The Binding of Isaac

Visually, The Binding of Isaac is fairly pleasing, but not really anything worth writing home about. It's fairly stylised and is very interesting to look at, but in the general sense of 'good graphics' I'm a bit on the fence. The visuals certainly feel appropriate, which is important and they take nothing away from the game during actual gameplay. I feel like the game could probably make more use of sound with different ambient music for different areas/levels of dungeons, but although fairly repetitive the music isn't bad and sound effects are pretty well executed. My final point in this section has to be a slight visual niggle regarding obstacle bounding boxes - it sometimes looks like you should be able to shoot past them, when you can't. Frustrating, but admittedly rarely happens and is manageable. Sound & Visual

Your method of controlling little Isaac is good ol' WASD - except, I'm starting to feel indecisive about what control method would actually work best for this game. Though it's most certainly playable once you get used to it, being restricted to 4-directional shooting and 8-directional movement can sometimes feel limiting and frustrating against certain types of enemies. This issue is more apparent with the default attack of tears (your attack/weapon can change with pick-ups), with it sometimes being rather difficult to get a shot on-target when moving around (which is mandatory with some areas/enemies). The gameplay is smooth overall and has a pretty simple flow, with each level/dungeon being reached by defeating the boss on your current level (marked by a skull-clad door with a red glow). Tracking your progress through the dungeon is made simple thanks to a mini-map in the top left (which also shows what types of rooms they are, and whether or not you've actually entered it yet). Control and gameplay

As you progress through the game and descend through the levels (multiple times for each, as every time you die you get reset to the top level), you might start to notice repetition in the 'random'. I know this sounds strange, but although the room layouts change and you get different collections of monsters (of which there are many variations), it becomes fairly repetitive quite quickly which I believe is just the gameplay itself rather than the lack of variety in enemies/dungeon layouts. Dodging droplets of blood and jumpy monsters etc and shooting back at them somehow involves almost identical tactics for every room, bar the bosses. Despite this, replay-ability is still pretty good because of the fact that every time you play, you will get a different series of monsters and bosses making your descent variably easier/harder than the last time. The assortment of pick-ups also aid variety and replay-ability a bit, but are ultimately a bit thin on the ground to be relying on. Replay-ability/Variety

In terms of actually having fun, The Binding of Isaac does do well. It has a very strange basis on the plot/concept which is intriguing and for the whole time I was running around I would keep going "man this is f**ked up", as I exploded a strange lumpy monster with my baby tears. There are also some interesting pick-ups which add to the fun, such as a terminator-esque eye replacement that shoots red laser beams instead of your normal tears. For me personally, each room could do with being slightly larger and generate less restrictive paths to reduce stress when trying to dodge certain attacks, but I certainly can't say the game's not fun. Fun factor