In March, our site bestowed upon The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth a commendable score of 9/10. Originally released as a flash game in 2011, the Binding of Isaac was a 2D, rogue-like, twin-stick shooter that features procedurally-generated levels. The main character used his tears to battle the ultimate bad guy, his mom. Each run was completely different from the last as health, firepower, tear effects, and more were affected by the items picked up during a playthrough. The game was a masterclass in the rogue-like genre.
The game’s creator, Edmund Mcmillan, and the developer Nicalis, have released the chaos of The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth DLC onto the Xbox Store. As someone who has put over 500 hours into Rebirth, I am very excited to finally get my hands on Afterbirth for review. But does this meaty add-on have enough to keep me going for another 500 hours?
Well, yes. I am not going to drag that on any longer. Afterbirth is jam-packed with content. To start, Afterbirth adds two new characters. Unlocked by completing special actions in the main game, Lilith, the mother of demons, is the first new character I unlocked while playing. Her special feature is the incubus item that follows her around and shoots for her. She has her eyes covered and cannot shoot herself. I had trouble getting the hang of her at first, but when paired with the new box of friends item, her double and triple incubus reeked havoc.
The second new character is meant to stay secret so I will not spoil him, but his theme is related to the new mode–Greed mode. Greed mode is different than the main game as the player starts each run-through in a large room that is only left after completing the level. There are four adjoining rooms that contain items, but there is no fighting in those rooms. To start the floor I walked over a button and waves of enemies spawned in after an allotted time. When I could not kill quickly enough, I had to step on the button again to cancel the next wave and I took damage as a penalty. The ending boss, Ultra Greed, is incredibly tough and took some practice to beat flawlessly.
The main draw to Isaac is the items. Afterbirth adds a whopping 120 new items to the item pool, increasing the overall total to 500 possible items. And since the game has been out on PC for almost a year, Xbox players benefit from the items being tuned and balanced. Not only have new items been added, but old items now have better synergistic effects when combined with other items. Previously, the brimstone laser did little when combined with rubber cement. Now, the laser bounces all over the screen causing an incredible death trap.
If the 120 additional items, 1,000 additional rooms, two playable characters, and new ending area and boss are not enough to keep you entertained, Afterbirth also brings daily challenges. Every 24 hours, a new daily challenge run is added to the game. All players will play the same seed and compete for the best time and score. This adds a new complexity to The Binding of Isaac that is not a focus during normal play. To maximize score, different paths and actions must be done that are just plain silly during normal play. An example is I took the blood bag as my active item over shoop-da-whoop. Normally, sdw is a much better item, but the penny drops from blood bag gave me the point bonus needed to move up a few rankings. I am excited to see how my friends do on the leaderboards as time progresses.
While Afterbirth is awesome, it is in no way perfect. Afterbirth regularly crashes to dashboard while playing. This happens in about three of every ten runs. The game does auto-save your progress, so you will only lose a minute of playtime when you reload the level, but this is simply unacceptable. It was also impossible to recreate as doing the same action during the reload would continue on without a problem. Also, heads up to you achievement hunters, the Xbox listing for Afterbirth states it adds “MOAR new achievements.” However, on Xbox One the achievements are currently not unlocking for any players. The developer has acknowledged the error and we should see a patch soon.
Summary
The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth is a monstrous amount of add-on content for my money. I found the new mode innovative and fun. I found the new characters interesting and challenging. I found the new items exciting and awesome. But, I also found the random and consistent crashes frustrating. Afterbirth is a great piece of DLC with some hiccups that are not game-breaking, but it needs to be patched before I am willing to spend as much time with it as I have with Rebirth.
Joshua was a regular ICXM contributor between 2016–2017, publishing 42 articles across game reviews, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative.