Binary Domain is a 3rd person cover-based shooter set in futuristic Tokyo, circa 2080. The Amada Corporation have violated the New Geneva Convention by producing 'Hollow Children': robots which look identical to humans and are convinced they are human.
The 'Rust Crew' is sent to take the leader of Amada Corporation into custody. You play as Dan Marshall, accompanied by his trusty partner Big Bo, and later joined by a group of mercenaries. The characters aren't that likeable, but they do have much more personality than the ones in Gears of War. Binary Domain also has a much more interesting story driving it, so you are eager to play to see how the story pans out. As it goes, the ending is fantastic and is full of twists and moral dilemmas.
There's quite a lot of cut-scenes and dialog throughout the game. Most of the dialog is often cliché action banter, but is well presented. The overall look to the game is quite arcade-like, much like Alpha Protocol was, and it fits well alongside Sega's other published titles.
At certain points, you have to choose which two companions you want by your side for that section of the game. Each character specialises in a certain type of weapon, but your choice will mainly come down to personality. You do most of the shooting, but your team-mates do chip in with some kills, and are always prepared to come and revive you providing they have a health-pack available.
As you destroy your enemies, you are awarded with credits. You can then spend these at the shopping terminals which you find at regular intervals. You can purchase ammunition, gun upgrades and nano-tech. The nano-tech upgrades let you boost certain skills which gives the game a slight RPG element to it, although I don't think it makes a huge difference to the game-play.
Binary Domain essentially controls like Gears of War. You can snap to cover, hop between objects, and roadie-run to navigate the battlefield. Behind cover, you have the option to pop out and aim, or stay behind cover to blind fire with lower accuracy. In close combat, you can use your mêlée attack. D-pad switches between your equipped weapons. You have a stock machine gun, specific to Dan, a pistol with unlimited ammo, leaving you with two slots for a gun and grenade of your choice.
Shooting robots is refreshing since other games in the genre have used human or humanoid aliens as the enemies. The destructible nature of the robotic foes gives a satisfying feeling as appendages can be blown off separately. Robots with missing legs attempt to crawl towards you and will claw at your feet until you put them out of their misery. Robots with missing heads will wander aimlessly and can shoot their own kind.
Throughout the game, the action is varied to help keep it from becoming tedious. There's some chase sequences where you are shooting from moving vehicles, static turret sections and plenty of arena boss battles.
The bosses are huge robots that can often knock you down in one hit. The bosses are pretty varied in their design, so you need to apply different tactics to them. Sometimes you will have to hide behind cover, whereas others require a run-and-gun approach. They usually involve targeting weak spots, or destroying parts of their armour before taking them down.
The game has voice recognition support to give commands to your team-mates, or respond to their statements. This feature is entirely optional, and you can just use LB button to pop up dialog options mapped to the face buttons on the controller. You can tell your squad to retreat, cover you, charge, or wait whilst on the field.
The game also features a relationship system between you and your squad mates, which is affected by your actions during battle and your responses during each conversation. The idea is if you have a good relationship then they will obey your orders and provide extra dialog, but a bad relationship will mean they will be less helpful and ignore your commands. They will never abandon your team if they hate you though, and I don't think the relationship system has any baring on the story.
For the majority of the game, I was convinced I would give the game an 8. It's a good cover-based shooter with enough variety to keep you entertained. The story was interesting but I was afraid it wouldn't have a good conclusion. As it goes, the finale was well executed, delivering enough action and adding some plot twists to the mix. The characters started to show more emotion and personality as they are faced with moral dilemmas. This pushes the rating to a 9.