The gameplay feels more balanced and fair, there are tons of new power-ups, and the bosses are as interesting as they are challenging. While the original game has its own charm, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is superior in almost every way. It's a truly addictive gameplay experience that tests your ability and strategy, but it's loads of fun. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth offers dozens of new bosses, hundreds of new rooms, and a countless number of power-up combinations. If you die you lose everything you've gained and must completely start over, although new items you discover will continue to appear. You only have three hearts at the start, so it's best to be cautious while weaving through boss attacks. In order to reach the next level you'll have to topple these tough foes, and if you don't have good enough power-ups, death is sure to come quick. Die, die, die again, and those tense battles, weird enemies, hidden secrets, and wonderfully over-the-top items will draw your finger to the restart button once more.Once you've completely explored a floor (or are simply done gathering items), you can attempt to battle against the boss. Thankfully those moments aren't common and the iOS version comes with controller support, so if the touch controls prove unwieldy, you have additional options.īut even those issues can't completely diminish the innate addictive nature of Binding of Isaac's gameplay and unsettling world. In a game where health can be so limited, it can be frustrating to lose half a heart due to unintentionally moving too close to danger or getting caught against a wall for a second too long. That's important because Isaac's touch controls can feel loose and floaty, which can be an issue in area with spikes or cluttered with rock walls. In fact, I found auto-fire as the best way to play, since it allowed me to focus more on movement in the midst of the chaos. The auto-fire option lets Isaac fire continuously in a set direction. Playing in portrait divides your iPad in half like a 3DS, with the gameplay on top and the map screen below. And for the most part, it works surprisingly decently. Quite touchingīinding of Isaac comes to iOS not only with all of the content present in 2014's Rebirth remake, but also myriad changes designed to make the shooter play well on mobile. It's this relentless pace and gradual drip feed that can hook players for dozens of hours there's always something new to discover, to work towards, whether it's more items, new rooms to survive, new enemies and bosses to kill, new characters to unlock. While upgrades collected throughout runs won't persist between attempts, you do gradually expand the overall pool of items and unlocks, allowing for more powerful and insane builds in later runs. Limited-use skills and consumable pick-ups like pills and bombs round out your potential loadout. In fact, your attack can gain all of those attributes simultaneously, since effects stack. Your base tears can evolve into a spread shot, or a single tear you control directly, or a powerful laser, or imbued with poison. The core of the game is its vast varied pool of items, each one granting both a cosmetic change on Isaac and some buff, debuff, or change to your attack. Binding of Isaac drops you into the randomly-generated basement stages, where each new room could offer a powerful upgrade, some weird secrets, or a horde of enemies to defeat. Poor Isaac has fled his insane Mother and her plans to sacrifice him, descending into the basement to escape. Edmund McMillen's popular roguelike shooter finally brings its surreal and gross brand of chaos to iOS, and despite some lingering control and UI issues, the randomized gauntlets remain as addictive and thrilling as fans would hope. Within Isaac's multi-level cellar awaits grotesque monstrosities, piles of rot and viscera, and walls of flesh horrific things that must be destroyed with the power of your tears. Basements have often been fodder for scares and disturbing secrets in horror movies, but most of those dank underground spaces would pale in comparison to the terrors found within Binding of Isaac's.