Binary Domain

This game teaches us that headshots are not always the go to things in a shooting game.

Sometimes you gotta shoot the shiny weak points of the bosses too.

This game also has some good amount of Bromance and Romance lol.

I finished the game. I will replay it later. It's worth it.

great

One of my best gaming Expriences so far .
Binary Domain is a masterpiece
A game more than a decades old is much more enjoyable than modern shooter games.
One innovative mechanic that really got me is that you can use microphone to command your squad (basic commands are only supported )
Havent seen anything like it before.
Your actions and performance and your dialoge choices affect the game ending.

9/10

Great game, fun story and overall a fun shooter. I own this on Xbox360 and enjoyed it for many years as a kid when it released. Well worth the money and if it is on sale YOU need to buy it.

Hidden gem, played it years ago and found it on steam so i'm going for another run. Good story, nice characters, fun shooting. Just one warning to know as a negative, it is HORRIBLY optimized for max difficulty because some things just can't work the way they wanted them. Play it on medium cause it's gonna be very miserable at times and it will ruin your experience.

Tl;dr GREAT hidden gem of a game, DO NOT play on hard.

This stupid dumb third person shooter actually has a compelling plot and the gameplay is pretty legit even if a bit clunky or wonky (especially when moving from cover to cover) but the characters also has charm, I even actually thought this was from the USA but nahhh its from Japan dude, well done Sega, hope they revive this IP someday, kudos to the devs

Shooting robots is fun. I tried to play the game with voice recognition; it works, but it's not something I play with.

I also can't believe they made the effort to add every line for every player-picked character in every story scene. I'm kind of impressed at how detailed it is.

Well, aside from that, get ready for some funny lines and repeated dialogue for every robot you killed.

Short and decent game, and I like Cain because he's cool.

Nowdays is quite rare to see Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios release something that isn't related to the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series. Believe it or not, they were once known for more arcade-focused titles, especially Super Monkey Ball. Now, they're almost entirely absorbed with those two franchises. Specially Like a Dragon.

It's no surprise that the 7th console generation was a strange time for Japanese developers trying to break into the Western market. Capcom, for instance, struggled, with Keiji Inafune being a key figure in pushing the company toward appealing almost exclusively to Western audiences—sometimes at the cost of its original identity. The Like a Dragon/Yakuza series faced similar challenges during this these times while not leaving its eastern heritage behind. Beyond the first Yakuza, which SEGA hoped would be a massive success, there wasn't much faith in its Western releases. For example, Yakuza 2 wasn't even dubbed in English, Yakuza 3 had cut content and a strange localization, Yakuza 4 suffered from odd DLC practices, and Yakuza 5 almost didn’t make it to the West at all if it hadn't been for the fans.

And then there's Binary Domain, a game that definitely slipped under the radar with an at best average reception scores, a quirky PC port, and a commercial faiure to its name. It was, in many ways, typical of the 7th generation shooters: a game that’s mostly average, with one or two unique mechanics that developers might expand on in a sequel a year or two later. One of these mechanics is the “Squad Trust System,” officially called the “Consequence System.” As the name suggests, it revolves around gaining your squadmates' trust. While it doesn’t affect gameplay as much as you might expect, since your squad's overall performance remains mostly unaffected, it does influence the narrative, particularly in the ending. Depending on how much trust you’ve earned, characters will act differently in the final scene. Nothing major, though. This system can be easily exploited if you play carefully. Headshots and melee attacks will impress your squad, steadily increasing the "trust meter", even if you don't constantly engage in dialogues with them. That's right-besides fighting NOD32 antivirus looking robots, you can chat with your squad and learn more about them. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it’s a nice break from the constant shooting. The game pushes you to interact with your team frequently, which can be fun at times, but it does get repetitive. Most of the interesting conversations happen at the beginning of each chapter, so after a while, the system starts to show it's ugly face as Dan's responses are kind of basic. This was because the game was intended to use the Kinect and record your voice, acting as a microphone to command your squad. On PC though you just use buttons to communicate.

Set in the year 2080 were robots are an integral part of society. As the "Rusted Crew" we are tasked to investigate a certain corporation that violated the "New Geneva Convention", a law that basically forbidds any robot with a human appereance, those that can't be distinguished. They are known as "Hollow Children", hollow on the inside born from metal but still carrying the weakness and social advantages of the flesh. The "Hollow Children" don't realise they're robots and just act like regular humans with wires and circuit inside, not until someone elses proves otherwise. The overall plot is very Metal Gear-esque with a touch of typicall hollywood b-action movie clichés. The "Ha! I'm the villain, actually" trope is here, in case anyone wants to do a list about it. Compared to RGG's usual fare, the writting actually feels more grounded, being less dramatic in a sense compared to the Like a Dragon/Yakuza series which can be a positive or a negative depending on which person you ask. For me it felt quite weak since I'm just used to how RGG Studios expresses themselves in Like a Dragon's cutscenes, trying to make each scene perfectly capture that 'something' in particular. Here, it it's still good don't get me wrong, but lacks the depth and subtlety that RGG Studios is known for. And the same goes for the characters, the frech robot is kind of cool.

While playing Binary Domain, I couldn't help but feel like it was just Resident Evil 5/6 disguised in a metal-made coat and instead of shooting zombies you were shooting robots. Same concept, different execution, but this can also apply to a lot of similar titles as well. Linear hallways, almost non-existent puzzles, partners, goofy dialogue and shoody shooting mechanics. It actually has the same problems both Resident Evil 5 and 6 face, it gets really repetitive overtime. Games usually have a loop in which they orbit around every 5 or so seconds, this specially applies to real-time action games. If the mechanics can't properly sustent that 5 time treshold, fun just starts to dwindle overtime and Binary Domain suffers from it to some degree. Not to the extents of RE 5 or 6 but still. By the third act, some bosses can get annoying to deal with since they have so much health and can knock you out with a single slap. In this 'Knock Out' state you're only able to shoot enemies with your pistol while crawling on the ground, (Kane & Lynch 2 style) until someone from your squad heals you or in case you have a medic bag doing it yourself. One funny thing to note is that when someone gets critically wounded the characters ragdoll, including you adding some unintentional humour. Setpieces here, setpieces there it is not far from other RGGs offerings really. Typical in a way that doesn't have to envy anything to it's most famous distant cousin. Or maybe that is what was trending around that time in the industry, but I wouldn't know for sure, at that time since I only had a Wii so most of the hot popular releases were out of my reach anyways.

Now, saving the worst for last: the PC port. It’s about what you'd expect from that era—pretty poor quality. Most of the issues stem from the fact that it was designed with consoles in mind, so as you can imagine, these problems mainly affect the PC version. I experienced low camera sensitivity, but since I couldn't adjust it directly in the game's menu, I had to go into a separate .exe file to tweak it, only to then realize that it made the camera way too sensitive to play. So I had to adjust it again, one problem less. Then, the keybindings were all messed up. 'M' to perform an action? I pressed every key, and nothing worked. I finally gave up and switched to a controller, thinking the buttons couldn’t be mapped wrong, right? Well, they were. Luckily, Steam Input saved me there. At this point, I felt like I was playing technician, constantly trying to set things up while problems just kept piling on. Perfect, now everything's good, I said. But as I'm trying to aim, my eye-hand cordination takes a hit thanks to just having my thumb to steer the camera in the correct position rather than my whole hand, essentially making the game near unplayable for me. So, what did I do? I tried turning on aim assist, but because I was using Steam Input, the game didn't recognize the controller properly, and the aim assist option stayed locked on 'No.' I totally gave up, I ended up using both a keyboard and a controller—switching to the controller for QTEs, vehicle sections, command and specific actions, and back to the keyboard for the rest. I’ve never had to jump through so many hoops just to fix a single issue, but here I am.

Binary Domain is simply a product of its time—dumb fun, no bullshit in between, non-stop action galore. Nowadays, many people seem to miss that era of gaming, longing for simpler times to return. But in reality, it never truly left, though it’s true that it's not as abundant as it once was 10 or so years ago.

Came out of the blue, was a very enjoyable game

Keyboard controls are awful, voice commands don't work

I honestly wanted to give this game an honest go but it's literally unplayable

This game, is such a blast to play. Especially today when AI is such a big topic and with all the concerns over its rapid development with next to no oversight, safeguards or regard for consequences this game is way more relevant now than it was back when it first came out.

Its graphics are somewhat dated, yes but the art design and direction i will argue holds up even today.
Music is solid and creates the appropriate feeling of high action ride.
Sound effects are great and the enemy robots exploding or limbs being blown off never gets old.
Voice acting is also great but also really funny with certain characters; it's like they knew their accents sounded like stereotypes, but had a lot of fun recording them regardless.

It feels very much intentional, but i could be wrong.
Either way its a joy to listen to them.

Gameplay has some elements of jank and partner AI is not the greatest, borderline terrible at times but once you get used to it the whole thing grows on you.

Boss battles are great and some are quite a spectacle to behold, especially the highway boss battle.

Now story is where the real meat of this thing lies; it starts off with intrigue and feels like an action movie throughout, until towards the end it throws in twists that you will not see coming but also does a great job asking what truly is the line between real and artificial life?

Best part it has a solid, stand alone ending that closes everything it starts while leaving the door open for potentially more without sequel hook, beg or leaving things unanswered until the sequel.

