Well, hello there. Recently I talked about a military shooter with branching paths based on the player's decisions, so today I'm going to do that again. This time, the game is a squad based third person shooter similar to Gears of War, and no, it is not Spec Ops: The Line. As the title spoiled what it is, I present you Binary Domain.
The game was developed by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, the guys behind the Yakuza series of games, and you can feel it in the character banter and general style. The story takes place in the year 2080 and presents a world where robots have become a part of everyday life. The creation of robots who look like humans and also think they are as such leads to the creation of The Second Geneva convention, banning their creation, also labelling them as Hollow Children.
The story kicks off when a hollow child pops up in an airport in America, realising he is a robot and ripping his face off to reveal a second, metal face. He is killed and the recording of him reaches the military, prompting an investigation into the Japanese robotics company, Amada. An international task force comprising of American, British, Chinese and French operatives is assembled and they are supposed to infiltrate Japan individually and meet up in the slums of Tokyo, and I'll stop here to prevent spoiling, because the story actually goes somewhere and it is quite well written.
The player takes the role of Dan Marshall, nicknamed the Survivor (probably because he is still alive, as it is never explained). You infiltrate together with your American friend, Roy 'Big Bo' Boateng. After that, the mechanics are quickly tutorialized: the straightforward movement, cover and shooting, secondary fire on guns and...voice commands. There are two ways to issue voice commands: using a microphone, but the voice recognition is so poor you won't use it, and context sensitive button presses, which you will use. Thing is, the list of voice commands is quite impressive and you will not be able to use it with the context sensitive method.
After the prologue of the game, the game introduces the squad and trust mechanics: all characters initially don't really trust you, but, by issuing good orders in combat and wiping the floor with enemies, you increase trust with your allies, which leads to them fulfilling orders even more promptly and it even influences the ending of the game. The squad mechanics basically let you choose two other characters to follow you into the chapter, and this is not just cosmetic, each of them have their own specialty and even personalized banter depending on trust and squad members. In the first chapter, if you pick the two female characters as your squad, you are called out as a pervert, which I found really funny on my repeat playthrough. In addition to combat, there are some breather chapters in which the team is chilling in a populated area, and you can do small chat with them to either increase or damage trust.
Combat in the game is very kinestethically pleasing, weapons hit hard and the enemies, which are all robots, break apart depending on where you shoot them: if you shoot them in the legs, they start crawling towards you, if you shoot their weapon arm, you literally disarm them and if you shoot them in the head, they start attacking their allies. Killing enemies gives you credits to use at store terminals to acquire medkits, ammo, weapon upgrades and perks to equip on you and your squad. The game also features boss fights, which are quite spectacular, be it giant robots, giant spider robots or airships. These are spread pretty liberally throughout the campaign and require liberal use of heavy ordinance like rocket launchers and the dodge button.
Unsurprisingly, the game has that characteristic of a Yakuza game, easily shifting between goofy, awesome and dramatic, while never actually getting jarring. You will go from friendly banter at the beginning of a chapter, to a small fight, to a bigger fight, issuing orders, to a random joke and then a boss shows up to kick the action off the charts. Stuff is pretty good.
All in all, the only thing I dislike about this game is the fact that it end on a cliffhanger and in the eight years since its release, it never got a sequel or at the very least a conclusion by any means.
Images: cover, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
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