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The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth |OT| Pixel Heart Mother

I think some of the items are broken (overpowered)? I don't know what it was but everytime Mom hit me I healed a heart...but not when any of the other enemies hit me. Needless to say it would be hard for me to not beat Mom.
 

wetflame

Pizza Dog
since this game is seeded it needs daily challenges ala spelunky

needs them

invent some scoring system and a daily leaderboard.. voila

Pretty good idea, even if it's just for speedruns. Or maybe there'd be some sort of rooms cleared/items gained points system. Not that I'm anywhere near that level though.
 

CassSept

Member
I think one reason why it feels easier is that at first you don't have alt rooms unlocked. Cellar is far far harder than Basement. I first played BoI after Wrath of Lamb and it kicked my butt (especially Cellar/Catacombs/Necropolis), here it was smooth sailing at first but just like in the first one it's gradually getting harder.

wait, I don't always unlock the level after
Mom's heart?

I just killed it and I had no way to go down.

In the original you had to kill
It Lives
first, remember?

Does anyone know how (character spoiler)
lazarus
is different from Issac? It seems both their start attributes are the same.

After he dies he resurrects in the same room with one heart I think. That's what happened when I died on Mom's Heart, I was ecstatic as I died few shots short of killing the boss :D
 

Grief.exe

Member
At work when I just want to play Isaac.

since this game is seeded it needs daily challenges ala spelunky

needs them

invent some scoring system and a daily leaderboard.. voila

I was very surprised they didn't go that route. Of course it's not that easy, they would need to have backend fixes for online leaderboards and syncing seeds.
 

hbkdx12

Member
since this game is seeded it needs daily challenges ala spelunky

needs them

invent some scoring system and a daily leaderboard.. voila
Agreed.

I'm not really all that great at spelunky (i'd enjoy it more if i could take my time) but I would absolutely love some kind of leaderboard integration of some sort for rebirth

I think some of the items are broken (overpowered)? I don't know what it was but everytime Mom hit me I healed a heart...but not when any of the other enemies hit me. Needless to say it would be hard for me to not beat Mom.
I don't know if there are any singular items that are OP on their own but by virtue of the game and all the different items and the way they synergize, feeling OP isn't particularly rare every handful of runs or so

After he dies he resurrects in the same room with one heart I think. That's what happened when I died on Mom's Heart, I was ecstatic as I died few shots short of killing the boss :D

Interesting. Thanks
 

SerTapTap

Member
Can the foot from (trinket spoilers)
Mom's Toenail
hurt you? It seems very un-focused, so Im' not sure if it's worth keeping around.
 

SerTapTap

Member
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it can.

Not using that thing then. I was suspicious since the other foot summoning items usually target (and hurt) Isaac if there's no enemies in the room. This one seems to come down totally randomly though. Daddy's Love is much better.
 

d00d3n

Member
I just fucked up a really lucky azazel run. I almost got the maximum amount of red hearts (yep, not soul hearts, and would have got it if not for a wasted white heart due to damage). Had high damage and a modifier that transformed my weapon into an area of effect circle that I could move separately from my character. Also got a power early that allowed me to eat most blocks in the game and get loads of items from them.

For some incomprehensible reason I picked up the cat power which removed all my red hearts and replaced them with nine lives instead (a bit blinded by playing azazel, where this is usually not a big loss). Had to quit the game and feel sorry for myself after this ...

Anyway, I took a screenshot of the seed, so I decided to share it if anyone wants to try the run. I don't know if all aspects of it will translate to your game (for example, getting two heaven rooms with two white hearts in each), but I guess that it is worth a shot.

This is the seed(playing as azazel):
6XQM
J2NR
 
Is Rebirth way easier than vanilla? I didn't play much BoI at all because I hated the aesthetic and I can finish Mom's Heart nearly every run.

Depends really... Vanilla no wrath of the lamb isaac is probably easier in some ways, if just because there's a lot of really annoying enemies added in wrath of the lamb onwards (Sup spiders) that aren't in it.

But, rebirth does have a lot more items, that synch up a lot better than vanilla and wrath only isaac.
 

SerTapTap

Member
I wish the game had a different art style. As it is, it's a major turn off for me. And that's not even counting the scat. Ugh.

It's an Edmund McMillen game. Zero chance of it not having blood, guts, wide creepy smiles and probably shit piss or barf, or in this case all 3.

