I Am... All Of Me.

Shadow the Hedgehog has been my favorite Sonic character ever since Sonic Adventure 2, so naturally I was looking forward to trying out the one game, where he plays the main role - despite the overall divisive reception of Shadow 2005.

That being said, you know you're in for a ride when the very first level already leaves a sour taste in your mouth. Have you ever wondered how Shadow would control like if he was constantly ice-skating? Probably not, but Shadow 2005 takes that question off your mind by providing you with physics that feel floaty and entirely different from the previous 3D games. Even with those complaints in the beginnning, everything was still tolerable enough for me to keep my motivation to a certain point, but while playing through Iron Jungle, it dawned on me that this game was infamous for a reason. The cherry on top was the Egg Breaker boss afterwards though, who should have been named Camera Breaker, cause that's all he does while Shadow is running little laps around the base in the center of the arena ad infinitum. No offense to Lava Shelter though, it was the final level on the route I played and I actually enjoyed it a good amount after the mess that the previous stage was.

Enough talk about the gameplay, as the unique way of storytelling is also a key aspect of Shadow 2005. There are unironically 326 possible routes to play and they even have their own unique names - but it doesn't change the fact that the storytelling is nonsensical in many cases. So basically there's an alignment system in the levels, which you can advance through completing certain objectives towards your alignment. If you want to be evil, do Black Doom's requests. If you want to remain neutral, just run through the level and get the Chaos Emerald. This way of storytelling is actually an interesting concept for a game like Shadow the Hedgehog, as he is this morally ambiguous character, who can be easily interpreted as a player for both sides. Depending on which objectives you complete, the selection of levels across the stage flowchart changes accordingly and I'm sure the idea is that you don't have to play the same levels twice. Quite ironic, considering you have to play through Westopolis at least ten times in order to see the true ending, all while doing the same, repetitive tasks. Considering the amount of "kill [x] amount of enemy" challenges present, it would have been nice if you weren't required to kill every single enemy in the stage. You missed one? Good luck backtracking and finding them, cause the game surely won't tell you where to search. I couldn't really bring myself to do those challenges, so I went for a run that's mostly on the neutral side, but even that required me to play arduous levels like Iron Jungle to the end. Playing it several times would not be something on my priority list, so I only played a single route and called it quits for now.

Sorry for the amount of unorganized rambling in the second half. I still had my fair share of fun with Shadow the Hedgehog, even if some of it comes from a "so bad it's good again" perspective, cause there's something about it that sticks with me here, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Either way, if I have to give the game some credit where it's due, it's for the soundtrack - the remix for Eggman's theme and the title theme "I Am... All Of Me" are both bangers.

I can give this less than a perfect 10 and what does it matter? Any less-than-immaculate rating cannot take away just how much of a consummate work of art Dark Souls is. This game’s main factors are excellent and blend together so well. The mechanics, the structure, the world-building, the lore… the stew they make together is amazing.

Back in 2011, Dark Souls showed everyone what a cohesive piece of art a video game could be and the years have not done a disservice to it. It still feels great to play, the world is captivating, and just about every little detail is worth exploring. That’s what it gets down to: just about everything here is worth examining like any other great piece of art in history.

I could mention some of its flaws like the camera can betray you at the most crucial moments or how the collision physics in the Crystal Cave are pretty bad because, hey, those criticisms are legitimate! But art is more than just weighing pros versus cons, so in case you were wondering why I could give a game like this a 9 out of 10 and then say it was one of the greatest pieces of video game art, that’s why.

THE BINDING OF ISAAC WARP ZONE: S H A R D S O F I S A A C

The Binding of Isaac Rebirth is my favorite game of all time. But what about the original, programmed in AS2 rather than C++? While I did play Rebirth first, this review series would be a bit incomplete without mentioning the original, no? Flash was made by a much smaller team than Rebirth, composed of solely Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl, with music provided by Danny B. Flash was worked on for the course of several months, but it was considerably rushed and generally unpolished, even to this day. Even then, it still attracted a large audience, even to this day, where it still gets about a hundred players daily. Is this for good reason? Perhaps Flash has something that Rebirth (and subsequent versions) don’t? Only one way to find out! So let's hop in this old ass Basement and check out what old Isaac has to offer.

