I bought The Binding of Issac and Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit today off the Steam Summer Sale. They’re equally absurd.

Issac has been described as a roguelike, but that doesn’t come across at first. It feels like Zelda. The original Zelda. Just the dungeons from the original Zelda.

You’re a small child with a large head in a big scary world that… er, sorry, wrong persona.

Starting again. What bothers me the most about Issac is that your character never turns his head when he moves. All you see is his crying face looking at the camera while tears fly in all directions. You also can’t fall down pits, which is the nicest thing I never expected the game to do. I’m not thrilled with it, but the oppressive and disturbing atmosphere is a nice change of pace from the happy shiny environments of Dark Souls.

Hot Pursuit feels better on the PC. Maybe it’s because I didn’t pay $60 for it, or maybe it’s because I’ve made peace with the fact that it controls like Ridge Racer. But a line in the intro cinematic made me think. The announcer says hotshot drivers come from all around the world to race really fast and “tame Seacrest County.”

I feel like I’ve heard this before in other Fast and Furious clones. What does it mean? How could you tame an entire county (or, presumably, just the police department) by driving really fast? It’s Speed Racer logic, where the protagonist solves all his problems by doing the only thing he can. Slurms MacKenzie approves, but what would this silliness actually require?

If your goal is to drive really fast and not be bothered by an entire county (because you’ve “tamed” it), I can think of a few ways to accomplish that.

• Defund or bribe the police department
• Depopulate the city
• Become the mayor

Your choice, anonymous street racer: sabotage the cops from the inside or outside, convince everyone to leave town, or become a politician. Fun fun fun!