Binary Domain

[Kolzig]

I noticed last month that this game sneaked it's way to Steam. I didn't find a thread for this one yet here.

I have heard nothing about it, but I laughed when I noticed that the main character's name is Dan Marshall. Do we get a Ben Ward also in the game?

The company behind it made the PC port version of Sonic Generations, so it should be a solid game as I've heard Generations was great on PC.

The game does look like a generic marine shooter, but it's based on Tokyo of the future so it does try to pull some right strings at least for me.

Here's something of the story and the game:

THE MACHINE AGE HAS BEGUN in this immersive and atmospheric squad-based shooter in which you need to regain control of a futuristic Tokyo from an emerging robotic threat.

Set in 2080, the story starts when Dan Marshall and his squad are sent to bring the robotic community under control as they begin to infiltrate society and slowly take over undetected, leaving humans redundant in their wake.

Thrilling encounters with highly intelligent robotic enemies require you to think tactically, make challenging, real-time moral decisions and build up trust with your team mates in order to guide your squad to safety and success.

Key Features:

A NEW TAKE ON FUTURISTIC TOKYO - Experience dual layered Tokyo with a run down and derelict lower city and a clean and affluent upper city.

THE CONSEQUENCE SYSTEM - Under the pressures of battle every action, every choice and every word affects everything.

PROCEDURAL DAMAGE - Fully destructible and highly resilient robots adapt to the damage they sustain encouraging you to analyse each enemy, find their weaknesses and dispose of them in the most efficient way.

WEAPON MODIFICATION AND SKILL SELECTION - Alongside a full armoury of unique weapons, put emphasis on the skills that will benefit you

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[Tanukitsune]

This game is on my radar since I heard the people who made the Yakuza games worked on it, I'm just waiting for it t go on sale.

I know that your team mates will talks and like you less depending on how you react. I saw a clip of someone playing with an all female group and he told them that he just wanted "purdy ladies", one was disgusted, the other liked his honesty.

I think this just affects if they'l obey your commands later?

[Sno]

I've heard a lot of exceedingly negative things about the PC port of this, so just a fair warning to do your research before investing in that Steam version.

The game itself is apparently a pretty solid and enjoyable adventure, though.

I played the demo on Live and found the control a bit swimmy, but otherwise thought it was ok.

[Scipio]

The game is £11 on intkeys at the moment

http://www.intkeys.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=74&products_id=355

Which is low enough for me to grab considering the weirdly positive stuff I keep hearing. Like there's a Robot?! And he's French?!?

[SuperHarman]

It's fun. The story is nothing new to anyone who has seen Blade Runner or Battlestar Galactica and the main character is a bit of a blank but once it gets going I found myself pretty immersed. If you want an idea of how it controls, think Mass Effect 2.

[melmer]

This game is hilarious, played about the first 3 hours today. So much fun. Wacky japs. it has exceeded all expectations!

[Erkki]

So this isn't a shooter? I remember seeing some trailer (maybe during the Steam sale?) and thought it was a simple FPS.

[Orv]

It's a pretty simplistic cover-based TPS with one of the best stories of 2012.

[melmer]

Irritatingly it's one of those games that forces you to keep subtitles on. I turned them off before I started as per usual, but ive had to turn the back on again after two cut scenes completely in Japanese... Still with no subtitles. I find them so bloody distracting

[miffy495]

I played the first mission after everyone else had gone to sleep on New Year's Eve (wusses. It was only 6 in the morning). I thought it was silly fun and will be going right back into it after I finish the last episode of the Walking Dead. Moment of the game so far was when being washed over the edge of a cliff by a massive wave, Big Bo decides to yell out "I'M FALLING DOWN A SLIDE!!!" in a way that made me laugh so hard at what a stupid thing it was to say that I actually had to pause the game. Oh, Big Bo. One mission in and I'm totally in love with what a stupid character you are.

[Sno]

Friends have been urging me to check out Binary Domain for a while, and after playing it i'm pretty well on board with the game. I think i ended up ignoring it just because all the marketing made it look so much like Vanquish, just without the immediately visible gameplay hooks that made that game so interesting. I don't think anything really conveyed what Binary Domain's strengths actually are.

