Binary Domain

Sega and Yakuza Team have put together an impressive package – Some of the best shooting action of 2012 with some memorable characters and a slick presentation on par with the Metal Gear series. In Binary Domain, you play as Dan Marshall. As part of a Rust Crew, you and your buddy Big Bo break into a futuristic Tokyo where the slums are entirely separated from the upper city due to massive flooding. Robots are the name of the game, and you will shoot, maim, bash, and explode your way through hundreds of them in all shapes and sizes. From the tiniest spiders, to giant motorcycle bots, this game throws everything at you and gives you the tools to deal with them all. A decent sized arsenal is spread throughout the game, from mounted turrets to RPGs. Your default assault rifle can be upgraded along with your squad mates weapons at determined shop points in the game. Aside from bullets, your rifle can charge up and shoot bursts of energy that stun larger enemies and straight up annihilate smaller foes.

To fill out your arsenal, you can purchase various chips that add to you and your squad’s health, defense, grenade and medkit limits, and reload speed; for balance, each implant is a different shape, and you must Tetris piece them into place. To purchase these upgrades and implants, you have to shoot a lot of robots – the game encourages a super satisfying method of play where instead of simply taking down each robot enemy quickly, it’s much more profitable to tear apart the robot as much as possible for the maximum return in credits. Faces and chest pieces can be blown off, head shots make robots turn on their own kind, and exploded limbs affect whether an enemy can hold onto its weapon or not (or in some cases, a riot shield). You can shoot the legs out from under most scrap-heads, and they will respond by crawling towards you, pitifully trying to take a swipe at your feet. Feel free to bash their metal faces in whenever this happens, as I often did.

When you’re not participating in a hallway shootout, a jetski sequence, or a chase scene that has you blowing up cars or blasting enemies trying to board your train, the game treats you to some surprisingly good dialog and cutscenes. This game is funny, with well developed characters that manage to avoid being one-note, and each squad member has a unique bit of chemistry with Dan. Built into the game is a trust system; as you play, your squaddies will ask you questions and your response will either raise or lower their trust. Being too forthcoming with a squad mate about your feelings towards them can lead to negative reactions. I should mention that this game has a voice command system – unfortunately it’s finicky enough to the point that I turned it off by the third chapter. The only words it seemed to recognize consistently were “yes” and, oddly, “fuck.” On top of that, if I wasn’t playing with headphones on in a perfectly silent setting, the game would interpret random keyboard clacking as dialog, leading to a number of confusing exchanges with my squad members. It’s hardly an issue though, as switching it off affords you a simple menu that you can use to respond to questions, as well as relay some simple orders, like “regroup” and “blitz!” that your allies with either follow or loudly ignore.

While the game has fun and satisfying combat, it’s not always easy in Binary Domain. Moving around is fairly clunky, and snapping in and out of cover isn’t a clean process. Many times I would be attempt to dodge out of the way of projectiles, only to find myself snapping to a wall directly in the line of fire. Luckily, the robot AI isn’t very smart, making them easy to flank or take out with grenades. Unfortunately, this hitch in the AI extends to your squad mates. It’s all too common to be blasting away at a group of enemies, only to have Rachel or Charlie run directly in front of you – friendly fire is on in this game, and shooting or grenading your allies will lower their trust. Fortunately, it’s not that big of a hit to their trust value, but I still didn’t like being berated for shooting Faye because she decided to melee a group of enemies I was shooting at. There were also plenty of moments in boss battles where I would get temporarily stuck in a loop of getting one-shotted by the boss, which meant I was down and had to either revive myself or call for an ally to revive me, and as soon as I was revived I would get hit again. On normal difficulty, the game is not too challenging. I managed to only die completely a handful of times, and any other mission failures were attributed to me not understanding my objective (trust me, more my fault than the game’s).

Story is a big focus, especially considering Binary Domain is a third person shooter. The plot deals a lot with the relationship between robots and humans – the nonviolent robots all have service jobs, like servers and receptionists. Hollow Children are illegal robots that look, act, and feel human and don’t even realize they themselves are robots. The global and personal relationship between humans and robots, and what happens when the differentiating line gets a little too blurry, is explored in the 8-10 hour story. I name dropped the Metal Gear series for good reason, as the politics and themes in this universe are very similar, stretching as far as the length of the cutscenes. There are hardly anything like Metal Gear Solid 4′s 71-minute movie, but for a game in this genre, it sure beats out Gears of War, and even the more story-focused Spec Ops: The Line, for length and number of cutscenes. I enjoyed them all, too! The writing is consistent and self-aware. Thumbs ups are given, “bro-ments” are shared between Dan and his buddy Big Bo, and almost every cutscene before a big fight ends with the group exhibiting a tough guy, gun-pointing posture. It’s well acted and the story gets manages to get crazy without going overboard. Binary Domain is an enjoyable, explosive ride with a few technical hitches that tarnish the experience without sapping too much fun out of it.