Binary Domain

I saw the sale on this game and so decided to purchase it, not expecting much but knowing that I enjoy the occasional third person shooter.
I must say though I got much more than I anticipated. Decent story, likable and very real characters, and addictive gameplay.

The voice recognition thing that you use to either give orders or say things like "I love you" doesn't add much, I ended up turning it off halfway through the first level.

Overall though, I very pleasant surprise from SEGA right after another game I enjoyed by them called VANQUISHED. Sega sure does like their futuristic robot shooting games.

The single player. After a poor start the game picked up to be really enjoyable - in fact I found it hard to put down. The graphics are largely goodish, once you get into Chapter 2, but they are hit and miss at times. Initially, in the first chapter, there is a lot of stop/start just learning the controls in a super drab grey factory with samey enemy in narrowish corridors. The first chapter is just a prologue, which goes on for around 45 mins, and is totally unremarkable. You need to give the game 45 minutes to get going.

The second chapter really opens up into the outside world (first level of the demo is part of the second chapter) and there are areas which are narrowish corridors and there other more open areas where you can mix it up a bit with your approach. There are one or two boss fights (re: like the demo) which are good and there is one super-huge boss which takes some killing - a bit shoot the glowy bits but I enjoyed it. There was one section in the second chapter where you have to defend a teammate that was 'doing something' (no spoilers:-)) and unknown to me a crawler had dragged himself to my team mate to stop from his task - meaning my AI team mate had to back track and do it all over again. No restart the level - more restart the task in game. Nicely done.

The robot enemies are varied. Snipers, shielded bots, big hard red bots that take more punishment and bigger mini-gun type bots. There are a lot of different bots. The enemy AI is really pretty good. They flank in the more open areas, rush you lol and crawl behind objects to take down friendly AI as well as yourself. One crawler snook up on me grabbed hold of my leg lol and set off a grenade. There are also drop ships and smaller hoverbots that drop off bi-ped bots into the battle. As well as spotter bots.

The robots though are superb and very varied and how you kill them is so satisfying - you can dismember them, decapitate them, watch them crawl along the floor (and sometimes they will sneak up on you when they crawl), attack each other headless, and even have glowing red eyes sometimes and swarm you like zombies :-). And the boss battles are varied and often, and some of the boses are HUGE which makes the game feel Japanese in flavour. Of course the game is a linear cover shooter mostly but there are many on-rails sections and times when you have to man turrets or use exo-skeleton bots.

Saying all this the game on normal difficulty has been super easy. So for all the good enemy AI I had no real trouble with the game. It helps that you can revive yourself I suppose - avoids death and no return to checkpoints.

Weapons wise there is a good variety (usual stuff you'd get in any game) but all weapons can be levelled up for extra fire power, accuracy, distance, ammo capcacity etc by spending in game credits (at shops) that you earn through killing enemy. There are also skills to level up using nanotech that increase health, defence etc. In other words some light RPG elements.

The voice commands work well most of the time but sometimes they have been frustrating - in that it wouldn't recognise my commands. Sometimes I was even shouting lol. You can use the controller instead to dish out team commands however. In the end I disabled the voice commands and used the controller instead.

There are A LOT of cut-scenes. Some quite long - 10 mins or more. However they are good and tell the story really well and set the scene nicely. However, the cut-scenes make for a stop-start affair which can spoil the flow. Some of the cut-scenes have some brutal mutilation of "hollow children" AKA humanoid bots which the story centers around.

There are also areas in the game where you just basically walk around talking (well, listening) to the local population before you start the next all out action section of the game.

Summary
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In summary Binary Domain is a cracking game and just got better and better until the very end. What can I say, loads and loads of boss battles that aren't too frustrating, great cut-scenes that tell the story well, some not too bad characters, lots of different bot types, solid shooting mechanics, has that 'Japanese' feel, some decent on-rails sections, twists in the story that you probably wont anticipate and what can I say [SLIGHT SPOILER] ZOMBIES!![END SLIGHT SPOILER].

The only complaints I have about this game are that it was slightly too easy on normal difficulty and the first act was a little drab and uninspiring. It really is a gem of a game and as a third person shooter there aren't many better. Multiplayer wise don't bother.

Got to say this game is not that far behind in enjoyment factor compared to some of the big hitters of 2011, especially comparing it to some of the linear shooters.

I'm giving this game a review score of 5/5 for the sheer enjoyment factor but the game is not without some minor flaws but which game hasn't got flaws.

In a world obsessed with stuff like Call of Duty and Battlefield 3, this game comes as a breath of fresh air. A solid, extremely nice looking shooter that swaps all the pretentious shark-jumping plots for a straight-up blaster that doesn't compromise on quality.

Voice control is a bit iffy (but thankfully you can get through the entire game without really needing it). It just plays so satisfyingly, mashing robots to a fizzing pulp never felt so good. Ludicrous value for the price, get in on a game that is destined to be sadly overlooked this generation and spread the word. Binary Domain really is worth your time.