DENYING DESTINY.
A manifold of humanism under a metal sheen. Bonds betwixt trust betwixt nano betwixt flesh. Conspiracies of otherness, cyber-strawmen and transracial espionage, only to fall back in on itself, the black hole that is the universal constant folly of Man.
Underneath its intentionally goofy dialogue and Hollywoodesque characterization lies one of RGG Studio's most unexpectedly critical thematics. Yes, I love the Yakuza franchise to death, it might even be my favorite franchise period, but to see what they're capable of when off their usual reins is inspiring to say the least...
...And to see what RGG does best: gameplay-reinforcing-story-themes-reinforcing-gameplay, here as well, Binary Domain makes for a pristinely unique play experience, one that I have a hard time finding any comparative equal. In my personal writing ethos, I commonly avoid using direct comparisons to other titles, as I would much rather let the game in question speak for itself, but if I had to describe what playing Binary Domain is like, I would say it takes its main cues from the textbook of Resident Evil 4 with its heavy context-sensitive shooting, but with a hard opioid injection of arcadeism. You shoot a robot's legs, they will break off and they will crawl on their arms to continue to reach you. Disarm enemies by shooting their gun right out from their hands, and add insult to injury by blowing their arms off to render them completely demilitarize them. Then there's my personal favorite, the cream of the crop gameplay changer for me: land a headshot, and score the off chance it rewires their programming and watch as your new temporary partner drops akimbo and razes their brethren with halonic hellfire; the perfect reward for risking the bullseye. Every bullet fired, every piece of machinery razed, every microcosmic plate of armor is blasted off with such visceral feedback you are never forgetting who the FUCK made this game.
Binary Domain's mechanical subsystems also never intrude or wear out their welcome, even if all are not created equal. Its humanist themes reinforced by trust building with your squadmates, commandeering them, assisting them, upgrading them, and even bantering with them, and you actually want to do these things, because where our John Guy Main Character inhibits a blank personality for player projection, your squadmates possess character in spades, with some unexpectedly complex developments in the long run.
Where Binary Domain misses its marks isn't in concrete areas of pinpoint, but rather an unfortunate snowballing of minor mistepping contrivances. Its movement scheme, also from the book of RE4, never seems to mesh when the game's at its most chaotic. A cover-based third person shooter isn't some outsider, foreign concept to me, but I've never seemed to really click with its intentionally restrictive maneuverability during the high octane. I've gotten baited out of cover just to get an RPG or sniper round to the face within a half second of my grand reappearance. Where RE4 nailed its limited movement is how coordinated its encounters were; enemies usually flanked you from the front and back in open spaces, and you were challenged to clear out as the monkey in the middle. It's a rewarding gameplay style, but one that is clearly emulated in Binary Domain without a full examination of the how or why to its flavor. During its heaviest firefights, you could be surrounded at all angles with nay a centimeter of breathing room, the claustrophobia settles in as you can't run around with the freedom you feel you need, and it almost feels like you're breaking the game's rules with how rapidly you're switching from walking to running to stopping to turning to aiming to shooting repeat ad nauseum. Maybe it's my fault that I wasn't taking much advantage of the team commands; maybe I should have called my squadmates to cover me more, but also maybe I've never actually seen them kill anything onscreen aside from a few instances.
Another thing to note is the quality of the PC port. Dreadful. Genuinely unacceptable. A separate configuration menu isn't the most wildly offensive thing to expect from a PC port of a console game from 2012, especially from SEGA because they loved these stupid fucking things back in that day, but the lack of any audio settings in-game just for me to find that I have to close the game to open the config menu to find an audio config tab that is just the master volume only? That's actually wildly offensive, doubly so because Binary Domain's audio mixing is dreadful, with both music and voices at a level for a mouse's ear as the roar of every single bullet and impact tears your eardrums, and that's not even the worst of this port's lack of care. That the general community consensus is to just map the keyboard controls, digital four-way movement to an analog stick, because this game refuses to identify any existing controller under the sun, is quite something. The worst thing about it is that I have no clue if the four-way movement has anything to do with how much I struggled to maneuver as mentioned above. Oh, and don't even think about trying to play with a mouse and keyboard. I genuinely have no clue how they managed to make mouse aiming feel.. the way it does here. It is so off it feels gross. This notice about the controls being the literal FIRST thing you read on the PCGamingWiki page is both affirming and depressing.
Binary Domain, in a vacuum removed from its technological shortcomings, is undoubtedly one of the most unique experiences of a third-person shooter I might ever play, and I genuinely feel it's something only RGG Studio could make, as much of a dickrider I probably sound right now. Technical issues notwithstanding, insanely responsive, standard-breaking gunplay carrying one of the most unexpectedly moralistic storylines the studio has put out, blended with their brand of off-kilter showmanship and synonymously free-spirited sense of humor, showcase what RGG Studio are capable of when unchained by formula.