Right off the bat, there's a few noticeable differences between this and Rebirth. First off, the artstyle and music. Compared to Rebirth, the game sports a hand-drawn artstyle, and a different music genre entirely, compared to Rebirth's pixel style graphics and hard Rock. In terms of graphics, Flash is just as strong, arguably stronger than its Rebirth cousin, as grotesque as ever, gore, piss, and shit all left intact. However, when it comes to the music, it's a fair bit debatable. Flash’s soundtrack goes for a more electronic style, with its music focusing more on the beat of the tracks compared to Rebirth. Meanwhile, Rebirth (and subsequent DLCs) have a very heavy focus on leitmotifs and melodies. It’s a bit of a tossup as to which one I prefer, but even though I find myself leaning towards Rebirth’s soundtrack more, Flash’s soundtrack is pretty good as well. All of these tunes are all time classics, with Repentant being my personal favorite track in the game. The boss tracks aren’t as great as Rebirth’s, but they’re still pretty banging here. The songs do feel a little short, but granted Flash’s limitations, it’s understandable. But what about the gameplay itself?

Rebirth is about the same as Flash, control-wise. You still move and shoot in four directions the same way you do as Rebirth, place bombs and use cards like you do in Rebirth. But, there's a bit of an issue… Where the fuck is the controller support? This is one of the unfortunate downsides of the game being programmed in Flash. Because Flash lacks any support of native gamepad support, you have to use a program called Joy2Key to even try to use a controller. And even then, the controls don't translate the best, because the movement isn't analog. And on that note, I found, even on a keyboard, the controls were pretty damn sensitive. Isaac instantly darts with a tap of WASD, and it feels mediocre, especially compared to Rebirth. Shooting feels just as good as possible, which is nice, but I can't help but feel the controls are just too janky for my tastes.

On the topic of gameplay and story itself, Flash still holds up pretty well, as much as Rebirth did. For a more complete gameplay overview, I highly suggest reading my Rebirth review, but the gist of the game is that “Mom tries to kill Isaac but that's not really what happens”, the player goes through randomly generated dungeons, collects items upon the way, and defeats supernatural creatures at the end of each floor before moving on. Avoiding damage is key to success, as you can achieve Devil deals which significantly power up your character. It's just as fun here as it was in Rebirth. Obviously, there's a lot less content here as there is in Rebirth, it being an older version of the beloved classic, but I really appreciated the balancing here. The game is a fair bit more difficult than Rebirth, but a lot less focus is placed on the items and more so the challenge, and it does that very well. Flash provides a consistent challenge from beginning to end, and I am all here for it. But said challenge comes at a bit of a cost, and one of the main reasons why I spring towards Rebirth rather than Flash. I love Flash, I think it's great, but where the hell is the content? Flash is a really fun game hampered by a lack of run variety, making the game become way more stale than Rebirth and future iterations. In Flash, there are a little over a hundred items, and before a Halloween Update, there were about 80, a disappointing amount compared to Rebirth's 300. And the items present at best aren't as innovative as even Rebirth’s worst. Each run is pretty similar for the most part. Find stat ups, maybe flight or one or two tear modifiers, a few useless passives, a half-decent activated item, and bam. Run’s over before you know it. Flash also suffers from a lack of synergies, another unfortunate consequence of Flash as a programming language, adding to the issues of a lack of run variety. And those issues of content don't just apply to items as well.

Flash also suffers from a lack of final bosses and floors. It's almost customary for any roguelike to have a super secret ending that's really difficult to achieve (Hell from Spelunky, Throne II in Nuclear Throne, and so on), but Flash really only has Satan to its fairly small name. And that was added in a patch, as base release simply… ended. Without any major conclusion. But Satan himself isn't really that difficult, either. A step up from previous floors, but far from difficult to get. And having him be a random spawn pre-It Lives kind of takes the oomph out of him being the “true ending”. He isn't labeled as such, but I feel that's what they were going for.

Now, with all that being said, you might be wondering why I rated Flash a 8/10. Well, that's because Flash is still a REALLY good game, just as not as good as Rebirth. Like I said at the beginning, it's still as fundamentally great as what comes after it, but I hold a heavy preference towards Rebirth. It’s a very small, yet focused game, and while I appreciate that, it really needed more content to warrant spending more than a few wins on it (in my opinion). However, almost all of my problems with it would be fixed WITH…


“Within the past grasps / All familiar faces surround / My life is rebound” - “Flash” by zeusdeegoose, Written on 4/22/24

At the end of the day, this is a very simple game and it mostly does what it sets out to do well enough. It doesn't have the purity and streamlined design of something like Geometry Dash, and yet I found Bit.Trip to be a much more enjoyable experience than Geometry Dash because it doesn't feel the need to get unplayably difficult right off the bat. On the surface, Bit.Trip feels like a pretty mid game; nothing too bad, nothing too good, it's all just... adequate.