Art style is definitely a matter of taste, but for what it is I think they really nailed it, has even more personality than the original.
 

CassSept

Member
The new spider enemies freak me the fuck out.

New Cellar is so so annoying.

Alt rooms are unlocked by getting no-damage achievements right? I'm dreading new Necropolis.

My most annoying new enemy is that bird-like skeleton that throws bones are you. Incredibly annoying.
 

Archaix

Drunky McMurder
New Cellar is so so annoying.

Alt rooms are unlocked by getting no-damage achievements right? I'm dreading new Necropolis.

My most annoying new enemy is that bird-like skeleton that throws bones are you. Incredibly annoying.


My very first game (when I was accidentally playing on hard mode, thanks loose 360 stick) I ran into a large room (also my first time seeing that) with 8 of those guys. Died before I could process what was happening.
 

SerTapTap

Member
Nope, it was in the original. Pretty widely regarded as a bad item, too, because you miss out on pickups.

Did it change? I used it recently and it
put me in a Zelda 1 style underground area with an item pickup instead of going to the next level
.

New Cellar is so so annoying.

Alt rooms are unlocked by getting no-damage achievements right? I'm dreading new Necropolis.

My most annoying new enemy is that bird-like skeleton that throws bones are you. Incredibly annoying.

I hate the bone things and the blood laser spiders. I always forget when they've switched over to laser instead of blood shots and end up getting hit. And the bones the skeletons throw are hard to avoid in the close quarters rooms.
 

Joe Molotov

Member
Yeah, I think it was a Bible. Good work, God.

Now use The Bible on
Satan
.
MSC3GgO.jpg
 

Berordn

Member
So is anyone else getting an "unspecified error" when syncing on PS4?

Vita version still has all my datums, just can't get it over to the PS4.
 

wetflame

Pizza Dog
It still does that too. Seems to either have some condition I'm unaware of or just functions randomly.

Oh, yeah. I meant that that was the only effect in the original, whereas this one is an additional effect that's been added. I love hearing about stuff like this because it makes me excited for all the stuff I haven't discovered yet. I just need to not spoil myself too much, haha.
 

SerTapTap

Member
Is cross save manual only? It looks like it since it has a button but I didn't test. Hate manual only cross save but it's better than nothing.
 

KarmaCow

Member
Seems like there are more (designed?) themed runs in the games. Had one run where pretty much every item was related to the zodiac and the next had every single Guppy item. I'm kinda disappointed I got that seed early on because I was basically immortal with 10 lives and invulnerable with about 20 blue flies orbiting at all times. Mom's Heart died in less than a second without me having to do anything. It would have been nice to have that when trying for
Cathedral achievements when it was unlocked
instead of
the game ending at Sheol
.

Also, I didn't realise how much was tied to the seed. Everything, including drops from enemies and rolls with the different gambling machines seems fixed. Found that out after the Fortune Teller machine caused a repeatable crash after using it too many times. Thankfully the game auto saves on every floor.
 

jblank83

Member
So is the
Shovel
a new item?

I just blazed through that run like it was nothing.

It's an old item.


Out of curiosity, do you prefer the original Flash art or do you not like the style of either?

I'll say it: I prefer the original's art (and music)

It's cleaner, the characters have more detail, and the sprites are uniformly excellent. In contrast, the Rebirth sprites range from great to awful. On average, the imported Isaac sprites look good, for instance the Duke of Flies. However, most of the new sprites are bad. The Leo lionhead and Goathead are terrible, many new monster sprites look like they were drawn by a 2 year old (and not in a charming, cute, 4th wall joke way), and the entire "retro sprite" aesthetic doesn't look retro. It just looks like regular art with a bad pixel filter.

I still like the game a lot and I think almost 100% of the game design is very well done, welcome improvements from the old Binding of Isaac and absolutely a reason to start replaying Rebirth from scratch. However the art and music are real disappointments to me personally (not speaking for anyone else, imo).
 

SerTapTap

Member
Seems like there are more (designed?) themed runs in the games. Had one run where pretty much every item was related to the zodiac and the next had every single Guppy item. I'm kinda disappointed I got that seed early on because I was basically immortal with 10 lives and invulnerable with about 20 blue flies orbiting at all times. Mom's Heart died in less than a second with me having to do anything. It would have been nice to have that when trying for Cathedral was unlocked instead of the game ending at Sheol.

Also, I didn't realise how much was tied to the seed. Everything, including drops from enemies and rolls with the different gambling machines seems fixed. Found that out after the Fortune Teller machine caused a repeatable crash after using it too many times. Thankfully the game auto saves on every floor.

I wouldn't mind more "themed" runs as Guppy is very rare otherwise. I did noticed I got two guppy items in a row from devil rooms...died before I got a third though.

The auto save is so great. One of my least favorite things about roguelikes is losing my save even if I DON'T die, I just need to stop playing or the game crashes.

It's an old item.




I'll say it: I prefer the original's art (and music)

It's cleaner, the characters have more detail, and the sprites are uniformly excellent. In contrast, the Rebirth sprites range from great to awful. On average, the imported Isaac sprites look good, for instance the Duke of Flies. However, most of the new sprites are bad. The Leo lionhead and Goathead are terrible, many new monster sprites look like they were drawn by a 2 year old (and not in a charming, cute, 4th wall joke way), and the entire "retro sprite" aesthetic doesn't look retro. It just looks like regular art with a bad pixel filter.

I still like the game a lot and I think almost 100% of the game design is very well done, welcome improvements from the old Binding of Isaac and absolutely a reason to start replaying Rebirth from scratch. However the art and music are real disappointments to me personally (not speaking for anyone else, imo).

I don't entirely agree--I prefer the look of Flash when done well, but a lot of stuff is much more detailed in Rebirth, almost all returning enemies look basically as good or better. I'll agree some new stuff is a bit lazy, but the world in general looks great. The Secret Room, the maggots on the floor, the fires, the blood laser, lots of stuff looks much better with lots of added detail that was just kinda bare minimum in the flash version. I think Edmund even said it was kinda rushed.

Music...yeah. Not as good. Sets a good gloomy mood, but not as good as the original, some really intense stuff in there. I bought the BoI OST, won't be buying the Rebirth one at this rate though. Heck, I'd pay to have the old OST as DLC.
 

ZeroCDR

Member
Anyone able to sync from their vita? It says unknown error occured :(

I get the same thing, it's probably down because people were having issues with syncing and then having their saves overwritten with old data or something. I really want to start playing on PS4 :\ lol
 
I wouldn't mind more "themed" runs as
Guppy
is very rare otherwise. I did noticed I got two
guppy
items in a row from
devil rooms
...died before I got a third though.

The
devil item pool
is really small to start with. I've had
guppy
twice in my limited number of runs. I haven't seen a fresh item there in my last several runs, but as we play the game more and unlock more stuff, the likelihood of getting
guppy
items is significantly reduced.
 

joelseph

Member
New to the series. Played it for a hour before bed last night.

Questions!

Keyboard or controller? I can't decide, leaning towards controller.

How do I use items? Most of my items would only appear in the pause menu but a couple did apear on screen (a hoof or something) but I couldn't "use" any of them. What gives?

What is up with the small statues with the signs? I ran into one that had a key on it and took all my keys. Couldn't hit it or interact with it in any ways.

Same thing goes for Arcades, left that room more confused and with less stuff.

Without giving too much away is there a good guide for noobies?
 

KarmaCow

Member
New to the series. Played it for a hour before bed last night.

Questions!

Keyboard or controller? I can't decide, leaning towards controller.

How do I use items? Most of my items would only appear in the pause menu but a couple did apear on screen (a hoof or something) but I couldn't "use" any of them. What gives?

What is up with the small statues with the signs? I ran into one that had a key on it and took all my keys. Couldn't hit it or interact with it in any ways.

Same thing goes for Arcades, left that room more confused and with less stuff.

Without giving too much away is there a good guide for noobies?

1) Either works, I find the keyboard better when you have abilities that change your shots to a charge shot.

2) There are different types of items and only some can be manually used. If it appears in the top left, it can be used and will recharge as you clear rooms. Bottom left, it's a trinket which modifies your stats. Bottom right, one use items that have various effects. Otherwise if they don't appear on screen, they just affect your stats or tweak your abilities.

3) Basically just a way to gamble. Give them what they want they will can give items ranging from hearts to items found in gold rooms. Or they will do nothing, it's all chance.

4) Same thing, just a place to gamble. With enough coins or health, you can get more than you put in.

5) There are a few things you'll pick up like how to find secret rooms on every floor but a lot just comes from getting to know the mechanics over time. I'm sure someone else will go in to detail.
 

wetflame

Pizza Dog
New to the series. Played it for a hour before bed last night.

