Game of the Month #14 (March) - Binary Domain

Binary Domain is an original squad-based shooter by Toshihiro Nagoshi, the creator behind some of Sega's most well-known video game franchises, including the critically acclaimed Yakuza series. Campaign play in Binary Domain features a trust based system in which the maintenance of relationships developed with AI squadmates are crucial if they are to follow orders. The game also features full destructible robot enemies, a wide range of weapons and a robust range of online multiplayer options.

Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC

I've already beaten this game so I'll be passing this month, but I just want to say it was a surprisingly fun game. It isn't amazing but it plays like a cheesy Gears of War, which was a fun ride.

I remember playing this game but got bored because the enemies were too bulletspongy for my liking. The graphics were amazing though, maybe I'll get back to it.

They are very bullet-spongey if you use an assault rifle and aim for the body. From what I remember, I used the sniper rifle, mostly aiming for the head, to avoid that.

What exactly does "bullet-spongy" mean?

What exactly does "bullet-spongy" mean?

They have tons of health/you don't do much damage, so it seems like they just absorb bullets like a sponge, taking forever to kill.

I'm also loving it. The western-style japanes games are always interesting and this one its actually pretty fun for a cover based shooter. The story is over-the-top and the game fully embraces it. I'm currently in chapter 4 and despite a couple bad moments (timed rescue and flying boss, not difficult just frustrating) I've enjoyed it a lot. The enemies didn't seem too bullet-spongey, not for this kind of game at least.
Plus, I don't know if this is because of my FOV settings, but it doesn't seem like a confortable way of shooting a gun


Edit: Forgot to say, the voice recognition works nicely(and my English could be waaaay better)

I'm also loving it. The western-style japanes games are always interesting and this one its actually pretty fun for a cover based shooter. The story is over-the-top and the game fully embraces it. I'm currently in chapter 4 and despite a couple bad moments (timed rescue and flying boss, not difficult just frustrating) I've enjoyed it a lot. The enemies didn't seem too bullet-spongey, not for this kind of game at least.
Plus, I don't know if this is because of my FOV settings, but it doesn't seem like a confortable way of shooting a gun


Edit: Forgot to say, the voice recognition works nicely(and my English could be waaaay better)

Maybe that is comfortable if your left arm is growing out of your right armpit...

I already beat it when it originally came out but I always wanted to revisit. I'm about 2 hours in and it's just as great as I remember. The gameplay isn't super exciting but I really love the story and character interactions. I was hoping to beat it before The Division comes out but it doesn't look like I'll be able to pull it off.

I love the idea of a Video Game Book Club and decided to join in on Binary Domain (I haven't really ventured in the forums here until today). I was only able to play a little bit tonight - (about 1 hour) and am liking what I'm seeing. I'm pretty sure there are people who will compare this to something like Gears of War with the cover shooter mechanics, but one thing that I particularly like about this game so far is being able to upgrade your characters with nanomachines and also being to able to upgrade your weapons.

Even though I'm barely getting into it right now, I like the feel of the game and Big Bo has me dying (Aight!). Can't wait to put in a couple of more hours in the next few days.

Just beat it. It's really quite good. The gameplay is pretty run of the mill, I didn't feel that the enemies were too bullet-spongy, the weapons felt good and the upgrade system was a nice addition. But the story and the characters are what really make the game here. The story is pretty over the top all the way through. And I really liked how they did the big twists, which while they weren't anything too suprising they still managed to put a unique spin on them. And the enemy design was really quite good as well, while the regular enemies weren't anything really special they still looked quite good. And the bosses were really cool looking, especially the really big ones.

This screenshot captures the essence of the game quite accurately:

I just finished it this morning and had a blast!
The only minor gripe that I have is that sometimes it was too easy to get stunlocked to death, but the game is quite easy, so not big of a problem. Also runing downstairs made the character gain absurd amount of speed for some reason. And playing the game at 60fps and have the cutscenes play at 30fps with worse graphics is always funny, but I guess it happens to every game as it gets older.
The story was cheesy and over the top, and it shows that they were fully commited to that cheesyness. Loved all the characters, specially Cain. I liked how they introduce him by making us believe that the French character will be the other guy, who seemed to be boring. But they kill him in no time and we get the robot instead.
The gameplay was alright, a bit faster that other cover based shooters like Gears of War. And speaking of cover based shooters, everytime I start thinking that they are boring a game comes along like Vanquish, Spec Ops or this one that makes me realise that its not the case.
The art direction was stellar and I loved the desing of the robots, the bigger ones mainly. The city was gorgeous also.
Overall a very solid title.

I'd like to thank Binary Domain for showing me that The Order: 1886 wasn't worth the 70% score I gave it on here (or the 75% I gave it in my head; both have been lowered to 60%). I haven't played many third person shooters, but after playing this one and seeing how good and how fun it was, I realize my initial assessment of The Order was totally wrong. (Plus the more I thought about its story the more frustrated I got).

Anyway, I really loved this game. I'd wanted to play it forever but I'm happy that the book club finally gave me an excuse to bump it to the top of my list. The core gameplay was really fun, obviously, and over the course of the game I found my own play style evolving from "hide behind cover and wait for the shot you want" to "charge forward with guns blazing, to hell with safety." Admittedly that was in part due to the fact I needed to wrap it up in a hurry due to unforeseen circumstances, but I think I'll be better for it in the future as well. I didn't really find the enemies bullet spongy, although, again, my frame of reference is limited. Rather, I liked how you could do damage to each individual part of any given robot, and the more damage you did the more credits you got. Then again, I'm easy to please. I appreciated the RPG elements, too, between the customization with nanomachines (I ended up buying all of them), the leveling up of various aspects of your characters' guns, and the voice commands to interact with the other characters. Sadly, I didn't have a headset and thus just used L2 and whatever prompt I felt best about, but still.

I played on a PS3, so I probably didn't get the graphical advantages that those playing on PC did, but while I thought the graphics were really good overall (at least for a 2012 game), the framerate was not consistent. Just all over the place, it was on uppers, downers and candy corn. Then of course it didn't have anti-aliasing, which is my #1 graphical peeve, especially now that I wear glasses and can actually notice it more readily. I suppose the fact that I was only sitting (at most) four feet away from a 50" TV didn't help, though. Incidentally, that was an LG, normally I play on a Samsung TV, and framerates seem universally better on the latter; any tech-y people know why this is?

Now, for the story (SPOILERS IN THIS PARAGRAPH). Obviously it was really strong for me, but then I always value the story most in any game. I appreciated right off the bat they were like "global warming is gonna screw us all over in a couple decades, people," because it is, and I like a game with a message, although that wasn't the primary one for this one. (Spoilers for another game: Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl did this, too, arguably better than Binary Domain since it was a bigger revelation that tied to the overarching plot more, so I had some flashbacks to that.) The central conflict revolving around the Hollow Children was compelling, but I can't help but feel it wasn't executed entirely correctly. Basically, it seemed like we, the players, were to look at the treatment of the Hollow Children by the human characters and feel as though this was an injustice; just because of their robotic origins, it doesn't mean that they're not human. The anguish felt by the one who ultimately commits suicide in the Japanese slums, contrasted by the fact that he was still treated as just a "scrap head," seemed like it was supposed to draw a clear parallel to the real-world problems of racism, homophobia, etc. The problem, then, is that there's no one in the actual story who feels the same way for the player to latch on to, at least not until the final chapter with the bombshell revelation about Faye. This is just poor storytelling to me: the player needs an avatar in the game to share his or her feelings, even if it's not the main character, and the fact that no one did until close to the end is frustrating to me. Then there's the fact that the ending ultimately left me wishing that Amada had won instead of the asshole American and Swiss governments, but there's nothing technically unsound about that. Besides, Dan and Faye got their happy ending, more or less, so I guess it worked out. Too bad the game apparently didn't sell well enough for a sequel, though; I'd love a Binary Domain 2 to pick up where it left off.

I also wish I'd realized that the endings were dependent on the trust you build with teammates. I, in effect, got the worst one, with Big Bo a traitor, Rachel dead, and Cain MIA. (Apparently this makes the final boss that much harder, and it was hard, to be sure.) I'd love to go back and play it again, trying to build everyone's trust up so that I can get the best ending, but I'll have to save that for another playthrough another time, since I am now sans PS3 for a while.

Overall, I really loved it. It was fun, it was smart, it was compelling, and it has me wishing for a sequel. 8.5/10 (which is yet another score I can't give in HLTB's system, hint hint).

I'd like to thank Binary Domain for showing me that The Order: 1886 wasn't worth the 70% score I gave it on here (or the 75% I gave it in my head; both have been lowered to 60%). I haven't played many third person shooters, but after playing this one and seeing how good and how fun it was, I realize my initial assessment of The Order was totally wrong. (Plus the more I thought about its story the more frustrated I got).

Anyway, I really loved this game. I'd wanted to play it forever but I'm happy that the book club finally gave me an excuse to bump it to the top of my list. The core gameplay was really fun, obviously, and over the course of the game I found my own play style evolving from "hide behind cover and wait for the shot you want" to "charge forward with guns blazing, to hell with safety." Admittedly that was in part due to the fact I needed to wrap it up in a hurry due to unforeseen circumstances, but I think I'll be better for it in the future as well. I didn't really find the enemies bullet spongy, although, again, my frame of reference is limited. Rather, I liked how you could do damage to each individual part of any given robot, and the more damage you did the more credits you got. Then again, I'm easy to please. I appreciated the RPG elements, too, between the customization with nanomachines (I ended up buying all of them), the leveling up of various aspects of your characters' guns, and the voice commands to interact with the other characters. Sadly, I didn't have a headset and thus just used L2 and whatever prompt I felt best about, but still.

I played on a PS3, so I probably didn't get the graphical advantages that those playing on PC did, but while I thought the graphics were really good overall (at least for a 2012 game), the framerate was not consistent. Just all over the place, it was on uppers, downers and candy corn. Then of course it didn't have anti-aliasing, which is my #1 graphical peeve, especially now that I wear glasses and can actually notice it more readily. I suppose the fact that I was only sitting (at most) four feet away from a 50" TV didn't help, though. Incidentally, that was an LG, normally I play on a Samsung TV, and framerates seem universally better on the latter; any tech-y people know why this is?

Now, for the story (SPOILERS IN THIS PARAGRAPH). Obviously it was really strong for me, but then I always value the story most in any game. I appreciated right off the bat they were like "global warming is gonna screw us all over in a couple decades, people," because it is, and I like a game with a message, although that wasn't the primary one for this one. (Spoilers for another game: Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl did this, too, arguably better than Binary Domain since it was a bigger revelation that tied to the overarching plot more, so I had some flashbacks to that.) The central conflict revolving around the Hollow Children was compelling, but I can't help but feel it wasn't executed entirely correctly. Basically, it seemed like we, the players, were to look at the treatment of the Hollow Children by the human characters and feel as though this was an injustice; just because of their robotic origins, it doesn't mean that they're not human. The anguish felt by the one who ultimately commits suicide in the Japanese slums, contrasted by the fact that he was still treated as just a "scrap head," seemed like it was supposed to draw a clear parallel to the real-world problems of racism, homophobia, etc. The problem, then, is that there's no one in the actual story who feels the same way for the player to latch on to, at least not until the final chapter with the bombshell revelation about Faye. This is just poor storytelling to me: the player needs an avatar in the game to share his or her feelings, even if it's not the main character, and the fact that no one did until close to the end is frustrating to me. Then there's the fact that the ending ultimately left me wishing that Amada had won instead of the asshole American and Swiss governments, but there's nothing technically unsound about that. Besides, Dan and Faye got their happy ending, more or less, so I guess it worked out. Too bad the game apparently didn't sell well enough for a sequel, though; I'd love a Binary Domain 2 to pick up where it left off.

I also wish I'd realized that the endings were dependent on the trust you build with teammates. I, in effect, got the worst one, with Big Bo a traitor, Rachel dead, and Cain MIA. (Apparently this makes the final boss that much harder, and it was hard, to be sure.) I'd love to go back and play it again, trying to build everyone's trust up so that I can get the best ending, but I'll have to save that for another playthrough another time, since I am now sans PS3 for a while.

Overall, I really loved it. It was fun, it was smart, it was compelling, and it has me wishing for a sequel. 8.5/10 (which is yet another score I can't give in HLTB's system, hint hint).

Incidentally, that was an LG, normally I play on a Samsung TV, and framerates seem universally better on the latter; any tech-y people know why this is?

If one of them is in game mode with all post processing off and the other has crap like interpolation on (which generates extra frames between the ones actually sent to it by whatever video source), that could be fairly noticeable. Stuff like that can also add a relatively large amount of input lag and just looks kind of weird to some people because it's trying to create data that isn't there, so I always turn it off.

Incidentally, that was an LG, normally I play on a Samsung TV, and framerates seem universally better on the latter; any tech-y people know why this is?

If one of them is in game mode with all post processing off and the other has crap like interpolation on (which generates extra frames between the ones actually sent to it by whatever video source), that could be fairly noticeable. Stuff like that can also add a relatively large amount of input lag and just looks kind of weird to some people because it's trying to create data that isn't there, so I always turn it off.

Well literally the only settings I've changed on either TV was just to make it so that the entire picture fits the screen (for some reason it zooms in about 4% for game consoles -- which I ironically know because of messing with Binary Domain's screen settings), so the Samsung is probably set to create those extra frames, since everything always looks smoother there. Never had any other graphical or input problems with it, though, so I'll just keep it where it is. Thanks!

A heads up in case anyone was looking to join in this month and didn't have the game, it's currently on sale on steam 75% off, has been for a few days and ends tomorrow.

Not sure I could recommend it though, played it for about an hour, seems decent so far but the PC version suffers from some ungodly negative mouse acceleration that apparently was never / can't be fixed. As a result it's been a rather frustrating experience so far. Might try a controller but for 3rd person shooters not sure I like that prospect any more than the mouse acceleration

In case the game doesn't detect your video card (Nvidia laptop GPUs) use this https://cra0kalo.com/upload/staging/store/push/BD_Toolkit_v1.0.zip

As for the game itself, I'm 2 hours in and I have to admit that I wasn't really blown away by the first chapter. Like some people said, the enemies feel bullet-spongy at first but after upgrading your weapon a little bit it seems to be less and less of an issue. Also, aiming for the legs is way more efficient in comparison to aiming for the head,at least for me.
Anyway, I'm sure the game will keep getting better from now on.

I'm 7 hours in on the 2nd hardest setting (360) and I really love it so far, although some setpieces were a bit too long. The voice acting, the graphics, the controls and the gunplay, it's all done really well. The story not so much though but then again I never play a game for the story. Enemies don't feel bulletspongy to me anymore and it might become one of my all-time favorite TPSes along with Gears of War 2 and Spec-Ops: The Line.

Beware of spoilers littered throughout this post, I'm assuming anyone reading this thread already played the game.

Complete this earlier as I mentioned in the Win thread, and for the most part I enjoyed the game. It has some fantastic production values, looks good, it's fairly original, sounds good etc. etc. I'm sure when it came out it was even more impressive. I actually consider it rather coincidental, I'm currently watching my way through Battlestar Galactica and I get the impression that Binary Domain was inspired by it if even just a little, with the hollow children obviously mirroring the Cylons, and minor Adama / Amada switch up. Regardless, it's mostly irrelevant because Binary Domain knows what it is and does what it wants to do fairly well.

I mentioned earlier that the controls were pretty bad on PC, which was pretty much the case throughout the game, so half the battle was against that. The negative mouse acceleration was relatively easy to adjust to over time but the biggest problem kicked in during more set piece moments. For example, when using the mounted gun during the 2nd Gorilla fight or the Cain-hacked mobile gun section, the sensitivity was so low it was almost impossible to rotate at all making it very, very frustrating to deal with, but not impossible.

