(Part 3 of the Half Century Challenge, created by C_F. You can read their third review here)

In the depths of the ocean surrounding all of us in one way or another, there are plenty of different fascinating creatures that lurk below it, ones that are quite common for us to find, and even in some cases own as pets, and plenty of others that have yet to even be discovered by us at the time of me tying this review. One of the many different kinds of creatures that we do see often lurking below the water’s surface would have to be sharks, and for good reason. I mean, come on, they are only some of the best kind of fish that you could find, being very neat to watch go about their business, seeing the many different types of sharks out there, and even enjoying them with a nice side dish whenever you catch and murder one………… or at least, I assume they taste good, cause I have never eaten one myself before. Naturally, because sharks are cooler then you will ever be, there have been many different types of movies, games, or what have you entirely revolving around sharks and the things they do best, and in terms of video games, we would see ones involving sharks going as far back as the early 70s, such as the case with today’s game, Killer Shark.

Now, truth be told, I had no clue this game existed for a long time, and most of you probably haven’t either. If you were like me, you have probably only seen it once before during this scene in Jaws, not paying any mind to it, and just moving on with your day, but now that I do know about the game’s existence solely through this challenge that I am doing, looking back on it while knowing details about it is… pretty fascinating, not gonna lie. I did wanna try to play the game for myself, but unfortunately, I was not able to, not only because of there not being a machine of it anywhere near me (or probably anywhere else for the next five or so states), but given the way that the game works, you probably wouldn’t be getting the full experience of the game by trying to emulate it, so I decided to opt out of it. However, just because I can’t play a game doesn’t mean I can’t talk about it, so come along, friends, as I ramble on for a good couple minutes or so about this random game from 1972 that nobody gives a shit about! HERE WE GO!

One thing I gotta point out automatically with this thing is just the design of the machine by itself, as it does a pretty great job of automatically drawing me in. The simplicity of the design, the eye-catching colors that compliment each other, the very simple silhouettes of the diver and shark placed on it, all of it tells you exactly what you need to know about the game, and I imagine it managed to catch peoples’ attention back in the day effectively as a result, which is to be admired for this early on in video game history. The same can also be extended to the actual “graphics” of the game itself, which are dated and basic as shit, but they still look pretty good for the time, and the way that the sharks in the game are animated is charming, in an amateurish sort of way.

The objective of the game is very simple: you are a diver who is about to have the worst day of his life, when he runs into a vicious, killer shark, who follows the wise words of his fellow shark, Bruce, and doesn’t eat fish, but humans are ripe for the picking as far as he’s concerned! So you gotta swim away from that bitch as fast as you can, while armed with your trusty harpoon gun, which you will be using to fire at the shark for an unprecedented amount of time, because for some reason, it is a super mutant shark that can take many different shots from a harpoon. From there, you grab ahold of the plastic gun that the game presents to you and then take aim, shooting many different shots at the shark to make sure it regrets ever messing with you, racking up a very simple score that can be seen on the top of the cabinet, all within a time limit, to prove that you are the best Brody impersonator on the planet.

There isn’t really anything else that this game has to offer besides all of that from what I could tell. You shoot at a shark for a good while, you rack up points, you try to beat your friend’s high score, and that’s all she wrote, which is to be expected from a lot of arcade games like this, especially released this long ago, but once again, a lot of why I found this game to be so appealing was because of its simplicity and charm. The way that the shark moves around on the screen, the noises that the gun makes whenever you fire it, the incredibly simple scoring system on the top of the arcade machine, and the hilarious animation that plays whenever you actually hit the shark at any point. It definitely shows just how primitive video games were at that point, but at the same time, it is also pretty impressive for its time. Yeah, it is mostly just done using lights, with not much else helping it stand out visually, but in a time when your only other options out there were a game where you bounce a ball back and forth or some text-based adventures here or there, this shit is revolutionary in some sense, and I think that alone deserves some praise above all else.

