Binary Domain, First Impressions

So, if you are a PC gamer at all, you should be aware of the Humble Bundle. If not, what have you been doing?! The latest of bundles happened to be a Sega bundle, and having not played many of the titles, I decided to give it a go. One of the greatest things that can happen is when expectations are largely surpassed and that's what Binary Domain has done.

Well, what's it about? The year is... something future, maybe like 2042 or something, and as a result of sea levels rising, many cities were left inhabitable. People got too attached to said destroyed cities and decided the best thing to do is create newer cities on top of the older cities. Nobody can really do anything in the flooded areas except robots causing a massive increase in demand for said bots. With these robotics, a New Geneva Convention was established with added clauses, such as Clause 21, robots may not externally appear as humans. One of these, a "hollow child," was found slinging accusations at the main robotics company in America. With heavy denials, attention is turned to a Japanese corporation, and is where the game picks up with you, Dan, and your friend, Bo, infiltrating Japan "covertly."

Gameplay focuses the standard third person, squad based, action-shooter. You have some guns, you have a couple people with you, and you shoot at robots. The gimmick this game touts is issuing squad commands through your mic. You can yell things like, "Cover me!" or "Sure," or "Damnit!" to respond to teammates or signal things in battle. The only mic I have is an onboard mic on my laptop and living in a house with 30 other dudes doesn't leave me feeling comfortable shouting weird things at my computer. Alternatively, I just hold tab at hit whatever response I feel accurate. While it may be an interesting idea, it's just easier to hit buttons for it. It reminds me of that whole Mass Effect 3 "better with Kinect" bullocks.

The actual gameplay is shooting various flavors of robots with various flavors of bullets, and I will say, 4 hours in, shooting robots is pretty fun. The standard robot grunts you fight aren't completely harmless, but still kinda fun to kill, as they explode into bits providing visceral exploding joy. The others I've fought being spider-ish zapping ones, spider-ish exploding ones and robo-snipers have all been fairly unique and entertaining, if not sometimes annoying. The bosses have been fairly creative and unique as well. Tense and rewarding, although sometimes repetitive in the whole, shoot this spot a thousand times- oh, now-I-get-a-command-on-how-to-actually-beat-this-guy-and-I've-been-doing-nothing-this-whole-time kind of boss fight.



The games not without its faults. Playing on the PC, it's really quite messy of a port. There's no rebindable keys, or any key configuration or layout at all. You don't reload with R, sprint with shift, or switch weapons with the mouse wheel. If you missed how to do something in the tutorial, you're stuck guessing how to do it, and even the tutorial kinda sucks on PC. Aim with [M] and shoot with [M]. Reload with [M], shoot a charged shot by holding [M]. Contextual crane adjusting minigame? Move box with WASD, turn box with [M]. If you didn't catch on yet, M is something on the mouse. No, I'm not going to tell you which one, figure it out yourself. The game also has problems with unplugging or replacing anything in the audio jack, resulting in the game crashing for whatever reason. One time the game crashed causing me to play a goddamn rail shooter segment again. Which kinda sucked. Although it did lead my to notice that every time you get hit, and I mean EVERY TIME you get hit, your character responds with an audible grunt. Getting shot at with machine guns, UH-UH-UH-UH-UH-UH-UH-UH-UH-UH reminding me of beta Minecraft where Steve had a male voice indicating when he got hurt, then falling into lava.

Who doesn't love RAAAAAAAIIIIIIIL SHOOOOOOTER SEGMENTS?

Aside from this, I haven't had anything in terms game-breaking bugs or something really taking me out of the game. I'm pretty interested in the story and the characters, actually. I want my character to be liked by the other people on the team, and, like in real life, appreciate the approval of my squad-mates. The setting is pretty interesting and I do want to know what more we'll discover. Now, I am only 4 hours in, but seeing robots programmed to think they're and discovering they're a robot for the first time is pretty damn moving. A goddamn robot committed suicide and I felt bad! Have YOU ever felt bad for a robot? Didn't think so!

I dunno. I've been crushed before by the loss of a volleyball as well, so maybe pulling my strings isn't as hard as it seems.

8/10 (for the first 4 hours)