The point about enemies being bullet sponges, in general I disagree with, especially towards the end if you've been upgrading your weapons you can just shred through enemies like butter and it feels awesome. The exception is the bosses, many of which just take forever to go down. Biggest problem with the bosses is the general lack of feedback, unless it has a giant glowing weak point, though many have those as well, it sometimes just takes forever to make any meaningful progress on them. If they had health bars or something then it might not feel so monotonous. The giant chandelier boss is an example of that, it's not a difficult fight in the slightest but it took ages for it to go down. That said the spectacle of the boss fights are great, some very imaginative designs.

There's a few fights I didn't like, namely, the Iron Raptor and 2nd Gorilla fight. Iron Raptor fight is just a cacophony of annoyance, the need to use an ammo limited heavy rocket launcher that you have to drop every time you need to shoot down ammo crates from those little robots, and the ammo is so easily wasted on those pesky drones who block your line of sight to the boss, meanwhile getting constantly bombarded by rockets from the boss itself. I think I spent half the battle getting stunned and jostled by the explosions while my squad mates failed to kill the drones fast enough for me to get a clear shot. The Gorilla fight was frustrating, it's really difficulty to determine whether or not you're doing any damage to it regardless of what weapon you use, even with the mounted gun. It follows you fast enough that you can barely get a shot off, and the control problems made it worse. The A.I. here annoyed me too, since a few times I asked for it to reload the gun and it either didn't or couldn't. Was glad when both were over. But for each of these there's a handful other that are fun, like the spider or the Tsar Runner.

Mechanically the game is pretty good though, a few things were a bit off. Context sensitive button responses could be detrimental, tying sprint, dodge and cover to a single button for example can have terrible results. Want to roll out of danger? sure let's just stick you to the facing wall in clear view of all enemies. Same goes for tying the shock burst to reload.. The one thing that bugged me above all else though is that at close range where you are aiming is not where you will hit, the reticule does not indicate that, so many times I'd be behind cover or close to it, firing point blank into a wall I thought I could see past clearly. There were one too many times where my squad mates would mindlessly run back and forward across my gunfire and get me penalized for it. Worst situations I had with it is they'd be standing in cover at the edge of a wall, I'd fire straight into their face accidentally because I thought I was aiming well past them. It's not a huge deal but it's just one of those little things I wish was presented better to the player.

Anyways, don't want to sound like I'm hating on it too much, I enjoyed it, would really love a sequel, explore the world and ideas more, fight along side some of those great characters again. Best Character, Cain by a long shot.

edit: I just learned there's multiple endings based on the trust ratings. I thought it was mostly pointless since I rarely ever issued commands to my squad mates. I ended with Bo dying to save Faye and Cain was MIA, which sucks cause I really wanted to know what happened to him. Everyone else was fine.

Beware of spoilers littered throughout this post, I'm assuming anyone reading this thread already played the game.

Complete this earlier as I mentioned in the Win thread, and for the most part I enjoyed the game. It has some fantastic production values, looks good, it's fairly original, sounds good etc. etc. I'm sure when it came out it was even more impressive. I actually consider it rather coincidental, I'm currently watching my way through Battlestar Galactica and I get the impression that Binary Domain was inspired by it if even just a little, with the hollow children obviously mirroring the Cylons, and minor Adama / Amada switch up. Regardless, it's mostly irrelevant because Binary Domain knows what it is and does what it wants to do fairly well.

I mentioned earlier that the controls were pretty bad on PC, which was pretty much the case throughout the game, so half the battle was against that. The negative mouse acceleration was relatively easy to adjust to over time but the biggest problem kicked in during more set piece moments. For example, when using the mounted gun during the 2nd Gorilla fight or the Cain-hacked mobile gun section, the sensitivity was so low it was almost impossible to rotate at all making it very, very frustrating to deal with, but not impossible.

The point about enemies being bullet sponges, in general I disagree with, especially towards the end if you've been upgrading your weapons you can just shred through enemies like butter and it feels awesome. The exception is the bosses, many of which just take forever to go down. Biggest problem with the bosses is the general lack of feedback, unless it has a giant glowing weak point, though many have those as well, it sometimes just takes forever to make any meaningful progress on them. If they had health bars or something then it might not feel so monotonous. The giant chandelier boss is an example of that, it's not a difficult fight in the slightest but it took ages for it to go down. That said the spectacle of the boss fights are great, some very imaginative designs.

