REVIEW
If you're tired of killing aliens, zombies and/or Russian terrorists, then Binary Domain just might be for you. In SEGA's futuristic squad shooter you won't actually fire a shot at a single living thing, just waves upon waves of mechanical maniacs hell-bent on instigating the extinction of you and your species. While its core gameplay doesn't stray too far from the Gears of War template, its setting and plot - inspired by the likes of I, Robot and Bladerunner - makes for a fresh and often thrilling experience, with only a handful of negatives holding it back from greatness.
Binary Domain takes place in Tokyo, in the year 2080. The Amada Corporation, one of the industry leaders in robotics technology, has begun producing humanoid robots that are gradually assimilating their way into the human population. It's up to you, Sergeant Dan Marshall, and an interchangeable squad of multinational mercenaries to infiltrate Amada and put a stop to the android production before it's too late for mankind. The plot admittedly takes a while to get going, but the last few hours of the game present a few interesting twists and turns.
The fight against Amada's robot army takes place in a variety of Neo Tokyo settings, from the shattered slums and sewers of the city's underground to the sun kissed skyline of its affluent upper reaches. There are a handful of times where you'll find yourself slogging through grey, crate-riddled corridors, but for the most part the game designers have come up with interesting locales to frame each action set piece in.
Binary Domain's core gameplay mechanics will be instantly familiar for anyone who's played a cover-based shooter before. You can blind-fire, roadie-run, hop between cover… You know the drill. Beyond the notable inability to turn corners whilst in cover, and a slightly limp feeling melee attack, the control setup works, and works well.
What makes Binary Domain's otherwise boilerplate brand of combat enjoyable is the enemies you face. Forget about the bullet sponges that so often inhabit games of this type, the destructible nature of Binary Domain's robotic foes gives a tangible sense of the damage you're inflicting with each bullet fired - armor shreds into scattered pieces of shrapnel, legs are blown off leaving enemies to drag themselves along with all the relentlessness of a Terminator. Given that you're essentially facing off against an army of glorified appliances, it's somewhat surprising just how violent it all feels. Put simply: machine-gunning robots to death is awesome.
The action never stagnates, either. When you're not shooting at robots, you're surfing on robots, getting chased by giant, transforming biker robots, even taking control of a fallen robot in order to use it as a de facto mech. There are plenty of imposing bosses to take down along the way, and the game's 10-hour campaign hurtles along at a breakneck pace – although some of the palate-cleansing gameplay diversions such as the jet ski section suffer somewhat due to clunky execution.
Binary Domain has two other major gameplay features of note. One is the voice command system for your squad mates, which allows you to wear a headset and speak basic orders like "cover me" and "wait" (Kinect owners take note, the game unfortunately doesn't support Microsoft's peripheral). It can even interpret a handful of basic swear words, just in case you're prone to dropping the odd F-bomb in between grenade tosses.
While the list of commands is pretty extensive, it ultimately boils down to variations on the one small set of available orders – you can't really coordinate any complicated flanking maneuvers or anything, just basic stop or go-type directives. Still, the bottom line is that the voice recognition works far more often than it doesn't – there's even a calibration tool that allows for ambient noise in your lounge room – and if you feel a bit too goofy talking to your console, you can still give commands via a streamlined set of controller inputs instead. Although when you do give squad orders with the controller your character stays mute, which is odd.
The game also features a relationship system between you and your squad mates, which is affected directly by your actions during battle and your responses during each conversation. Be good to your squad and they'll obey your orders and offer tips for defeating certain enemy types; piss them off and they'll be less helpful in a firefight – ignoring your commands and being less proactive with their attacks.
It's an interesting idea, but it ultimately feels pretty superficial as you really have to go out of your way to get them offside, and unless you're a completely unreasonable jerk then chances are you'll lead a relatively happy band of brothers and sisters throughout. Even if you are a prick on purpose, it's not like your squad will ever up and leave you, and in terms of difficulty the experience doesn't really change noticeably whether your squad mates trust you or not.
The consequence system doesn't really bare any major impact on the storyline either – the odd cutscene here and there may be slightly different depending on your level of trust with each team mate, but don't expect a direct influence over any Mass Effect-style killing off of major characters, or any other major moral decisions.
Perhaps due to the incorporation of the trust and consequence system and the importance of the AI relationships to the gameplay, there isn't any co-op support for the main campaign, which is a shame. Instead, the multiplayer consists of the usual variants on deathmatches and capture the flag, as well as a Horde-inspired co-op mode called Invasion, which throws waves of increasingly challenging enemies at you and rewards your kills with currency to spend on weapon upgrades. It's all totally playable, but doesn't present anything new and is unlikely to threaten the established online shooter stalwarts.
Closing Comments
Ironically, for a game about the eradication of androids posing as humans, Binary Domain is itself a form of replicant. It convincingly apes the mechanics and behaviours of the best shooters on the market, but its augmentations feel noticeably forced and artificial. Having said that, shearing through robots in a Neo Tokyo setting makes for a nice change of pace within a genre typically populated by alien antagonists and Eastern European enemies, and in all but name this is essentially the best Terminator game ever made. The voice command and trust systems are interesting experiments that yield slightly underdeveloped results, but ultimately Binary Domain doesn’t hang its hat on them – even without the gimmicks this is an enjoyable albeit derivative shooter that any self-respecting sci-fi fan should check out.Links
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