Questions!

Keyboard or controller? I can't decide, leaning towards controller.

How do I use items? Most of my items would only appear in the pause menu but a couple did apear on screen (a hoof or something) but I couldn't "use" any of them. What gives?

What is up with the small statues with the signs? I ran into one that had a key on it and took all my keys. Couldn't hit it or interact with it in any ways.

Same thing goes for Arcades, left that room more confused and with less stuff.

Without giving too much away is there a good guide for noobies?

I personally use controller but pick whichever suits your playstyle. Controller has analogue movement, which is a plus.

Items which can be "used" appear in the top right and can be activated using the left trigger, they then have a cooldown period which is replenished by clearing rooms. A lot of items are passive or stat-boosting so you won't actively be using them, but you should notice their effects.

The little statues are actually beggars, they'll take whatever's on their sign from you and will give you items in return after a random amount is given. Arcades give prizes based on your luck stat, so the slot machine will sometimes give out hearts, coins, etc, there's a shell game too. The blood donation machines that sometimes appear will take half a heart and give coins in return.

A lot of people will say to keep playing and learning, because it's fun to try and figure things out by yourself, but there are wikis and guides out there if you want to give yourself a helping hand getting started.
 

SerTapTap

Member
The
devil item pool
is really small to start with. I've had
guppy
twice in my limited number of runs. I haven't seen a fresh item there in my last several runs, but as we play the game more and unlock more stuff, the likelihood of getting
guppy
items is significantly reduced.

I noticed the pool is fairly small and the room is MUCH more common now (in normal mode). I'm okay with that, I love lots of those items. But I'll never get Magdalene at this rate, always consuming my hearts.

Keyboard or controller? I can't decide, leaning towards controller.

How do I use items? Most of my items would only appear in the pause menu but a couple did apear on screen (a hoof or something) but I couldn't "use" any of them. What gives?

What is up with the small statues with the signs? I ran into one that had a key on it and took all my keys. Couldn't hit it or interact with it in any ways.

Same thing goes for Arcades, left that room more confused and with less stuff.

Without giving too much away is there a good guide for noobies?

I can't imagine ever playing this with a keyboard again after using a controller. I mean, keyboard works, but dual stick controls are so natural and you can control your movement speed in an analog fashion. Though there's no quick reset on controller, at least on PS4, that kinda sucks. But not everyone twitch resets.

Only bombs, cards/pills (bottom right corner item), and Use Items (top left, rechargable) have Use keys. Depends on your control setup. Most items just passively affect your abilities directly or indirectly. There is a VERY wide range of things they can do. The help text usually tells you outright or gives you a hint.

All items in Arcades drop items at a random chance, by taking away your cash/keys/health. A good plan is to only play games when you have excessive stock, and stop after an item drop if you're running low.

After a certain point I decided to just look up how certain mechanics work explicitly. Only you can decide when you've reached that point, the game is too complex to fully understand without ever looking up, but it's certainly playable without looking things up either. Especially Rebirth, since almost all items are actually good now. BoI had lots of "gotchas" that made it very noob unfriendly.
 

hbkdx12

Member
I noticed the pool is fairly small and the room is MUCH more common now (in normal mode). I'm okay with that, I love lots of those items. But I'll never get Magdalene at this rate, always consuming my hearts.
The (item spoiler)
contract item
from the deal with the devil is so good. I enjoy the prospect of unlocking more items to widen the pool of what we can get on subsequent runs

Also, (item spoiler)
Bob's rotten head
is so damn powerful! I don't remember it being this good in Vanilla. It was easily cutting bosses health meters down to half
 

microfolk

Member
Does anybody else feel like sometimes you get one heart of damage instead of the usual half when it shouldn't be like this? I know that from
the womb onwards
every single damage is of one heart but sometimes in some of the first levels it seems like when I get hurt I lose a whole heart... I don't know for sure, it may be possible that's just me not tracking my hearts well enough.

I'm playing on hard by the way.
 
It's an Edmund McMillen game. Zero chance of it not having blood, guts, wide creepy smiles and probably shit piss or barf, or in this case all 3.

Art style is definitely a matter of taste, but for what it is I think they really nailed it, has even more personality than the original.

