Binary Domain

The Rad

• Solid shooting and handling.
• Robot enemys are fun to dismantle.
• French robot

The Bad

• Trust system is compromised by dumb A.I. partner.
• Voice recognition fails more often than not.

I don’t feel like there’s loads to say on Binary Domain.

It’s a solid, cover based third person shooter.

It’s mechanically sound and fun to play.

It doesn’t weave the greatest tale ever told, but you’ll meet some interesting characters along the way. All giving you decent enough incentive to shoot some robots.

Robots are typically my least favorite enemy type in any given game, but Binary Domain makes them fun! Dismantling them for additional credits to spend in stores is ultra satisfying aside from just giving you tactical advantages such as slowing them down by blasting their legs off or removing their weapons by blasting their arms.

The game also has some pretty decent, kind of old school boss fights with some massive mechanical monstrosities.

The thing that makes Binary Domain more interesting on the surface than your average cover based shooter is that there’s sort of light rpg elements - mostly referring to the conversation system. Different choices make different party members like you more or less, which will affect their judgement when it comes to the orders you give them.

If they like you they’ll be more inclined to come save your arse when you need it than they would otherwise. One problem with this system is that you lose trust with a party member if you shoot them and they are prone to walking right through your line of sight as you’re blasting away. A major problem if like me you prefer to hang back rather than take the lead.

The conversations are simple in that you bring up a menu and respond with a simple phrase to get your feelings across. Like “yeah” if you approve or “damn!” if you don’t. You can also do this hands free by playing with a microphone plugged in and simply speaking the words, you can also use the microphone to bark orders at your A.I. companions. Unfortunately in my experience this seldom worked.

The microphone would either not pick me up at all or misinterpret what I said which at times could have hazardous implications or at the very least just piss off your buddies.

I don’t think the voice stuff and the whole trust thing in general work out as well as you’d hope, but the general feel of the shooting and the satisfaction you’ll get from slaying synthetics make Binary Domain worth a look - especially now you can grab it for cheap!