There is a robot. He wears a scarf. He speaks French. Need I say more?

BINARY DOMAIN

A third person cover based shooter in the likes of Gears Of War.
The controls are a little too console port
camera controlling is to sensitive.
But once you get use to it
the game is alot of fun blasting your way thru hordes of robot enemies and bosses.
You play in a small soldier team with 2-3 AI controlled allies
you can give them orders but no need to they pretty much holds their own.
The game has an intressting Sci-Fi story that raises some intressting questions on robots and humans.

I believe it's quite understandable why might exist such discrepancy among the opinions of this game. Binary Domain is an interesting game not olnly from the different type of enemies you are used to shoot but also for the combination of action, humour and storytelling. The Story kept me interested until the very end.If you were one of those players that would get bored for the constant shooting then in my case, I just found new ways to make it more fun. By shooting the robots in head they will turn against each other. If you add that with shooting others in the feet, forcing them to crawl then you have an interesting combination of events to watch. The city is filled with amazing little details, something you might miss if you are just rushing from point A to point B. But you shouldn't. The bright lights in the city at night are something your eyes will be pleased to see and the visuals are quite good too.

The characters are very distinctive from each other putting Big Bo among the favourites. There's rivalry, sarcasm, humour and even... romance. There are a few plot twists here and there to make the story more compelling and interesting which pleased me until the very end. During the game you are able to talk to your team mates using your own voice (which I didn't because I do not have a Microphone on my PC yet) or simply by using the controller. By doing so, you will offer tactical advice to them but also if they request healing or suggest a new tactic you are free to agree or disagree with them.

It might not be a title that many people have the chance to play it, and those that had it share different opinions about the game, however I found to be a nice shooting adventure from start to finish. There's nothing over the top or extremely remarkable but not all games require to be such experience. Some, like Binary Domain just want to tell a story while mixing a bit of storytelling and bullets, lot's of them, in fact.

There might be more cut scenes that one person who is used to play FPS and TPS would find but to me this was never a problem, in fact, I believe it was balanced between having a lot of things to point and shoot during tense moments, and then, a little bit of story, controversy or plot twist via cut scenes. I like to have both of these in my games but again, many may find it tiresome if all you want is too shoot some robots in their shiny metal ***.

In the end I think it's important to reflect if we are not going too far with our discoveries in advanced robotic technology. I know that it is the year of 2080 and the world most progress but, at what cost..? Paraphrasing Albert Einstein "I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction." In Binary Domain, that day may have happened already...

I don't blame anybody if their first thoughts on binary domain was that it's a generic gears of war shooter. But holy ♥♥♥♥ after the prologue it becomes on of the best TPS I've ever played.

Words cannot describe the gameplay. Shooting is far more than good, every bullet you fire has a satisfying feel to them, especially the pistol, every bullet peels off their skin, the recoil of the gun, the sound of the gun add to the overall feel of the guns, I highly recommend you "play" with the robots before actually putting them out of their misery my favorite method is decapitating the heads, watch them attack their allies (They attack their allies if you decapitate them) and then whip their asses to death with a pistol (literally!). I highly recommend you upgrade your weapons as soon as you can, a fully upgraded assault rifle would leave Sonic the Hedgehog wishing he was THAT fast.

Story is also pretty good, the characters all have their own charm to them and the dialogue is amusing, especially Cain (a French robot that aids you in the battle later on). There are dialogue choices that will affect your relationship to your party members, but rest assured these are not HUGE assets to your reputation with your party members.

Soundtrack isn't amazing, but it does the job well. None of the songs are bad, but none of them are amazing. One or two tracks stand out, but that's about it.

If you like shooting things this game is a must have, especially if you have a fetish for robots, even better if you have a fetish for robot-gore.

I was actually really surprised by Binary Domain, I was expecting it to be another of those mediocre third person shooters but I was wrong. From the get go you are presented with a cutscene that summarizes the plot for you and after a few minutes you get your hands on some real combat. The shooting is probably one of the most satisfying in a third person shooter, everytime you score a hit on an enemy you see little pieces of metal flying, in case you don't know you're fighting robots. The aiming is pretty decent and smooth if you use the mouse, you can also turn on/off aim assist if you're playing with a controller. The storyline and the writing was actually one of the things that surprised me the most, Binary Domain takes place in 2074 and you're part of a Rust Crew which is a squad, that belongs to the IRTA, a special unit that hunts down those who break the laws stated in the New Geneva Convention and you're sent to Japan to investigate Amada Corporation, leading company in robotics in Japan, due to suspicion of producing "Hollow Children" or as you might call it robots that look like humans, or have human skin. Throughout the game you'll meet different characters in which upon reaching a certain point of the level you'll be asked to choose 2 of them to take with you further into the level, the dialogue plays a huge roll on the game actually, every now and then when a someone asks you a question you can answer by a different set of dialogue choices, but what actually is pretty nice is that you can answer using your microphone, I actually had alot of trouble doing that so later on I just switched to keyboard controls which made it alot easier, it's not just during dialogue that you can use this system but also during combat to issue orders to your squad mates. Now, both the dialogue and the friendly fire during combat and certain actions you take will affect your teammates trust on you and trust actually plays a big role because if your teammates don't trust you, they are likely to not obey your orders. The character development is also something I really liked, it reminded me of Spec Ops The Line to some extent, later on on the game, characters that didn't trusted you and hated you at the beginning will now be your friends, not just teammates. There's some plot twists throughout the entire game and I certainly think those are there for good measure. Certainly the world design and the environments you play on are not really that varied, ranging from slum streets, to industrial underground facilities and corporation's buildings they are not that really interesting but the surface areas on Upper Tokyo are really nice to look at. The enemy variety in the game was actually something I found really interesting, there's all kind of robots, humanoid robots, scorpion robots, flying robots, huge motorcycle riding robots, robot trucks, robot cars, robot spiders, there's all kind of robots for every tastes and likes (giggles). The weapon variety is actually not that great and I think they should have come up with some other interesting weaponry, the available arsenal consists of a SMG, 3 or so Assault Rifles, a LMG, a Sniper Rifle, a Stinger Missile Launcher, a Minigun and I think that's pretty much it, still, this didn't kept me from enjoying the combat, which as I already mentioned is really satisfying, just blasting your way through hordes of robots. Also, depending on how you kill your enemies (headshot, one shot etc) you'll receive credits which then can be used at a shop to buy ammo, medkits or nanomachines (which work as some kind of passive perk system) or even upgrade your main weapon or your teammates. There's alot of great and good humour in Binary Domain and some of it comes from dirty jokes during cutscenes or dialogue which most of the times come to "calm" things down. There's certainly an approach on ethical standards, is it right to give "life" to a robot, in the way that it haves feelings and emotions? Should we consider a robot with emotions and feelings a robot, considering it has self awareness? Of course this is pure sci-fi but it kinda makes you wonder. Other than that I don't really have much to say about Binary Domain other than it looks great and it runs surprisingly well on my low end PC and it also has a kickass soundtrack and the entire game is a joy to play and to witness. If you haven't picked this one up already, please do it, I'm eagerly waiting for a sequel, and so should you.

There is a robot. He wears a scarf. He speaks French. Need I say more?