Now, this is how to make a satisfying shooter.
“Binary Domain” is probably one of the better third-person shooters we’ve seen in a while. There are some half-baked ideas that either need to be fleshed out or dumped, but the bones of this game are rock-solid.
Let’s start with the good: this is a game that makes killing robots fun again. It’s intensely satisfying to blow chunks of metal off a robot, stripping it down to the circuitry, and then blowing it away, or shooting it strategically to get an effect. Headshots are more important that usual, and in a nice touch, while the game is often smoky, robots have bright red glowing eyes you can see through any haze. Drill ’em between the eyes a few times, and they’ll start killing other robots for you. But it takes a few shots for this to happen, and blowing off arms and legs is often just a waste of ammo.
The result is a game that asks you to strategize; you have to think about the ammo you have, where your enemy is, and how to best place your shots to get the maximum effect. It’s actually a lot of fun.
Another nice touch: the game is fairly well-written. The plot is standard “Blade Runner” all the way, but you’ll want to talk to various NPCs: somebody in the writer’s room has a sense of humor over at Sega. It’s also a nice length: long enough to suck you in and give you a satisfying experience, while not sucking every minute of your life away. We got through it in about ten hours.
Unfortunately, it’s not all great work. You may have heard you can command your squadmates with a headset: that works about as well as you’d suspect. It’s just not a good idea and should have been scrapped. Similarly, the “trust” mechanic is little more than a minigame: your squad is more helpful if they trust you, but you rarely need them anyway. It is nice, however, to see that shooting your squadmates has an actual in-game effect.
“Binary Domain” is a very solid shooter with some good ideas, but only one of them really makes it past the stage of “gimmick”. But if Sega dumps the voice gimmick, and makes the trust system more integral to your strategy, we can see this game becoming more than just very good.
image courtesy Sega