A manifold of humanism under a metal sheen. Bonds betwixt trust betwixt nano betwixt flesh. Conspiracies of otherness, cyber-strawmen and transracial espionage, only to fall back in on itself, the black hole that is the universal constant folly of Man.
Underneath its intentionally goofy dialogue and Hollywoodesque characterization lies one of RGG Studio's most unexpectedly critical thematics. Yes, I love the Yakuza franchise to death, it might even be my favorite franchise period, but to see what they're capable of when off their usual reins is inspiring to say the least...
...And to see what RGG does best: gameplay-reinforcing-story-themes-reinforcing-gameplay, here as well, Binary Domain makes for a pristinely unique play experience, one that I have a hard time finding any comparative equal. In my personal writing ethos, I commonly avoid using direct comparisons to other titles, as I would much rather let the game in question speak for itself, but if I had to describe what playing Binary Domain is like, I would say it takes its main cues from the textbook of Resident Evil 4 with its heavy context-sensitive shooting, but with a hard opioid injection of arcadeism. You shoot a robot's legs, they will break off and they will crawl on their arms to continue to reach you. Disarm enemies by shooting their gun right out from their hands, and add insult to injury by blowing their arms off to render them completely demilitarize them. Then there's my personal favorite, the cream of the crop gameplay changer for me: land a headshot, and score the off chance it rewires their programming and watch as your new temporary partner drops akimbo and razes their brethren with halonic hellfire; the perfect reward for risking the bullseye. Every bullet fired, every piece of machinery razed, every microcosmic plate of armor is blasted off with such visceral feedback you are never forgetting who the FUCK made this game.
Binary Domain's mechanical subsystems also never intrude or wear out their welcome, even if all are not created equal. Its humanist themes reinforced by trust building with your squadmates, commandeering them, assisting them, upgrading them, and even bantering with them, and you actually want to do these things, because where our John Guy Main Character inhibits a blank personality for player projection, your squadmates possess character in spades, with some unexpectedly complex developments in the long run.
Where Binary Domain misses its marks isn't in concrete areas of pinpoint, but rather an unfortunate snowballing of minor mistepping contrivances. Its movement scheme, also from the book of RE4, never seems to mesh when the game's at its most chaotic. A cover-based third person shooter isn't some outsider, foreign concept to me, but I've never seemed to really click with its intentionally restrictive maneuverability during the high octane. I've gotten baited out of cover just to get an RPG or sniper round to the face within a half second of my grand reappearance. Where RE4 nailed its limited movement is how coordinated its encounters were; enemies usually flanked you from the front and back in open spaces, and you were challenged to clear out as the monkey in the middle. It's a rewarding gameplay style, but one that is clearly emulated in Binary Domain without a full examination of the how or why to its flavor. During its heaviest firefights, you could be surrounded at all angles with nay a centimeter of breathing room, the claustrophobia settles in as you can't run around with the freedom you feel you need, and it almost feels like you're breaking the game's rules with how rapidly you're switching from walking to running to stopping to turning to aiming to shooting repeat ad nauseum. Maybe it's my fault that I wasn't taking much advantage of the team commands; maybe I should have called my squadmates to cover me more, but also maybe I've never actually seen them kill anything onscreen aside from a few instances.
Another thing to note is the quality of the PC port. Dreadful. Genuinely unacceptable. A separate configuration menu isn't the most wildly offensive thing to expect from a PC port of a console game from 2012, especially from SEGA because they loved these stupid fucking things back in that day, but the lack of any audio settings in-game just for me to find that I have to close the game to open the config menu to find an audio config tab that is just the master volume only? That's actually wildly offensive, doubly so because Binary Domain's audio mixing is dreadful, with both music and voices at a level for a mouse's ear as the roar of every single bullet and impact tears your eardrums, and that's not even the worst of this port's lack of care. That the general community consensus is to just map the keyboard controls, digital four-way movement to an analog stick, because this game refuses to identify any existing controller under the sun, is quite something. The worst thing about it is that I have no clue if the four-way movement has anything to do with how much I struggled to maneuver as mentioned above. Oh, and don't even think about trying to play with a mouse and keyboard. I genuinely have no clue how they managed to make mouse aiming feel.. the way it does here. It is so off it feels gross. This notice about the controls being the literal FIRST thing you read on the PCGamingWiki page is both affirming and depressing.
Binary Domain, in a vacuum removed from its technological shortcomings, is undoubtedly one of the most unique experiences of a third-person shooter I might ever play, and I genuinely feel it's something only RGG Studio could make, as much of a dickrider I probably sound right now. Technical issues notwithstanding, insanely responsive, standard-breaking gunplay carrying one of the most unexpectedly moralistic storylines the studio has put out, blended with their brand of off-kilter showmanship and synonymously free-spirited sense of humor, showcase what RGG Studio are capable of when unchained by formula.