Overall, Killer Shark was an interesting game to look over with the footage that I found online, as it not only shows just what kind of games could be made at this point in time, but also how to make something so simple as killing sharks feel so engaging and welcoming in video game form, and while I may not ever be able to play it, I am at least glad that I know of its existence, as well as how I can share it all with you guys to some capacity. If you wanna see the game in action for yourself, check out this video, as it does a pretty good job at showing off what this game is all about, and hey, maybe later down the road, I could try doing some more reviews in this kind of style, ones that are meant to observe a game rather than needlessly nitpicking the fuck out of it. I dunno, we’ll see how it goes. For now though, I think I’ll move onto a game that I can actually play, and one that involves less sharks dying. They already have it bad enough as is, what with them now snorting cocaine and becoming tornadoes.

Game #580

To nintendoamerica3@hotmail.com

Cc reggiefilsaime@gmail.com +70102 others

Big Fat Fucking Stacks of Cash

Dearest Nintendo,

Just steal this dude's fucking game and sell it for 20 bucks. "Oh, how do I make money? Oh, it's so hard being a mega-corporation worth billions of dollars, waaaa" Just steal his game and put it on the Nintendo Switch. What's he going to do, sue you? It's literally a free 100 million dollars. Why would you not do this?

Yours sincerely,

The only smart person in the history of video games (Henry Vines)

Played 2 hours and realized I just was not having any fun. I don't particularly like the weapon (his attack animations/feel). I have problems timing the parry and the dodge to the attack animations. I love big shields in Dark Souls, but that feeling is NOT the same as shielding in this game. I dont like that the first area is just a open area with some "ruins".

I got to the second area (a big safe zone city) and all my exploration drive went away. I do not want to hear any more talking, I don't want to explore anymore so I just quit.

Yeah I think the artstyle, setting, and music is a good change of pace for Souls-likes, but it I don;t like the combat so 👎

The secret behind Pikmin’s success was not that it somehow outclassed classic real-time strategy franchises, but rather that it was never competing with them to begin with. According to Shigeru Miyamoto, he came up with the idea for Pikmin one day when he observed a group of ants carrying leaves together into their nest. Miyamoto then imagined a game focused on cooperation rather than competition; he asked, “Why can’t everyone just move together in the same direction, carrying things as a team?” Nintendo EAD’s design philosophy went along with this line of reasoning, melding design mechanics from different genres to create an entirely new yet familiar experience. As a result, instead of competing against other players in Pikmin akin to classic RTS games, Pikmin forces players to explore and compete with the very environment itself by introducing puzzle-exploration and survival mechanics. It made sense in the end; after all, real-time strategy is concerned with minimizing time spent to get a competitive edge over opponents, and what better way to translate this than to force players to master their understanding over the terrain itself, managing and optimizing the one resource which governs them all?

Perhaps Nintendo’s greatest challenge was figuring out how to translate a genre considered by many to be niche and technical to an intuitive yet layered game, and even more so, translating classic actions from a mouse and keyboard allowing for such complexity to a suite of simplified controls using a gamepad. Coming from the other side as someone who played Starcraft as a kid and didn’t get into Pikmin until recently however, I’m surprised at how well EAD’s tackled this endeavor. Classic RTS games focus upon base-building and resource gathering through the micromanagement of units. Pikmin’s take upon this is to introduce a dichotomy between the player character Captain Olimar, who is incapable of doing anything by himself but can issue commands to the units only he can create by plucking out of the soil, and the Pikmin, who are essentially brainless but represent the units that must do everything. The player as Olimar must be present to figure out exactly how to best traverse and exploit the environment around him (replacing the base-building with management/prioritization puzzles) while the Pikmin provide bodies to construct, move, and attack the world around them. However, the Pikmin’s AI is fairly limited and as a result, Pikmin will sit around helplessly once they finish their actions and often get distracted by nearby objects while moving around, which is where the micromanagement kicks in. Therefore, the player has to decide how to best build up their supply of Pikmin to allocate tasks to surmount bottlenecks while exploring and opening the world, all while working against the limited thirty-day timer throughout the game’s five areas.

