raced.

[undermind9]

i spent all night doing challenge 1, besides nasty drops the hidden health meter really threw me off

 

 

RE: BoILR - with the seeds and built in timer its like they prepped for this

[Bjorn]

I think I got lucky with drops on my first few runs, the difficulty is feeling more balanced now, that or as someone in the current podcast thread said, the difficulty steadily ramps up as you unlock things (different room configurations and layouts come active). 

 

I made it to Mom's Heart once, and beat her, but wow, is that fight a lot harder.  Seemed like quite a few more additional enemies and the bullet pattern was faster and changed quicker.  I was really lucky I had 8 hearts on me and the card that doubles your current hearts , or I wouldn't have got through it. 

 

I ran into one run killing bug.  I got the mini planet thing that makes your shots circle around you.  Shortly thereafter I ended up in a room that had a large chasm in it, with three of the new wall spiders on the other side.  My orbiting shots weren't able to clear the chasm, I didn't have an offensive usable item and I was out of bombs to be able to bomb a door open to escape.  There just wasn't any way out of it.  And it was going to be a great run to, I had picked up the Xray Specs on the first floor and was in terrific shape.  Really wished I hadn't have picked up the planetoid thing, but I didn't know what it was. 

 

The Lemon challenge is great.  They made the lemon item and lemon pill way more useful. 

[Korax]

WARNING TO THOSE PLAYING ON PSVITA/PS4:

 

Cross-save syncing is jacked right now. I've played for a while on my Vita, and when I went to sync my save to play on PS4, it pulled down an older save it still had and overwrote a bunch of progress. Some cursory searching online has shown that it's a fairly widespread problem.

[TurboPubx-16]

I love this game!

This turned out to be a total waste, since I found up Dead Cat after picking all of these up. 

 

Another great run, but it ended at the heart . I'm just going to say that I could have beaten ??? with this build, even though I have no idea what that battle is now.

I think I picked up all five pieces of Guppy this run. Not sure if that did anything special.

 

Sorry to hear people are having buggy experiences. I frequently walk into rooms and ask myself, how would I possibly get through this if my range wasn't high enough? I had the Three Dollar Bill a couple of times and I swear it gave me zero range tears for one room. Like, my tears didn't even go past my toes.

[N1njaSquirrel]

Picking up 4 guppy items turns you into guppy. Boi pro's swore by it but I never understood why.

[mikemariano]

How great is it that the map now appears over the play area?

 

 

So great!

[Twig]

Make it more transparent!

[Professor Video Games]

Yeah the map is gigantic and hard to read. Also the time is displayed over the play area and there's no way to turn it off. Annoying.

[Bjorn]

How great is it that the map now appears over the play area?

 

There's an opacity setting you can change. I haven't tried it yet, but also haven't been surprised by something hiding there. Suppose it's like the UI in Spelunky before they patched it. When it screwed you, it screwed you hard.

 

Picking up 4 guppy items turns you into guppy. Boi pro's swore by it but I never understood why.

 

It only took three items, and I liked it. Flight and free attack flies are awesome. You also didn't have to hold onto the items to get the transformation, so you could pick up and discard the head and paw, and just wait for the tail to show up, so that made it easier to get.

Oh, I totally forgot to talk about playing in co-op last night. It's fun, but fucking hard. My wife had never played BoI before, so there were lots of deaths and restarts before she started getting into the flow of it. I suspect co-op will be similar to Spelunky, where we are never as good together as we are separate, but it's fun to do anyways.

OH, and Turbo mentioned it, but seriously, bomb everything if you have extra bombs on a run. Blowing up mushrooms and Skulls can make a huge difference in a run if you've got the bombs to spare.

[Bjorn]

Yeah the map is gigantic and hard to read. Also the time is displayed over the play area and there's no way to turn it off. Annoying.

 

That's only if you are running with the big map though, if you change it to the small map (Tab or Back button), the time goes away. I don't like having the big map up anyways, so I just always run with the small map.

Is there any interest in setting up our own Thumbs Daily Challenges as long as a bunch of us are playing? Just pick or generate a seed once a day and everyone who wants to participate can?

[undermind9]

regarding the map -

there are two forms of the mini map and can tab between them -

One is much larger than it should be and difficult to read on low opacity...but on opaque can hide nasties (spider, wall spider, flies, etc - Even worse on a Curse of the Darkness level)

 

And then the smaller difficult to read...but good for general navigation

 

 

i am learning to like the 16bit pixel aesthetic for the main graphics...but the mini-map icons & UI graphics still have me on the fence

 

 

i'd be in for some daily-run/seed sharing.  Even if dont take it all they way to the end could spurn great conversation to see where everyone met their demise / found parts easier

[mikemariano]

Is there any interest in setting up our own Thumbs Daily Challenges as long as a bunch of us are playing? Just pick or generate a seed once a day and everyone who wants to participate can?

 

I played HORSEBAG as a seed last night, which led to me being cornered by a mud-man against a rock that was hidden by the mini-map.

[Bjorn]

I played HORSEBAG as a seed last night, which led to me being cornered by a mud-man against a rock that was hidden by the mini-map.

 

 - So with a story like that, you're in then

 

i'd be in for some daily-run/seed sharing.  Even if dont take it all they way to the end could spurn great conversation to see where everyone met their demise / found parts easier

 

Cool, probably others will as well. Should we do some Thumbs jokes to start with, and then branch out to either generating or other stuff once we've burned through the good ones? For today, I nominate:

shty wzrd

[Professor Video Games]

That's only if you are running with the big map though, if you change it to the small map (Tab or Back button), the time goes away. I don't like having the big map up anyways, so I just always run with the small map.

 

Yeah I must have switched it on by accident right at the start when I was pushing all the buttons to figure out which did anything. I retract my complaint (kind of).