It's a real shame this never did get a sequel, i would have loved to come back to this story universe and see what would have come next.
Oh well.

tried to tell shinodo that i liked him.
my advances got shot down VERY quickly and was told that "men in japan don't talk to other men like that".
BUT you tell faye that she looks like a porn star and she responds with nothing??

Good game

yes just yes

Not bad

6,5/10

Just finished this adventurous game which has been forgotten by the mainstream media which was inundated with a plethora of third person shooters during its time. You had the likes of GTA, Vanquish and other well known shooters that were waiting to be played but this was something quite different which I will explain further.

The story is nothing much to write home about as it is your very own character fighting against an evil corporation akin to similar games in its genre. You start out as Dan , a member of the Rust Crew fighting against an evil corporation called Yamada known for its diabolical attempts to wipe out mankind in futuristic Tokyo during 2080. The 2 aspects that set this game apart from others were the choices that you as a player get in taking whom you want in your team to battle against the evil forces. The second being the speech recognition aspect which is a neat idea well implemented with the headphone speaker put to great use.


The game spans 6 solid chapters and has a varied level design as you travel through different locations waiting to be explored. The story is quite linear which is good especially when you have a group of teammates to guide you through completing objectives.

The graphics are solid especially for a game made in 2012. You can see the emotions on the characters faces when your character gets shot or when he needs help from his teammates battling for his life. The cutscenes evoke emotion as well as every teammate works together little realizing what is in store for them as they press forward.

It portrays quintessential emotions of humans at war against challenges which pose a threat to their existence more akin to fictional stories such as War of the Worlds.

The gameplay reminds me more of Gears of War but in a futuristic setting and with guns that pack a punch when used effectively. Further, there is an Invasion Mode which spans over 50 levels where you fight against hordes of enemies. The longer you last , the more points you achieve. You do unlock a Chapter select option when you complete the game on any difficulty.

The music has an amazing techno score which hits the spot in my playlist starting with the mellowed down tone when no action arises to the adrenaline pumping techno funk hitting it real hard while you mow down scores of enemies. I will definitely add the music to my personal collection as video game music gives you a different feel of nostalgia when played over and over again.

The overall replayability depends on you the gamer. According to me , I will go for a second round for this game despite the repetitive enemies and same objectives. This gets me to certain issues which need attention for a hopeful sequel for this game. The enemies are quite repetiive and the gun variety is less especially when you have a game set in 2080 where technology is well advanced and chances of weapon customizations are quite possible. You do reach an upgrade center which may be fine to upgrade you and your team members in terms of their firepower damage, rate of fire and other features including adding ammunition and accuracy into the mix. But, you do not get the choice of a different special weapon which can add impetus to the battle.

Another area which could have been fixed is the enemy variety. You get to shoot down the same robots over and over again giving you the feel of a Dynasty Warriors rinse and repeat conundrum. What really got on my nerves were the AI companions who just wander in circles and dont heal you when you are downed by an RPG or a regular gunfire. They either stand on the line of fire absorbing hits while you are crying for help or they get in your line of fire when you are engaged in shooting the enemy.

However, barring these minor issues, I give this game an 8/10. Its lamentable not to see a sequel as it didnt rake up the mullah desired by the company. But I hope something of this nature of a game will arise with greater visuals, a fleshed out story and different locales to sink your teeth into.

Absolute cinema. Fantastic story, engaging game play/mechanics.

This game proves that 100 men can in fact, beat a gorilla.

Bad game, can't run properly. This is not pirated and they give you this crap? smh

I still remember the day I got to play this masterpiece, skipped school that day went straight to a gaming cafe started playing this game and was immediately hooked, shame they stopped making fun games like this.

It's quite fun to analyze Binary Domain in the context of its time. Cover shooters were all the rage in the Western gaming space, and a couple of Japanese studios felt the urge to join in, probably in a bid to get mainstream success. In comes Sega's Ryu Ga Gotoku studio, giving the cover shooter formula an honest shot. And I gotta say, they've done a heck of a job here, especially considering it's a rookie's attempt.

The gunplay is a blast, shooting robots legs and bashing their heads on the ground while circuitry and sparks fly all over the place never gets old. I enjoyed the story too, the plot is nothing too crazy but it definitely has fun characters and memorable moments. At the 8-9 hours length it has, it moves at a nice pace and it kept being exciting the whole way through.

It pains me that we'll probably never see a sequel, because Binary Domain is such a solid start. I would put it as my favorite RGG game; as a cover shooter enjoyer, they ticked all the right boxes for me, and then some. Personally I would love to see them making more shooters, although I'm definitely in the minority with that, haha.

It is fun. Every companion have different dialog based on your choices of companionship during mission. Nice gag all around with concept of AI taking over, in 2025 sure make it different now.

