It is hard nowadays to really just sit down and be a weekend gamer; punching through a title in a little over 12 hours and enjoying the faults and the fancy as they come to you. Everyone sort of praises games for their length and depth of mechanics, for crisp graphics, complex narratives, and more, mostly because it is now expected from any bit-budgeted title that comes out. Sometimes, though, we just need to turn off our brains and play something that, let's be real, is kind of just technically bad, but in a fun way.
Take Binary Domain, a new title from Yakuza Studio, Ryu Ga Gotoku.Their first title under the studio's new name, upon first glance it seems to be destined to be a bargain bin experience. The entire design, from its super busy boxart, to fairly stylized yet surprisingly standard character models, kind of betrays everything before you even boot up the disk. Yet even under the blandness of what's presented, Binary Domain has a spark that raises it above its station, one that can only be described as purely fun.
The world of Binary Domain is simple: by the year 2080, robots live among humans, but someone decided to build robots that are so human-like, they don’t even know about it. Since this is a violation of natural law, world governments decide to send a “Rust Crew”, a special forces team made out of international specialists, to investigate the Amada corporation in Japan, the source of these “Hollowed Children,” as they are called. As Sgt. Dan Marshall, you and the rest of the Rust Crew have to infiltrate an isolated Japan and find evidence of Amada’s crime.
The plot is basically ripped right out of a knock-off Isaac Asimov novel filled with conspiracy theories and extra cheese, pretty much throwing every cliché in the book at you. Looking for pompous, cockney British operatives? Check! Stereotypical black guy with a massive gun, shouting “aight” every five minutes? Check! A sexy Chinese lady? Double Check! And let's not forget a French-speaking robot that is polite and has magic plot powers to help you out of any situation. Yeah, wrap your head around that one for a second.
You kind of have to hand it to Ryu Ga Gotoku for this one, as they essentially re-create their super serious narrative structure from the Yakuza series, but with a plot straight out of a Yakuza side story. Every so often you get a moment of silence or a section of cutscenes that push the plot forward, complete with twists you mostly come to expect. Yet despite the complete lunacy of the storyline, the subtext behind Binary Domain is both surprisingly pertinent and, dare I say, thought-provoking.
Ultimately, the game is asking the age-old question every science fiction story involving robots does: what makes us really human? Add to that a new question: does it matter if we are flesh and bone or mechanical in the end if we feel emotions and have free will? It is honestly a fascinating narrative thread in what is a B-movie action game on an AA budget. And while it kind of just lets some of those questions linger, it at least should get points for attempting to bring some subtext to a premise that is so overplayed in science fiction that it could have been easier to not address it entirely.
The game’s core mechanics are pretty much an exercise of the cover-based, third-person shooter checklist. Sadly though, the imitation is not exact. The controls are responsive but a bit touchy, making slipping in and out of cover tedious as the levels get progressively longer. The game also has an issue with reloading guns; any time you get interrupted or shot at, the animation to reload weapons restarts. It’s little things like this that are very noticeable, and while skilled players will probably get used to the controls, it does follow a fairly rinse-and-repeat progression through the game levels that mostly deviates for big, loud setpieces.
The main gameplay gimmick in Binary Domain is the tactical command system. You can dictate orders to your squad of international specialists through both button and voice commands, but both are very hit-and-miss. The voice commands don’t always work, and sometimes the squad just refuses to acknowledge orders given to them, feeling tacked-on and not fully fleshed out. The button commands are better, but more cumbersome to deal with since activating the menu of choice commands has you press two to three buttons while in combat. It also doesn’t help that the A. I of your squadmates is rather weak; they can fight and hold their own, but they tend to get in your way at times when going for cover, or just jump right out in front of the enemy to absorb tons of bullets in a matter of seconds.
Ryu Ga Gotoku also tries to inject interpersonal drama into the mix with a basic trust system. The trust system in place pretty much hinges on both your in-game performance and conversing with squad mates in between combat. Conversations are mostly one-sided, as you pick a response out of a few options and hear some lines with a text box, again reminiscent of the Yakuza side stories. It also utilizes a simple binary of "right" and "wrong" conversation choices, with right answers raising trust and wrong answers lowering it.
The choices are basically shallow, as you need to gain approval from your squad by picking what they want to hear, making it simple to gain the trust of your teammates. In fact, the biggest problem I had was shooting my own squadmates as they jump in front of me, as that lowers trust constantly. Thankfully, the penalty is minimal, but it's a shame that the trust system becomes a neat idea on paper only, which is also problematic as the trust system is tied to some of the game's ending choices, so you need high trust to achieve what the game considers its best ending.
While the squad system is a bit weak and the controls need some fine-tuning, one thing Binary Domain does right is provide entertainment. Shooting robots is, frankly, fun as hell. It also helps that the game breaks up the action in a myriad of ways. There are some poorly implemented quick-time events, but we also have ridiculous boss fights full of spectacle. These are kind of boss fights that require some quick thinking to take down the blinking “kill me” lights that you have to hit. It helps that most of the action goes for an arcade-like feel. This contradicts the strategy shooter elements, but it makes the game extremely fun to play through.
It helps that the game is fairly clean visually. The environments are varied enough to not be repetitive, but are also fairly insignificant and overall forgettable. The graphical style, however, borrows heavily from the exaggerated close-ups of characters' faces trying to sell the emotion in a cutscene, complete with hammy voice acting. This does add to the B-movie charm, and is pretty much a signature style of Ryu Ga Gotaku games, so fans of the Yakuza series will see some similarities. If there is one flaw, the game is not remotely detailed enough to compete with heavier hitters of its era, with stiffer animations and a few graphical hiccups here and there.
While the human characters are a bit lacking visually, the robots have some personality to them. Design-wise, they are crisp, like 3-D vector models mashed with the Robot design from the film I, Robot. They look menacing and, in some cases, fairly unique, and the physics of blowing off the countless limbs of robotic enemies is honestly cathartic. Sound design also sells this, with bullet effects lending decent heft to their impacts as your squad shouts cheesy lines and cringeworthy dialogue over the noise of broken machine parts. This is all more memorable than a generic techno-metal soundtrack for the background music, the kind you would hear from any game back in the early 2010s.
Other than the ten-hour campaign, you can also go through multiplayer in Binary Domain. But the blasé nature of the game continues here. You have two game modes: Invasion, which is pretty much horde mode against an onslaught of robots. The robots don’t come in droves though; in fact they lumber up to you slowly, stretching out the online matches longer than they should be. The versus mode is stock standard for what you expect; you have five classes you can level up, each with strengths and weaknesses, and you fight other opponents in deathmatch, king of the hill, and other gameplay modes. The multiplayer is whitewashed to the point of being an afterthought.
Honestly, I quite enjoyed my time with Binary Domain. It's a fun game that thankfully doesn't overstay its welcome, offering some cheap entertainment. It is the type of game that has the makings of a cult classic, and it can attribute this fact to the fun factor of the entire package. It honestly plays like a throwback to gameplay from a bygone time; a great choice for those weekend warriors looking for a quick rental to blast through. For that one weekend, just nothing but Binary Domain, before it goes back to Blockbuster, it shall shine until moving on to something meatier.
Author's Note: This review was originally written for the website Blistered Thumbs, back in 2012. I have edited it from its original version and am posting it here to preserve it.