Playing A Game Binary Domain PC

I really think I gave Binary Domain a fair shake -- but it's just too rough, too flawed, and too irritating.

To its credit, the game does have some fun boss designs, and the number and pacing of bosses is pretty impressive; of course, it would have to be, to break up the otherwise tedious generic-robot encounters. And even so, boss events can suffer from having too much shit happening, to the point where you can't even count the number of enemies and projectiles headed directly toward your face. It reminds me of Vanquish, but without the ability to get out of the way of your incoming death.

And as I mentioned last time, the high-concept plot is genuinely fascinating; but this fascination is diminished by wacky narrative pacing, and subpar dialog and voice-acting. Cutscenes are overly long, and while not as melodramatic as a Kojima production, are dull and plodding enough to ruin any hope of immersive storytelling. The poorly-polished relationship system doesn't help either, with plenty of irrelevant choices for responding to a teammate (such as "Yes," "No," or "Shit!"), and some completely illogical responses based on the characters' inscrutable personalities.

Also, I did part of a level where I had to ride a jet-ski through a sewage causeway. Well-placed mechanical change-ups are one thing, but with controls as bad as this ... the game can feel like it's parodying itself.

Between all these failings and frustrations - oh, and my teammates continuing to walk directly in front of my gun, then yelling at me for shooting them - continuing on through Binary Domain just felt like a chore. The final straw was unreasonably infrequent checkpoints. Dying isn't usually a concern, since you have a moderate store of life-restoring med-packs (and can usually get even more resuscitations from your teammates), but there are times when this doesn't apply, such as on the aforementioned jet-ski. In the mission I gave up on, I spontaneously failed, for no discernible reason, and with no apparent explanation; and was then sent backward about ten minutes. So, no thanks.

I no longer feel sorry for Binary Domain. While its basic ideas still strike me as promising, this isn't a game let down simply by a handful of execution mistakes; it seems to have gone wrong from the very start. You can do worse than this game, but it should be pretty easy to do better.

Better than: Terminator Salvation
Not as good as: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine
Maybe a good thing I didn't use a microphone: since I spent most of my time cursing out the AI.

Progress: Gave up -- Chapter 2-5

Rating: Bad