It has issues though, including some very swimmy gamepad aiming, way too many turret sequences, dumb party AI, and the odd boss or two that lacks enough visual feedback to let you know if you're doing the right thing.

On the positive side, it's another in a series of recent shooters that are mixing up some of the tried and true gameplay language as opposed to headshots forever always. (In general, the legs are the first thing to aim for here.) There are also a ton of boss fights, and i thought that actually most of them were quite excellent.

The story though, that's what makes this game, that and how it adapts around influence exerted by your squad selections and the affinity system. The story doesn't seem mutable to the extent of a Deus Ex or a Mass Effect game, but it's certainly far more than i was expecting out of a relatively straight forward third-person shooter.

I will say, though, the AI's weaknesses are made more prominent by the affinity system. It completely sucks when the AI strolls into your line of fire and likes you less because of it, or asks you for assistance in a battle and it's not exactly completely clear what the condition for completing that request is.

There also appears to be quite an extensive multiplayer suite in the game, but with literally nobody playing. I cringe to think of the money and time spent on things like this. That possibly extends to the speech recognition thing, which i honestly didn't even touch. If it works, it might be a better way to play, because the canned dialogue choices are frequently quite ambiguous, while the pop-up for squad commands is contextual and doesn't always give you the options you want.

Still, i'd say it's a firmly above average shooter with a really fun and well told sci-fi story. I think its enemies are a ton of fun to fight, and that story really counts for a lot.

I love that, at one point, it even just directly addresses the Blade Runner question. It seems pretty savvy about its influences. (Which are numerous, it's not going to win awards for originality.)

for Binary Domain.

[Salacious Snake]

The voice recognition doesn't work at all.

[melmer]

Nope I gave up after screaming 'good job' at my tele for 5 minutes. Girlfriend thought I had lost the plot. I didn't know if it was me or the fact that my Xbox headset is so old the sponge mouth guard is starting to sprout fungi

Shooting robots is actually just as satisfying and shooting GoW's locusts. Probably even more so than shooting generic soldier men in COD and the like

I must be near the end of the game. I'm gonna go play It now...

Alas I can't, inlaws coming round in 20mins for dins dins. Balls.

[Roderick]

I can't get over the title Binary Domain. They took the two words that would most persuade you this is a service for registering a URL.

[melmer]

I can't get over the title Binary Domain. They took the two words that would most persuade you this is a service for registering a URL.

I actually mentioned to a couple of relatively non gamer friends at work that I was playing '"Binary domain". And they just laughed in my face.

Quick tip: if your game title causes spontaneous laughter and ridicule. Change said title.

[Roderick]

I challenge you to think of a less exciting, even more nondescript title. You can't.

Invoice Administration

Reclining Ruler

Excel Point

Info Bracket

Alpha Protocol OHHH BURNNNN

[melmer]

Lol buuuuurrrrrn

Identity colon

I'm not very good at this

[Wrestlevania]

Name Space

...anyway, I've played a couple of hours of Binary Domain and also find the enemies fun to dismember and blow up. They remind me of Terminators not just in their appearance (obviously), but in how satisfying it is to dismember them only for them to still come at you missing an arm or a leg.

I particularly like how you can blow their shooting arm off, and they'll pause to pick up their dropped gun with the remaining working arm and get back to shooting. The game has a fair amount of charm thanks to its attention to detail like that. The enemy designs seem to be of a high calibre too, with a large gunship boss evoking Ghost in the Shell's believable near-future vehicle designs.

I do find the squad mates to be universally horrible cyphers, though, with Big B[r]o being particularly repulsive. He's like a 300-pound ambulatory side of beef with verbal diarrhoea consisting exclusively of brain-dead jockisms. And none of the others - Stiff Englishman, Uptight Chinese Lady, and Butch Bomb Woman - are any better, all behaving exactly as you'd expect from first glance at them (which I'm uncomfortable writing, but it is what it is).

For me, the superficiality of the main characters jars with the effort the writers have otherwise spent on the main story. It isn't a particularly original tale as others have pointed out, being as it's shamelessly steeped in popular cyberpunk references, but (so far) it's worked them together very well and had some great moments in just a few hours.

The "man" who gets dragged through the shopping district by gangsters, and is then humiliated and mutilated in the street for their amusement, being a particularly well written and emotional highlight early on.

