A few thoughts on... Binary Domain

Binary Domain, developed by Devil's Domain and published by SEGA in 2012 is a game that seems to polarise people. They either love it or hate it. I found it to be an enjoyable experience, with some nicely written dialogue (I'm a sucker for banter), an interesting story that isn't to far fetched and a nice twist in the tail.

Binary Domain is an on rails third person shooter, and as such there isn't any real exploration to be done.  The story is set in the near(ish) future where Japan has closed it's borders and bipedal robots are commonplace.  You play as Sgt Marshall, a special ops soldier who is sent on a black op to Japan to track down information on "Hollow Children", essentially robots that can pass as human beings which of course has been outlawed by Geneva.

The narrative is very linear but the pace of the delivery keeps things moving forward at a decent clip, so you don't feel the desire to go off the path too often. I have seen a number of complaints that this is a buggy and substandard port of a console title, the graphics are on par with what you'd expect for an almost 4 year old game, but I didn't encounter any glitches or frame rate drops at all.  I also didn't have any issues with my controller (Xbox360), which worked fine first time out and didn't give me any trouble throughout my ten hour play time.  The only thing I found frustrating was that the interactions didn't remap to the buttons to the 360 controller scheme, this meant that at times I was guessing which button to press to select a conversation response.

The game also makes use of voice commands, so you can tell your squad to hold, charge, fire, etc, verbally rather than having to select the command using the controller.  This seemed to work pretty well overall but I ended up leaving my squad mates to their own devices most of the time and let them comment on my skills (both positive and negative) when in combat.  This commenting I found to be one of the more interesting aspects of the game.  You don't have a lot of direct conversation with the NPC's outside of cut scenes, but as you progress through the game the supporting cast do give you some exposition and provide some nice banter between themselves.  I think my personal favourite is Cain, a CN-7 model Combat robot, who talks with a French accent.

The story wraps up neatly, but there is enough left that should a sequel ever be developed it could be quite interesting.  There is an online mode (both co-op and player vs player) but the online matches are pretty dead unless you know people who you can play with.

Overall I enjoyed Binary Domain and would recommend it to people who enjoy rail shooters, games with a light Sci-Fi feel or banter between the main character and their supporting cast.