Binary Domain
Metacrtic: 68
Binary Domain is a very strange game, it does so much right, but for some reason it just feels meh. Binary Domain touches on themes of nationality and what it means to be human. But it also has incredibly self aware fan service and toilet humor. All of this gets lost however, as the game shoehorns in a end of the world plot at the end of the game. However inside this game are some really fun and cool mechanics wrapped in mediocre shooting and the most expansive shallow RPG mechanics of all time.
Binary Domain has an amazingly interesting plot setup. It takes place in the near where rising tides have forced humanity to build towering cities on the land that remains. Due to the great need for rapid city development, robotics technology advanced leaps and bounds, with robots rapidly approaching parity with humans. The world governments regulate robot development to prevent the creation of robotic sentient live, however Japan refuses to sign the deal. This causes japan returns to its isolationist roots and literally wall itself off from the world. The world governments deploy RUST Teams to monitor and control robotic development throughout the world, however it isn’t enough. At the start of the game, the world has recently discovered the existence of Hollow Children. Hollow Children are robots who think they are human, and its nearly impossible to tell them apart from humans. The Hollow Children are everywhere literally. In the briefing for the joint chiefs at the UN its discovered that one of the members at the briefing is one. It is discovered that the Hollow Children were designed with some greater intent in mind, by a Japanese genius. In response the UN sends a multi-national RUST team into isolationist Japan to find out what is happening and stop the development of Hollow Children.
Early on, Binary Domain touches on several interesting concepts such as what it means to be human. The Hollow Children think they are human, everyone else think they are human and there is no discernible differences to them other than their robotic birth, so are they human? Do they deserve to be regulated and controlled like the other robots? Or do they deserve to be treated as humans? Is the Japanese creator evil for dooming these “living” beings to this fate? However it only touches on these themes tangentially before going in a completely different direction with the finale.
The most interesting and cool part of the game is the characters and their interactions with each other. Players take on the role of Dan, one of the two american members of the RUST team sent into Japan. All of the characters are massive caricatures of their countries. The Americans are bombastic and over the top, constantly flirting with women, cracking one-liners, and high-fiving each other. The British are the human equivalent of snark, and the French robot is literally wearing an ascot and speaks with a comically heavy french accent. Faye (the chinese team member) doesn’t exemplify China, however she is a very strange character who is shockingly important to the plot overall, so she gets a pass, I guess.
So what Binary Domain does thats very cool, is gamify interacting with your squad mates. The game measures your releationships with your team mates, and your relationship status has a huge effect on the gameplay and even the outcome of the entire game. Throughout the game you have to make choices, these choices effect your teamates views of Dan. Beyond that, during combat helping your teamates out, or doing what they want, increases your relationship. On the flip side, based on your relationship, the characters may decide to help you out, or might outright ignore your orders. Also the game uses a voice command system for all choices and orders, that helps immerse you in the game. At the start of the game, outside of Big Bo (your partner) Dan isn’t very popular with the team, forcing you to bring different sets of characters with you in each mission, and be an actual good teamate. You have to watch their backs, so they watch yours. You have conversations with them in between combat, such as talking about how’s gonna get Faye with Big Bo, or talking about how baseball is better than cricket with Charles. What you choose to say affects your relationship. What this does really well is add, depth and weight to the choices you have to make throughout the game. The game doesn’t directly tell you who likes what choice, so only through building a human connection with them, can you understand your choices to the fullest. Most interestingly, having either very good or very bad relationships with your teammates, will drastically effect the games outcome.
Now onto the bad. Binary Domain is a third person shooter, but the shooting doesn’t particularly feel great. The robotic enemies are fun to shoot, because you can shoot their arms and legs off, and they continue their assault. However the amount of bullets its takes to down enemies is not fun at all, and makes every gun feel like a pea shooter. Beyond that, every character has a fixed Main weapon, including Dan, meaning throughout the game you can only change your second weapon and your hand gun. The game feature an insane amount of pointless RPG choices. Throughout the game (like every 3 rooms), you encounter stores that allow you to buy weapon and character upgrades. The character upgrades make little to no discernible difference, however they are equipped through a fun little tetris style inventory management system. However, the main issue lies in the inability to directly control/order your teamates. The game wants you to define roles for your teamates, such as making BO a tank and Faye a glass cannon, however since you can’t order them, Faye never stays far enough back for BO to actually tank for her, and BO doesn’t like getting shot. So what you end up doing is making everyone the same, you upgrade everyone's health and damage output equally. Beyond that, the weapon upgrades make drastic differences, but cost way to little currency and are extremely easy to acquire. To counter this, later upgrades are locked behind progress through the game, making the weapon upgrading nothing more than traditional leveling up, without actually leveling up. While the combat is mostly passable, the boss fights and set pieces are amazing, and each level is pretty unique.
Overall, Binary Domain tells an entertaining story with passable gameplay and a very interesting relationship mechanic. It is currently only 15 dollars on steam, and its well worth playing if any of what I wrote about interests you.
PS: I wrote this entire post with no actual research about the game, the story was that memorable for me, so thats something.