[TurboPubx-16]

Picking up 4 guppy items turns you into guppy. Boi pro's swore by it but I never understood why.

Yep, it's three items to become Guppy, I was just wondering if getting all five had any special benefits. Speed runners go for Guppy because it is fast as hell. The flies' damage is based off your tears damage, so Poly Guppy or Brim Guppy are top tier builds. The flies have a chance to spawn every time you deal damage so a high year rate and followers are ideal. Speed runners are also masters at dodging, so Nine Lives with the Paw is more than enough to finish any run.

Edit: I also didn't initially understand why the pros adored Guppy. One day something just clicked and I got it. There's a learning curve to finding the pieces, picking them up in the correct order, which space bar item to keep, how to recover from having just one heart per life. I could yammer on for hours over Guppy.

 

Edit 2: Sorry Bjorn, shty wzrd doesn't work for me. Maybe because we have different things unlocked?

[undermind9]

Cool, probably others will as well. Should we do some Thumbs jokes to start with, and then branch out to either generating or other stuff once we've burned through the good ones? For today, I nominate:

shty wzrd

 

doesnt seem like those work.  i get a error sound (like when losing at slot machine) but when using a proper code it'll go right back to character select

 

one i just started - H7YE NEHW if anyone interested 

*Edit - first level poop boss is my new black widow

round 2 - XRG1 NTMX

*edit 2 - utero 2, fail

 

i had my first satan kill earlier...feel bad about it but got to see the later content w/o the anxiety of getting there w/low health, bad items. i got the green leaf (mario 3 -> turns you into a statue when standing still) & gold bars/ "Midas touch" which turns people to gold when they hit you...but does damage and pop out coins.  so i was able to stand still and let the waves of minions crash and die against my invulnerable statue.  Combined with another one called 1+1=? i was getting double drops so the arcades were working out great.  plus 2 blood bags and some meat cubes it was cake walk till Sheol.

 

RE: moms heart -

this is way harder.  the constant shooting, variety of enemies falling out, rotating brimstone, holy smokes.  i feel like getting in there without a high damage set or full orbitals is asking for trouble.

 

RE: Satan

is just as easy as before, but the minons in Sheol are no joke, there are some gas bags w/technology laser shots that just lit me up.  there are also little demon folks chained to the walls that when released dim the lights, nice touch!  the worst room was the walking skulls that need to expose neck to shoot...except there were a dozen of those flying skulls that only go away after room is cleared

 

 

I could yammer on for hours over Guppy.

i could talk about isaac for hours - im not great at it, but doesnt stop it from being my favorite.  rebirth has its hooks in now and isnt going to get any better.  additionally i dont have any meat-space friends that play to discuss bonkers runs

[BadHat]

Enjoying this quite a bit so far. Feels much more like "a game" than BoI. The original always felt like it was shackled to its Flash roots a bit much, probably because I used to play (and make, a tiny bit) a lot of Flash games and I got too used to the way they all felt and looked.

 

Between this and Nuclear Throne I've got my roguelikelike fix well sorted.

 

Edit: Oh yeah, anyone else think the new music is kind of... average? It'd probably be fine if the original soundtrack wasn't so freaking great. Wonder why they decided to replace it with something so different.

[Bjorn]

Edit 2: Sorry Bjorn, shty wzrd doesn't work for me. Maybe because we have different things unlocked?

doesnt seem like those work.  i get a error sound (like when losing at slot machine) but when using a proper code it'll go right back to character select

 

Yeah, I discovered that last night as well. I hadn't tried seeds, and didn't realize how they worked. I assumed that any 8 character seed would work. FWIW, HORSEBAG doesn't work either. It looks like the only good way to get seeds is to get them from in game and share them, just randomly typing in numbers and letters is more likely to result in an error than a good seed.

So two nights ago, I think I was playing on Hard by accident. It's really easy to accidently change the difficulty and not realize it if you aren't paying attention to the bloodstain on the page. My wife and I died early in co-op a couple of times last night, and I noticed this red symbol beneath our key/bomb counter. After the deaths, I realized that's the symbol to show that you're on Hard! Whoops.

I got to both the Devil and the Cathedral last night, and died to the bosses both times. I should have beat the Devil, just totally botched that. But on the Cathedral run, I just got hosed on damage. Not a single damage upgrade the entire run. And I had a badass character otherwise. I had Tech 1, Tech 2, Mutant Spider (which makes Tech 2 split into 4 lasers), and a trinket that makes your shots do this zig-zag motion (which did affect both lasers). It was like being a fucking Sith Lord. But my damage was just shit for the Cathedral.

My favorite run of the night was playing as Samson. Realized that Bloody Lust has changed. It's no longer per room, it's per floor. I got an upgrade that gave me fireballs, which set enemies on fire and had a chance to detonate like a bomb. Then I got an item that caused explosions to heal me! Perfect synergy. With Bloody Lust, the fireballs would be the size of Samson by the end of the later floors.

 

i could talk about isaac for hours - im not great at it, but doesnt stop it from being my favorite.  rebirth has its hooks in now and isnt going to get any better.  additionally i dont have any meat-space friends that play to discuss bonkers runs

 

Agreed!

[mikemariano]

Yeah, I discovered that last night as well. I hadn't tried seeds, and didn't realize how they worked. I assumed that any 8 character seed would work. FWIW, HORSEBAG doesn't work either.

 

Yeah, apparently there's an error sound and that's the only feedback that a seed doesn't work.  I just assumed I was horsebagging it the whole time.

 

The Cathedral?  Sheol?  I don't know what these words mean!  Wow, I am a really bad Isaac player. (I also never discovered the second quest and true ending of Symphony of the Night or the good endings to Fallout 1, so yay me...)