That's not to say I didn't have any more significant issues with this game because I definitely did, but they mostly ended up being rather specific. While I found the level design to be quite good (decent use of repetition without becoming stale, interesting mix of obstacles, etc), the overarching difficulty game is rocky to say the least. In particular, level 1-11 is an absolute nightmare. It's by no means the hardest level in the game (although it is by far the longest), but placing it at the end of an introductory world filled with pretty trivial levels for the most part is just sadistic, and led to one of the most abrupt difficulty spikes I think I've experienced in gaming.

I also don't really get on with the aesthetics in this game, or how they impact the moment-to-moment gameplay. For starters, the game is so heavily pixelated that I had to learn how to read the HUD, because none of the characters looked like the letters or numbers they were supposed to. I also don't like how similar the colour pallets for the foreground and background are in large parts of this game, as it can make it very difficult to make a snap judgement as to what is a hazard in some of the more challenging levels. In fact the use of colour in general is overall poor in this game. It feels like colour could be used to convey player information (e.g. all kickable objects could be blue, all objects that need ducking under could be black, etc); the game does do this, but only with 2 or 3 of the many types of obstacle, and most of the time working out the correct way to deal with a hazard is left to educated guesswork or trial and error.

The most heinous misuse of colour though has to be with the little squares you have to use the shield for in World 3, which are coloured the same as the gold bars you are supposed to collect. The game spends 2 whole worlds conditioning you that hitting gold objects is a good thing, only to sadistically 180 at the last moment. When I'm in a flow state in this game my lizard brain is 100% in control, and it simply cannot differentiate between two small identically coloured objects in the 1/10th of a second you have to process information in the more hectic parts of this game. Honestly this feels like a deliberate choice to fuck over the player, and it's not the only one; Bit.Trip Runner also loves to have obstacles fly at you from off-screen so unreasonably quickly that the only way to deal with them is to just learn exactly where they all are. It really goes against the sense of flow and rhythm that this game can create at it's best; I think the 'haha fuck the player' attitude present in many of the early indie titles is nearly always a mis-step, but especially in a game like this where it seems completely antithetical to its specific brand of gameplay.

I think the game also hates anyone who would be interested in 100%ing it as well. If you collect all the aforementioned gold bars in a level you get a 'perfect' score for that level and a little badge for it, which is a nice reward for opting in to a bit of extra challenge. But you also get a bonus level. These bonus levels are obtusely long, deliberately awkward and incredibly uninteresting... and you need to get all the gold bars in the bonus level too to get a true perfect score on a given level and an even nicer badge. Missed one or two gold bars in the bonus level? Well then you'd better go get a perfect score in the original level again, because that's the only way to have a second go at the bonus. In a game that so heavily relies on trial and error, having such a hurdle be in the way of retrying content is just agony, and makes any effort you put into getting regular perfect scores feel completely wasted.

All this makes it sound like I hated Bit.Trip Runner, but I really didn't. At times I did (1-11 can continue to go fuck itself), but my issues with the game were mostly surmountable roadblocks rather than persistent problems. Once I learned to give up on 100% and treat this more as a memorisation game than a reactive one, I started to get a lot more out of this. I am glad to have played it, but I do think this is still one I'm going to remember more for its failings than for its successes.

It's fine.

When folks decry Super for being a blasphemous take on the tried-and-true formula of Classicvania with it's eight-directional whipping, they're absolutely justified in their thought. It takes away the strategical element that made us love the thinking person's aspect behind the careful movement. An entire sub-system becomes a complete afterthought, with them only being convenient at hyper-specific instances rather than something that was there to truly compliment our whipping prowess to help with entire courses and encounters. Taking a death becomes less threatening as losing a sub-weapon essentially turns into a very minor slap on the wrist at worst, as an empty sub-weapon box may as well had been what it felt like the entire time we had been playing.

It's an ordeal that can't be simply ignored in a self-imposed challenge like the charged mega buster in every NES era Mega Man past the third game, and you're left with Simon being able to skillfully twirl his whip better than any other Belmont before or after him. Perhaps Simon was always meant to be presented as the most headstrong and bullish of the family? Characterization through mechanics? It remains to be seen if that was the intent, or if it was supposed to be an "evolution". An evolution that no doubt would've made this entry an even bigger target of contempt, especially if the stage design would continue to fail to compliment the new system beyond smattering a few bats flying down from odd angles, and if we could still easily thwart Axe Armors from below the floor they're standing on. Luckily for all of us however, this would be the only time such a new take would be used, and instead of being a deplorable turning point for the series, it is in fact unique and now it's own experience.

A retelling of the original that shows Simon's entire journey from beyond Devil's Castle, braving the horrors that crept from the onset of the horrid manifestation of Dracula's power within what was once a peaceful forest accompanied by strings of a violin within a purple and grey console. A walk through the caves with beautiful woodwind arrangements, and mesmerizing illusions brought upon by the seventh mode conjured by unknown forces presumably under the control of the dark lord himself. The approach to familiar scenery from the beginning of our original story of the legendary quest partnered by intimidating percussion for nightmares to come. We make our way through the retold portions of Simon's tale, and upon completion hear echoes of our past one last time before we must move on to beginnings of a new generation. The slow haunting keys of an organ cue the entry of Dracula to the main stage. Simon's Theme of which signaled the entrance of the hero at the very start, returns once again at the final moment the Count is nearing his defeat to build the audience's tension to the epic conclusion of the adventure. The orchestra plays to the agonizing death of the villain, and rings in daylight's victory over the darkness.

The fabled saga, retold and reimagined with added flare of chilling drama and suspense. Not to replace the original, but to remember it through a more cinematic lens. Forever immortal.

THE BINDING OF ISAAC WARP ZONE: S H A R D S O F I S A A C

This is my Shrek the Third.

Straight and to the point, this is the ONLY, and I mean ONLY time I genuinely do not have anything that is unambiguously positive to say regarding The Binding of Isaac. Rebirth is an INCREDIBLE game. Afterbirth was decent. Repentance is my FAVORITE game of ALL time. Flash was good. The Legend of Bumbo was also good (if unpolished at times). So that leaves ONE release, that flabbergasts the mind at how it costs 10 United States Dollars. That ONE stain on Isaac’s legacy that shan't be forgotten. That ONE DLC that’s more worthless than that 25 Lives bullshit in Sonic Lost World. THAT ONE DLC THAT IS...

Afterbirth+, also referred to as the worst fucking thing in existence by the overarching Isaac community, is easily the worst DLC I have ever played, and I mean that with no hyperbole, or anything of the sorts. It’s that BAD. There's almost NOTHING to be enjoyed here that couldn't be found within the previous, and infinitely more fun predecessors, and I highly recommend that literally skip over to Repentance.

EXHIBIT A: The new items are actually dogshit! There were about 70 new items in this DLC at launch, a poultry amount compared to the likes of Rebirth and Wrath of the Lamb, and almost all are terrible to boot. The most gimmicky, incompatible, Enter The Gungeon-tier bullshit you could ever imagine. The items are far too niche to be useful, and rarely synergize with the hundreds of previous items. Almost all provide little to no benefits to any run, or are just too finicky to be worth a damn. Remember the old-school D-Infinity? You know, the item that gave you a new dice each time you used it? That shit was so ass. Or Adrenaline? Which gives you more damage for each empty heart container? Or Greed’s Gullet? Or Large Zit? Or Brown Nugget? Or Shade? Sure, each DLC had it’s fair share of bad or niche items, but not to this level. And even if you got a bad item, it didn’t matter because they all SYNERGIZED. That’s the ENTIRE FUCKING POINT of The Binding of Isaac, and ensures that most of your runs are GOOD. But when your items border on no synergies, you lose a lit of your run’s overall potential. And the items themselves plainly suck, so what’s the point? Introducing too many bad items into the fray doesn’t make your DLC harder, it makes it more unfun and luck based. But difficulty doesn’t mean anything when your DLC is even EASIER than before! Not only is it as easy as previous releases, the game breaks have only gotten easier. A new item introduced, The Tarot Cloth, is a GAME WINNING item, and it’s pretty common at that. It doubles almost all consumables’ effectiveness. Ever wanted to have infinite money? Bam, Tarot Cloth + 2 of Diamonds, and you’ve broken the game. Or hell, Rune of Jera for the easiest game breaks in the world. Or get IV Bag and Restock for quite LITERALLY infinite money and items. Shit, you might as well remove the roguelike elements of Isaac at this point. And the actual content here? It is some of the most irritating bullshit you’ll ever find in roguelike history. The Void? GREEDIER MODE??? CHALLENGES?!?!?! ALL FUCKING TERRIBLE. I’ll be damned if I could find genuinely anything within the rough here, filled with rehashed and unfun content. I WISH I was joking, this DLC genuinely sucks and is a fundamental misunderstanding of the entire game’s DESIGN. Let's start off from the very top, with THE VOID!