A part of me expected to really struggle with the gamepad while playing Pikmin, but the available actions on offer allow for a surprising degree of control despite the simplification. For instance, consider Olimar’s whistle; as a substitute for dragging and clicking to select units on PC, the whistle on the GameCube lets Olimar quickly rally groups of clustered units. Holding down B for longer allows the player to increase the size of the whistle’s AOE, which allows the player to better control and target how many Pikmin to rally in any cluster (hence, the analog of clicking and dragging to select boxes of units on mouse and keyboard). The Swarm command is another interesting translation. The obvious use is to allow Olimar to quickly move nearby Pikmin by directing them with the C-stick versus needing to aim and throw them by positioning and rotating Olimar himself. However, because it can be used to shift the position of Pikmin with respect to Olimar, it can also be used to swap the Pikmin on-deck for throwing (since Olimar will always throw the Pikmin closest to him) without needing to dismiss and re-rally separated Pikmin colors, and most importantly, it allows you to directly control the group of Pikmin following Olimar while moving Olimar himself. This second application allows the player to kite the Pikmin around telegraphed enemy attacks, and properly funnel them so the Pikmin aren’t getting as easily stuck behind walls or falling off ledges/bridges into hazards. That said, noticeable control limitations do exist. Olimar cannot pivot to move the reticle without changing his position with respect to the Pikmin around him, which can make aiming in place annoying if the Pikmin types you need to throw aren’t close enough to be moved next to Olimar with Swarm. Additionally, there is no way for Olimar to simultaneously and directly control multiple separated groups of Pikmin, which does make allocating tasks a bit slower. However, given that the tasks themselves usually don’t necessitate more than one Pikmin type at a time, this limitation is understandable, especially since the sequels would tackle this challenge with more expansive controls and multiple playable characters on the field.

Pikmin’s base model as a result is a fantastic translation of an abstract design philosophy, but I can’t help but wonder if the original could have been pushed further. Don’t misunderstand me: I absolutely take pride in mastering a game by learning all about its inner workings and pushing its mechanics to the limits simply by following a few intuitive genre principles. As such, I wish that the game was a bit harder in order to really force me to squeeze every bit of time from the game’s solid premise. For example, combat is often optional in Pikmin given how many full-grown Bulborbs are found sleeping, but given that most enemies don’t respawn within the next day after killing them and I can bring their carcasses back to base to more than replenish my Pikmin supply, combat is almost always in my favor, especially since certain enemies will spawn more mobs if they aren’t defeated. If circumstances existed where it would be unfavorable to engage (such as losing a significant number of Pikmin every time, or having so little time left that engaging would waste time), then I feel that this would add an additional layer of decision-making of deciding when to sneak past sleeping Bulborbs rather than just wiping out as many foes as I could as soon as possible. In a similar sense, I felt that certain design elements such as the Candypop Buds for switching Pikmin colors were a bit underutilized; outside of one environmental puzzle, I never had to use the Candypop Buds, mainly because I had so many remaining Pikmin and time to never justify their usage. I’ll concede here that Pikmin’s one-day Challenge Mode does at least provide a score attack sandbox where I’m forced to take my Pikmin stock and remaining time into higher consideration, but it’s missing the connectivity of the main story mode where my earlier actions would greatly affect how I planned later days in a run, particularly in making judgement calls on which days to spend at each site and which days I dedicate towards building up my Pikmin numbers versus hauling in ship parts. Regardless, I found myself completing the main game with all parts in just twenty days on my first run with minimal resets, and I’d love to try a harder difficulty mode with a stricter time limit and tougher Pikmin margins to really force me to better conserve my working force and dedicate more time to restocking my supply.

