Binary Domain Review

Binary Domain is a game about blowing up robots. Hundreds and hundreds of robots.

If that sounds appealing to you then this offering from Sega’s Yakuza Studio is unlikely to disappoint. On the surface, Binary Domain looks like a fairly generic third-person cover shooter – and in many ways it is just that. However, what really makes this game stand out from the rest is the robot enemies you fight against.

Shooting robots in Binary Domain is just fantastic. Each robot is pristine when you meet it, with a nice metal finish and a brand new paint job. Throw a few hundred rounds in their direction though and all of a sudden they don’t look so pretty. Shards of metal casing fly away when bullets impact; armour plates are blasted off revealing the glowing circuits that lie beneath; arms, legs and even heads are blown clean off as shots strike home.

This gives you fantastic feedback on the impact your weapons are having against enemies and makes them feel meaty and powerful. It’s a great feeling to focus your fire on an individual, or on a tightly packed group of robots, and watch as they practically disintegrate under the onslaught.

Despite minor inconveniences such as the lack of legs, or even lack of a head, your robot enemies are very resilient. When the smoke clears and the firing stops it’s not uncommon to see a legless and one armed robot crawling slowly towards you, or a headless juggernaut firing randomly at friend and foe alike.

You are not alone in your mission to destroy every electronic appliance in the city of Tokyo. All-American superman Dan Marshall is joined by a multinational unit of elite robot killers – or ‘Rust Crew’ – whose job it is to assist you in your ‘covert’ mission to apprehend the head of a major Japanese robotics corporation.

Despite being accompanied at (nearly) all times by a varying number of AI squad members throughout the course of the mission this is a strictly single player campaign only – no co-operative play allowed. While some may consider this a missed opportunity it does serve to allow you to explore two features of Binary Domain that attempt to provide some innovation.

The first feature is that the loyalty of each team member is different and can change during the course of your mission. Agree with them in conversations or have them in your team when you are fighting well and their loyalty will increase. Disagree with them regularly or hit them with friendly fire and their loyalty will go down. The loyalty of each team member affects how willing they are to follow your orders and can also affect certain aspects of the game’s final chapters.

While this may sound interesting it is a fairly two dimensional system. Improving a squad member’s loyalty generally involves saying “Yes” to them whenever they talk to you and not filling them full of lead every time they get in your way. When the question is “Nice work, do you think you can keep it up?” and the suggested answers are “Yes”, “No” and “S**t” it’s pretty obvious what the right answer is.

The second of these features is the implementation of voice control. By using a headset or microphone you can issue orders to individual squad members, praise or condemn their performance, apologise when you shoot them by mistake or even just shout profanities at the enemy.

Again this is a great system in principle, but unfortunately it does not work in practice as the game has a real problem in recognising the voice input. Perhaps it is due to my accent (which is not that bad) but voice commands during my playthrough of Binary Domain were usually either not recognised, or worse, recognised incorrectly. On several occasions I even lost squad loyalty by failing to respond correctly or at all to questions – despite clearly saying “yes” over and over again into my headset.

Fortunately if you unplug your input device or disable voice commands you can then issue basic commands such as “advance” and “regroup” at the press of a button. You do lose the ability to order around individuals and can only issue orders on a squad-wide level, but it is much better to do this than deal with the frustration of constantly having your commands ignored or misheard.

For the most part, fighting the robot hordes is a blast. The game engine is capable of throwing plenty of enemies at you at once and there are a number of different variations of robot, all of which require different tactical approaches to engage. Large open planned environments with a good spread of available cover mean most fights can be approached from a number of different angles.

Boss fights with massive mechs are encountered regularly and for the most part are handled well. There are a fair few gaming clichés in these battles such as conveniently placed heavy weapons, an abundance of handy ammo boxes and a fair few ‘shoot the glowing bit’ style encounters. However, the majority of battles are fun enough that these minor issues can be overlooked.

Also scattered liberally throughout the campaign are vehicular ‘on-rails’ shooting sections that serve as bridges between locations and chapters. These are probably the least fun aspect of Binary Domain, consisting mainly of holding down the fire button while the game goes on around you. While these sections are not the most fun part of the game they do, along with the boss battles, serve to provide a change of pace and keep the constant action from becoming stale or repetitive.

There is nothing particularly new or unique in Binary Domain but it does deliver smooth gameplay, good graphics and exciting gun play. The campaign clocks in at around the 8 hour mark (on normal difficulty) and with collectables, timed runs and alternate endings there is plenty of replay value. Strip away all else and at the core of Binary Domain you will find an enjoyable and well-made TPS. With robots.