EXHIBIT B: Look guys, it's the ultimate conclusion to Isaac’s story! For the first, erm, second... third... FOURTH, FOURTH TIME GUYS! Aren't you excited? And what's the ultimate final floor? What do you have to get in order to see the true ending of The Binding of Isaac? It's fucking random. Upon each Final boss kill, a small Void portal has a chance to appear. No items needed, nor skill involved. Off to a great start. And then you have the actual floor itself. It's a big, open floor, with 6 bosses each (one of which holds the final boss, Delirium), built off the backs of each individual floor already within the game. How fuuuuuuun… This is so fucking shameless. I'm not even fucking kidding. There's literally NO new enemies on this floor, aside from these weird ass portal things which… spew out other reused enem- 10 UNITED STATES DOLLARS EVERYBODY! It's so fucking LAZY. It just becomes so repetitive, traveling slowly between every floor, likely smiting anything in your path because of how strong you are, doubly more so if you dare to get Curse of the Lost and have no fucking map. And when you eventually, after 9 million years, find the final boss Delirium, you're in for an ass-blasting finale. Now, before I speak, let me just say that conceptually, Delirium is such a fucking cool fight on paper. AND he has a pretty banging design. Representing Isaac’s final dying delusions in a single boss is really interesting. But fuuuuck me if this fight isn’t annoying! Guess what Delirium is? Literally all of the bosses encountered in your past runs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!2!2!2! He transforms into each boss that you've encountered in prior runs, but now with a million bullets and twice as fast. Oh and get telefragged because fun and fair game design. Self admittedly, the boss isn't too bad to fight, in fact, it's kinda fun at points. But the fight itself is so creatively bankrupt and anti-climactic. When I think of the Repentance bosses, they all stick out in my mind because actually cool stuff happens leading up to them. In fact, there's borderline no storyline to this floor either. No rhyme nor reason. A Void just appears. Happens every Tuesday. And the contents within the floor barely correlate to the ending at all. Isaac dies… again? We get to see an argument between his Mom and Dad (not a new plot point but I digress), and then he dies. PLUS CAN'T EVEN INVENT NEW STORY! It's so funnily terrible at everything it does. And then Isaac walks into Purgatory? I was so confused when I got this ending. It’s not something I brought up, but almost every Isaac ending had correlated to the story, even a little bit. Even the one that was least connected to the story, the Hush ending, made sense because Blue Baby (dead Isaac) IS Hush. It’d make sense to show Isaac dead after that, BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT FUCKING HAPPENS! What does some Semen-esque Demon have to do with parents fighting? Sure, the actual floor connects with this, but not the ending! Yeah, I guess Isaac dying would be something that Delirium represents, but where the HELL did the parents’ arguments come into play at all? But in the end, does it matter? Because overall, the Void FUCKING SUCKS. It’s so ludo-narratively dissonant for its own good, and the gameplay is abysmal as the final chapter of The Binding of Isaac. Good music but 2/10. Moving on.

EXHIBIT C: Speaking of Voids, Apollyon, the new character! He starts with The Voi- It's the fucking D6. The Void absorbs items and gives you stats. Literally, in WHAT SCENARIO DO YOU NOT USE THE D6 WHEN YOU USE VOID??? Oh, it can absorb active items??? Okay??? Oh, no, that's some QUALITY 5 shit right there. Apollyon sucks and he is lame good character design tho 3/10.

EXHIBIT D: Greedier Mode. Need I say more? 0/10

Okay, but for real this time. Greedier Mode is commonly cited as one of the worst elements to Isaac as a whole. And this time, I actually agree. Hell, I even LIKED Greed Mode in the original. So what's so bad about Greedier?

First off, you have to donate 500 coins just to UNLOCK IT. That’s a big issue when it comes to game progression, as you won’t be able to even play Greedier even if you wanted to. Isaac has already let you play Hard Mode from the start, so I can’t see why Greedier had to be different here. Second of all, the mode itself fucking SUCKS. You get a poultry amount of money, barely enough to even SURVIVE, one extra wave spawns, and the timer is so sped up, oh my god, make it end please. Basic enemies also can be champions with no rewards for killing them. But hey, at least the Jam chance for the Donation Machine is decreased!!!! God. I am tired. And now the final boss has a second phase that lasts all of 2 seconds? Cool???

