Videogame Playlist: Binding of Isaac

I think it’s about time I talked about this gem of a messed up game. Binding of Isaac is like a combination of Link to the Past’s retro top-down dungeon-crawl gameplay, Doom’s gore, and Conker’s humor. If that’s not enough to whet your appetite then allow me to give you some exposition. The main character of this game is Isaac, a troubled infant boy, whose mother just got a message from God. God tells the mother that she must kill Isaac because, apparently, he’s the antichrist. Isaac’s mother then tosses him into the basement while she prepares for his murder, and so begins Isaac’s long twisted journey. You control Isaac and guide him through the basement while fighting off monsters with your tears (yes, literally tears) and unlock special upgrades (you can turn into your dead cat), and as you complete each level, you go deeper into the basement and deeper into the insanity that is this game.

With that intense story, it might be easy to stereotype this game and thrown in a bunch of today’s metal hits into a playlist, which would probably be great, but it wouldn’t fully adhere to the tone of Binding of Isaac. Beyond all the talk of the antichrist and filicide, the game also has a layer of crude humor and fun (YOU CAN TURN INTO YOUR DEAD CAT!)

So, ultimately, yes, the Binding of Isaac is metal, but it might also make you laugh, which might make you think you’re going to hell…which is also pretty metal. It brings to mind a certain kind of metal, embraced by the minds of Metalocalypse and Tenacious D. Fast, heavy, distorted rhythms and riffs that are performed with a mischievous smile, and that smile persists as you go from dungeon to dungeon shooting tears at rocks, poop, flies, spiders, and wild eyeless mutant babies. Yeah, that kind of metal.