Yeah, the Bible, shit, piss, blood combo works really well for me as I find it makes for a cohesive and deep game universe but I'm always a bit surprised that so many people love this game as its overall design is pretty peculiar.

Speaking of popularity, it's so weird to have a game with so many concurrent users and yet very few reviews (only one I saw was RPS). I guess they didn't send advance copies of everyone was busy with COD.

So is anyone else getting an "unspecified error" when syncing on PS4?

Vita version still has all my datums, just can't get it over to the PS4.
Yeah, I had this on PS4, having already played on Vita. Other people are reporting it on Vita, I guess they started on PS4.
 

joelseph

Member
One more question; Without using guides is there a way to get information about an item? Should I be able to deduce what it's doing?
 

LakeEarth

Member
Played it, beat it on my third playthrough. I thought it was fun, but I was wondering how people kept playing the game for 80+ hours. Then I realized I just unlocked new final bosses, new regular bosses, new levels with new enemies and patterns, etc. Now I get it. A brilliant way to increase difficulty on a 'random' game like this.
 

jblank83

Member
I don't entirely agree--I prefer the look of Flash when done well, but a lot of stuff is much more detailed in Rebirth, almost all returning enemies look basically as good or better. I'll agree some new stuff is a bit lazy, but the world in general looks great. The Secret Room, the maggots on the floor, the fires, the blood laser, lots of stuff looks much better with lots of added detail that was just kinda bare minimum in the flash version. I think Edmund even said it was kinda rushed.

I'm glad you mentioned maggots (though not the same maggots I'm thinking of). An example...

Here is BoI flash:
Binding-of-Isaac-Chub-3.jpg


Here is BoI Rebirth:
2014-11-06_00002_zps859908ba.jpg


As for the new ambient effects, I find them about as variable in quality as the others. The flies and maggots caught my attention once or twice, and now they're white noise. The masses of bones and guts that fly out of everything are not amusing. The effect doesn't look good in the first place and ends up as visual white noise.

As I said, though, there is a wider variation in quality in the new art assets. For instance, the new God room looks wonderful. Some of the boss sprites are great. Some of the environmental sprites are great. Then other sprites look plain bad, like the new poop monsters or the new long legged spiders. I honestly sit there fighting the new poops and spiders thinking "these sprites look terrible." It pulls me out of the game a little.

Meanwhile, the flash version is uniformly good, clean, and delivers its aesthetic more consistently and effectively.

At the end of the day, I'm still playing the game more than I should, and enjoying it, but the art and music are disappointing to me, personally. I'm not speaking for anyone else, just myself.
 

SerTapTap

Member
Yeah, the Bible, shit, piss, blood combo works really well for me as I find it makes for a cohesive and deep game universe but I'm always a bit surprised that so many people love this game as its overall design is pretty peculiar.

Speaking of popularity, it's so weird to have a game with so many concurrent users and yet very few reviews (only one I saw was RPS). I guess they didn't send advance copies of everyone was busy with COD.


Yeah, I had this on PS4, having already played on Vita. Other people are reporting it on Vita, I guess they started on PS4.

I'm actually really glad it's gotten popular, I've always liked Edmund's unashamed style, and the games are usually good (but hard as fuck). Gish really deserves more attention, though the controls certainly take getting used to. I was actually a little disappointed to see Super Meat Boy get so much attention as it feels pretty toned down to other games by Ed, but BoI goes all the way.

If the game didn't have review copies pre-release it's not surprising there's few reviews. It's the sort of game you need a LOT of time to properly evaluate. Plus even "big" indie games aren't guaranteed a review at big places, so all in all it's not that surprising. Did review copies go out early or not?

I'm glad you mentioned maggots (though not the same maggots I'm thinking of). Here is an example.

As for the new ambient effects, I find them about as variable in quality as the others. The flies and maggots caught my attention once or twice, and now they're white noise. The masses of bones and guts that fly out of everything are not amusing, either. It doesn't look good in the first place and so ends up as visual white noise.

I don't really think they've lost much detail. I was actually quite impressed they managed to keep the "rotten teeth" effect in the translation to pixel art.
 

Zaku

Member
Was doing a run this morning. Got a Ring Worm going with the Orbit Stone, I think it was. Also, the tears lit enemies on fire.

Holy crap. Tears, tears everywhere on screen at all times.

The only reason I died was because I got unlucky after going for a few items I shouldn't have and only had a single heart when going up against Widow.

I'm loving this over the original BoI.
 
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