I've not bothered even trying the speech recognition. I read a couple of thorough reviews and both mentioned how poorly this system worked for their respective writers. The game actively scolds you for not plugging in a mic, which is quite funny in itself, but you can use the D-pad to issue commands and conversational responses instead.

Sno makes good points about the blundering, self-harming AI and how broken the conversation system is in this respect. I experienced exactly the same all too frequently. (Not that I particularly care much for any of the characters in the first place, but still...)

Overall, I'm intending to go back and play some more of it. But I'd say if you're after an over-the-top Japanese sci-fi TPS and you still haven't played Vanquish yet, I'd recommend Platinum's game before trying this without hesitation. It's just that much tighter and more highly polished, and whilst it also has deliberately idiotic characters, Vanquish's didn't grate on me anything like this lot do.

[Roderick]

So, are you all master of your Binary Domain yet?

[eot]

I played through this over the last few days (started a second playthrough even) and had a lot of fun with it. The weirdness of it is what makes it work. You've got Big Bo (who defies description), a nonsensical (in a good way) conversation system and over the top bosses with surprisingly good designs. It all adds up to give the game a weird but irresistable charm. After playing through the opening I thought I was going to dislike it because it seemed like another Japanese game that takes itself too seriously and has too many idiosyncratic gameplay mechanics and systems, but it gradually won me over it feels so refreshing for a game to do that.

Importantly, the Japaneseness doesn't get in the way. There's a big emphasis on boss battles but the vast majority of them (I'd say all but 1½) never get frustrating like you would expect. When you get revived and watch the standing up animation the enemies don't shoot you etc. It avoids falling into the trap of having its Japanese idiosyncrasies be frustrating and so it remains a very playable game.

It might not have been intentional but with all the comic relief and general absurdity (like the quips your squad shouts when you're doing well in combat) the game has a very light hearted feel, despite some very serious story moments. I think it helps that you're shooting robots instead of people. Since they're robots they also break apart in interesting ways and the combat is really fun when you upgrade your rifle a bit. Also, the bosses: when was the last time giant bosses in a shooter were actually fun? I can't remember them ever being.

As a Steam sale game I strongly recommend it, it's not the generic shooter you'd expect.

[melmer]

The game really made me wonder how much the games story changed dependent on your choices and the buddy system, I really got a sense that I was getting a tailored experience, but I wouldn't be surprised if its mostly smoke and mirrors. For example:

Would you still have sex with the Chinese lady if you had a poor buddy rating?

Would big bo fight against you in the final boss fight after the double cross if you had a poor buddy rating?

would big bo die if you didn't help him out of that robots jaw?

When you can first pick a team, i just happened to pick the 2 female members and they called me a pervert which made me lol

And I liked it when one of my team gave me a hard time after I picked them to fight when they had just been injured in a cut scene

[eot]

All those things you mentioned can turn out differently. Well the last one doesn't happen like that it's more indirect.

Bo dies if you don't max out everyone's trust and to do that I think you have to save him

[miffy495]

When you can first pick a team, i just happened to pick the 2 female members and they called me a pervert which made me lol

Ha, I did that too. One was a sniper and one was a heavy. Seemed like a good balance choice to me...

[melmer]

Yeah same here, and sniper and a shotgun seemed like a good mix. Then when i tried to defend my choice they were like "Yeah whatever DAN"

I really liked dan, in fact I really enjoyed all the characters (apart from big bo who was like some weird sex pest caricature. I never knew how to respond to his questions, yeah, damn, shit?)

[twmac]

I wrote about this ages ago on the blog I do stuff on. I am really happy to see a lot of people echoing the sentiments.

For anyone interested go here.

But so I don't just look like I am plugging my site every few seconds, here is a quote I feel is in keeping of the thread:

The accusation has been levelled that this game is soulless – another Japanese attempt at selling to the Western crowd – but this is only fair if you only look at the cover of the game, its overtly butch protagonist and his awful stereotype of a buddy. This narrative setup changes as the story progresses; certainly it starts out as a simple ‘Bros against evil robots’ tale but the game takes some interesting turns – for what it is worth – as it progresses. The game genuinely tries to explore what it is to be human, with robots expressing emotion and understanding the concept of death while struggling to rise up against their oppressors.