The Therapist Gamer

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is a roguelike game I played on the PS Vita, but it's available on a variety of platforms.  The story is brief but intriguing: a little boy named Isaac is enjoying life with his mother until she believes she hears the voice of God telling her to do things.  She takes all of his possessions, including his clothes, and locks him in a room by himself.  The voice tells her that she needs to sacrifice Isaac to show her devotion to Him and she approaches Isaac's room with an ax, which he can see through a crack in the door.  In a panic, Isaac searches the room and finds a trap door.  He jumps down and the game begins.

 

The game is randomized each time and is designed to be played multiple times.  You go from room to room in a style much like the dungeons in the original Legend of Zelda.  Your offensive technique is to shoot your tears.  Throughout the game you'll find some of hundreds of possible power-ups, each with a unique property.  One power-up will increase your maximum health, another will increase how many tears you shoot, another may cause coins to magnetically come towards you, and another may cause you to shoot lava instead of tears.  Many of the weapon modifications work together, so if you get one item that makes your tears huge an another than makes them zigzag, you'll shoot giant zigzagging tears.  The exploration of the dungeon and the different item combinations make the game ever-intriguing.

 

Perhaps reflective of Isaac's mind (there's evidence to suggest the entire game is simply in his mind), lots of the environment and monsters are juvenile.  Poop and urine abound, as are monsters that barf on you.  The visuals and subject matter may be too intense for some people, but I found it to be basically goofy and enjoyable.  Who doesn't love poop?

 

It's pretty easy to die, but even after you "beat" the game, you'll want to play more.  Not only to discover more of the content, but because there are several characters to play as and multiple endings.  The more times you beat the game the more you realize that you haven't really beaten it yet!