There's a few fights I didn't like, namely, the Iron Raptor and 2nd Gorilla fight. Iron Raptor fight is just a cacophony of annoyance, the need to use an ammo limited heavy rocket launcher that you have to drop every time you need to shoot down ammo crates from those little robots, and the ammo is so easily wasted on those pesky drones who block your line of sight to the boss, meanwhile getting constantly bombarded by rockets from the boss itself. I think I spent half the battle getting stunned and jostled by the explosions while my squad mates failed to kill the drones fast enough for me to get a clear shot. The Gorilla fight was frustrating, it's really difficulty to determine whether or not you're doing any damage to it regardless of what weapon you use, even with the mounted gun. It follows you fast enough that you can barely get a shot off, and the control problems made it worse. The A.I. here annoyed me too, since a few times I asked for it to reload the gun and it either didn't or couldn't. Was glad when both were over. But for each of these there's a handful other that are fun, like the spider or the Tsar Runner.

Mechanically the game is pretty good though, a few things were a bit off. Context sensitive button responses could be detrimental, tying sprint, dodge and cover to a single button for example can have terrible results. Want to roll out of danger? sure let's just stick you to the facing wall in clear view of all enemies. Same goes for tying the shock burst to reload.. The one thing that bugged me above all else though is that at close range where you are aiming is not where you will hit, the reticule does not indicate that, so many times I'd be behind cover or close to it, firing point blank into a wall I thought I could see past clearly. There were one too many times where my squad mates would mindlessly run back and forward across my gunfire and get me penalized for it. Worst situations I had with it is they'd be standing in cover at the edge of a wall, I'd fire straight into their face accidentally because I thought I was aiming well past them. It's not a huge deal but it's just one of those little things I wish was presented better to the player.

Anyways, don't want to sound like I'm hating on it too much, I enjoyed it, would really love a sequel, explore the world and ideas more, fight along side some of those great characters again. Best Character, Cain by a long shot.

edit: I just learned there's multiple endings based on the trust ratings. I thought it was mostly pointless since I rarely ever issued commands to my squad mates. I ended with Bo dying to save Faye and Cain was MIA, which sucks cause I really wanted to know what happened to him. Everyone else was fine.

Oh man, the Iron Raptor was a major pain in the ass. I just had to stop and see if there was a strategy or something I was missing, and it turns out there's a mounted machine gun in the corner of the area that makes the battle a lot easier, since you don't have to rely on that stupid bazooka, and it can mow down those little drones without having to switch weapons. Had I not found that out I don't think I would've beaten it in as little time as I did.

And the chandelier boss was actually my favorite oddly enough, lol.

Just finished it.

This game has been in my backlogs for quiet awhile now so I thought what better time then now to get it out of the way. And I really enjoyed it alot. Characters, the story, graphics were all great, even the voice acting was great with alot of familiar anime voice actors in it.

8/10 - Play if you like:- Vanquish, Spec Ops: The Line, Gears of War

Finished it. 11h20m, will do another run on "No Mercy", too bad there is no New Game+ though. Liked the twist towards the end but that last scene was unnecessary imho. A solid 8,7/10 overall.

I like this game. Reminds me of a slower paced Vanquish, especially when it comes to the scale of some of the bosses. Played it on PC with a controller (thank god!) and found it to be a good experience. The framerate was fairly constant and it looked pretty good. I especially liked the effect of the chunks flying off the robots as you fired on them.

The story was alright but the interactions you had between the squad members were a highlight.

In all I'll probably play this again in a few years time. Nice to see a third person cover shooter done well.

Main Story 7h 19m

I completed my replay of the game and I still love it. It's not a perfect game but it's just plain fun with an interesting story and cast. Going from this to The Division was interesting mechanically but it didn't make the game feel weird or outdated at all. It's been a bit since I played a Yakuza game but the cutscenes give me the same vibe, which is great.

Overall, I'm a fan.

Was just browsing my backlog figuring out if i fancied playing anything.
Stumbled upon this post. A book club to beat you backlog is it? Fantastic idea, inspired me to sign up to the site.
Downloading the game now...