Exhibit E: Challenges. THIS is my breaking point. You might’ve thought Greedier was, or Delirium? No. The challenges in Rebirth and Afterbirth were fine, if a little short, and perhaps too easy. THE CHALLENGES IN AFTERBIRTH PLUS. They’re all TERRIBLE. EVERY SINGLE ONE HAS GIVEN ME FUCKING EPILEPSY. Pokey Mans and Pong are the only moderately okay ones, but the final 3 made me lose all hope for this game. April’s Fool: Everything has the wrong sprite and everything is the Bloat. We’re so funny, guys! It’s not like Spelunky, Nuclear Throne, and almost any roguelike is cooking us up on the market right now! Backasswards: Clear the game with 8-10 randomized items and do it backwards. Fun game de- LITERALLY JUST HOLD R UNTIL YOU GET A BROKEN ITEM COMBO!!! But, believe me folks. None of these compare to the worst challenge in the history of The Binding of Isaac. Do you wish to know the name? Well, here it is (barring the curse word).

ULTRA MOTHERFUCKING HARD. OH MY GOD. I have no idea what the entire developer team was on when creating this fucking challenge (or DLC in general!), but this is straight up poppycock. ALL CURSES ARE ENABLED, NO HEARTS SPAWN, AND EVERYTHING IS A CHAMPION!!! Do I even need to explain why this sucks? And guess what you get for completing ultimately one of the worst challenges in the game? A starting trinket. Uno. For Samson, which is a character you’ve probably 100%ed at this point. A SINGULAR FUCKING TRINKET. Not a cool ass item or anything for all of your troubles, like almost EVERY SINGLE ISAAC RELEASE HAS DONE AT THIS POINT, BUT NO! ONE FUCKING TRINKEY THAT SUCKS SHIT ANYWAYS. Hooray, I REALLY feel accomplished! This is a game that’s priced at $10, by the way? Could’ve fooled me!

At this point, what else is there to talk about? Victory Laps; runs that don’t even give you achievements during them? Or 100%, as unfun as the main game? Oh, guys, you gotta do everything with every character all over again. AND, as an additional fuck you, do 31 DAILY RUNS IN A FUCKING ROW. I AM NOT JOKING, AT LAUNCH, YOU HAD TO DO 31 FUCKING DAILY RUNS FOR A SINGULAR PILL. FUCK YOU! But yeah. Afterbirth Plus 100% SUCKS.

Before I close out this review, I wanted to mention the mod support, and zeusdeegoose policy. All products I review are reviewed as-is; mods are irrelevant to this discussion overall. Because if I did, basically every product I’ve review would be at least worth a 6/10; maybe higher. So that’s why I’ve neglected to mention it. But I will note that, while the mods for Afterbirth+ are cool, barring the numerous NSFW mods that have caused irreparable damage to the community (god, I hate you all), the mod scene for Afterbirth+ was limited by an incredibly shitty API. Not even Afterbirth+ could get mod support right, one of the main draws for the DLC in the FIRST PLACE! Later on, Repentance would release with these issues intact unfortunately, and modders had to REVERSE ENGINEER the entire game just to get an actually USEABLE API. What a shitshow, man...


Afterbirth+ is one of the worst expansions ever released, and I wholeheartedly stand by that. It’s unfun, recycled, unexciting content with absolutely nothing in it’s favor. Ultimately one of the worst releases I’ve seen, get it away from me, goodnight.

Or... was it? Well, announced before the release that the game would receive Booster Packs, small additions of content made by the community. What are my thoughts on these? Just as, if not more terrible than the base game. It’s just more items, and while some of these are pretty good, like Tech Zero, Mystery Gift, among others, the base game is still just as bad as before. Sure, The Forgotten is... cool, but other than that, there’s nothing. Delirium still sucks, Greedier Mode is still unfun bullshit, and overall, there’s still a major lack of content. But hey, at least they fixed the Dedication bullshit. God, what a joke. I have nothing else to add; Plus sucks, play Rebirth, Afterbirth, Antibirth, literally any other Isaac expansion instead instead, goodnight sweet prince, I’m out.

“The void inside cries / Consuming dissatisfied / Eating all alive ” - “Afterbirth Plus” by zeusdeegoose, Written on 4/22/24