Gripes aside, I’m glad that my friends finally convinced me to try out Pikmin, not just to better appreciate RTS games as a whole but to also gain an appreciation of how different genre mechanics can work in tandem to intuitively convey concepts without spelling everything out to the player. It’s classic Nintendo at their core, and while I had my reservations coming in as a fan of older RTS franchises, they’ve managed to convince me once again that the best hook is not simply offering something that’s visibly better, but rather offering something that’s visibly different. I still think that there’s improvement to be had, but given how much I’ve enjoyed the first game, I can’t wait to see what they have to offer from iterating upon their memorable beginnings.

I was not expecting to love this as much as I did. It's not perfect for sure, but what it did right was more than enough to push it to 5 stars for me!

The combat felt THE best I've experienced in a soulslike outside of Fromsoft, even surpassing Dark Souls 2 or Lies of P for me. Aggro Crab just gets it somehow! My only gripe with the combat is just that the game got a little bit too easy towards the end. I think this is because you can unlock so many powerups that you get to a point where you can just mow enemies down without much trouble. I fought the final boss with full upgrades and took almost no damage (I didn't use assist mode a single time except to get the gun achievement post game). I would've loved to see a NG+ mode or boss rush to address this or just better scaling at least.

The platforming and movement were an absolute joy. Rolling around in one of the many incredibly creative shells and using the grappling hook had a great sense of speed. Sure some platforming sections could be janky but it never bothered me to the point of frustration. I wasn't even expecting the platforming going in so the level of quality it's at was a pleasant surprise. It also sounds like the team is hard at work on fixing bugs as well. Speaking of bugs, most of the ones I experienced just had to do with me getting launched after using certain moves. This also didn't happen often enough to frustrate me either.

The story is the other part that was a huge surprise. I was fully expecting the story to just be goofy crab shenanigans and there's for sure a lot of crab/ocean related humor that was mostly just fine and sometimes fell flat, but the main character actually goes through a lot of meaningful growth, the story gets pretty dark and serious, and it even had me on the verge of tears a few times. It wasn't a life changing story by any means, but it felt way more epic and meaningful than I could've anticipated.

The game also has a lot of references to other games which were kind of fun to discover though it felt like there were a little too many references at times. Now and then the attempts at humor even went a bit too far imo. Still, it was a great experience.

HIGHLY recommend this game to anyone who enjoys soulslike games or is looking for a challenge/different experience. I have heard about more bugs on other platforms so it could be worth waiting a while for more bug fixes. I'm feeling pretty strongly that this'll be my GOTY this year.

NOTE: This is a review of the DLC, NOT the game as a whole. I love Isaac Rebirth, see my review on it if you're curious as to why.
Afterbirth Plus is easily the worst DLC of them all. It barely adds anything at all and what's here is incredibly mediocre. Let's start with it's major additions.
The Void SUCKS. Not only is the entire floor big as all hell, it's really, REALLY easy. Imagine Basement 1, but they give you Tech X, Brimstone, and Polyphemus on the first floor, and you have The Void. You just steamroll everything in your path. Sure, you could somewhat say that about the main game, but that was much rarer to achieve. And don't even get me started on the glitchy nightmare that is Delirium. He's so glitchy and can telefrag you whenever he wants to. He's also way too damn fast. He's a fun fight, but he can be pretty annoying at times.
Greedier Mode is just harder Greed Mode. Not much else to say.
There are 2 new characters. Forgotten is fun, but Apollyon, while also fun, is way too similar to Isaac. You void bad items, just like you'd D6 bad items.
100 new items, which is fine. But there's a lot of items that are almost entirely worthless. Unique, but not good enough for another major DLC.
The 5 new challenges are AWFUL. The only one that's decent here is Pokeymans; the rest are terrible. Backasswards is just RNG, April's Fool isn't fun, Pong is pretty much just slow roll, and Ultra Hard is the worst challenge in the entire game.
Overall, AB+ just wasn't a good DLC. It's too miniscule in content, and the new stuff isn't all that great. Buy it for Repentance and nothing else.

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