I am so down bad for cain dude I got solid like a diamond when I was fighting Gorilla and Cain was complimenting me half the time with Your Aim Is Tres Bien Monsieour

Entertaining game from Yakuza game makers :)

a forgotten gen in the sand

It's a pretty decent game with a cool host of characters voiced by some big hitters. I just had that you have to edit the settings before getting into the game instead of just doing it right on the main menu. I also never got the voice chat feature to work at all. Overall cool experience with some cool boss designs. Catch this on sale!

The game is not bad but I wanted to warn players about those few small details:
I played 1h and got frustrated so many times because everything is SOOOOO F§°#§ING SCRIPTED:
- you run in corridors and shoot at enemies which won't die with multiple shots in the head ;
- half of the time you do EXACTLY what the game tells you to do. You can't shoot, run or even move until the game tells you "ok, now you can" ;
- you need to talk to the game with your mic but it doesn't work very well and I don't want to talk to a game ;
- stuff like "the characters will wear their masks to swim but not when they are shot at" ;
- I hesitated between easy and normal, chose normal and it is way too easy ;
- things happen by strange coincidence, like you are fighting a big robot and OOOOOH, THANK YOU THE BUTTON THAT MAKES HEAVY METAL BARS CRUSH IT ;
- if you move a platform to make a bridge but you don't go to the very last pixel, you won't be able to cross ;
- every time the tutorial tells me to push a button, is says "Press M", no matter which button I need to push ;
- if you shoot at something but the game isn't ready, you will waste your ammo ;
- what I forget.
Play the game because it is fun but be aware of all that.

Update: after an additional hour I decided to uninstall the game because all of the above get worse over time.
Got stuck in a door, couldn't fight a boss because my teammates couldn't destroy drones which are very easy to destroy, my teammates yelled at me "COME, OVER HERE" but I couldn't find them, or the yelled "HURRY!" but the game only allowed me to walk and not run.... anyway, it's an old story now.

From AI thinking its human to robots getting pregnant. This game is a fun ass game published by sega and the gun play is fun as well. 10/10

If Gears of War had squadmate relationship mechanics. Pretty solid title for the uncommon Japanese Third-person Shooter. The Robot is the coolest character and hardest to befriend.

It feels ugly calling this retro, but it is. Great game, controls were terrible with mouse and keyboard, story was cheesy, but that's exactly what I wanted.

Good story and gameplay

its a cool game it gives me memories

A hidden-gem to be sure. Binary Domain is one of the best third-person shooters you've probably never played. A solid 8/10 and frequently goes on sale, so it's a safe purchase as far as I'm concerned.

Pros

• Fantastic weapon variety and a cool take on alt-fire for your primary weapon, with upgrades that feel substantial.
  
• Huge roster of squad-mates. You'll end up with favourites, for sure. Mine were Bo, Faye and Cain.
  
• Meaty combat, benefited by the robot limb stripping system which rewards you for destroying robots' weapon arms and heads.
  
• Interesting story, delivered in the hammy bombastic fashion the devs of Yakuza are known for, but delivered with sincerity that makes it palatable.
  
• Great music, when you can hear it. Mixing is weird in this game, sometimes the music drowns out dialogue, sometimes the opposite.
  
• Diverse range of choices. I was able to keep loyalty with a shaky squadmate, avert one's betrayal, and stopped one from being killed off. I didn't expect rpg-like elements in a tps, but it works here, as does the voice command system. I used keyboard inputs as opposed to my microphone, but it's a novel concept.
  
• Chapter select per section is great for replayability & revisiting favourite parts of the game.
  
• It has Cain. We need more Cain.
  

It's a sci fi cover shooter from the guys who made Yakuza. Buy it

It's still fun despite its age.

I played with a controller and it went really well.

The social mechanics during fights make you want to take risks and impress your teammates, sometimes you get called out for being stupid but they are easily impressed and praise you most of the time.

Too bad we'll never get a sequel.

This game may be old but its a fun arcade-ish shooter. Reminds me of the old resident evil games.

I would have kept playing this game if the companions weren't so annoying, all the time saying "you could have done better" even when you killed every single enemy on the screen. Seriously, what the hell was that?

A very strange and not well known third person shooter from the early 2010s, 7/10 shooter that's only worth checking out on heavy discount.

Binary Domain plays exactly like the shooters of that time, third person cover based, linear levels, set pieces, generic military protagonist with a personality of a wet noodle, shooting gauntlets, turret/chase sequences and some shocking QTE prompts that pop up thankfully not that often because damn are they lightning fast.

The highlight of the game is the definitely the shooting parts :) Shooting robots in this game can be quite fun and satisfying blowing off each individual parts de-limbing robots and seeing scrap go everywhere so much that your fps tanks after an explosion, good robot variety aswell keeps the encounters varied and not too tedious to go through, bosses are a hit and miss some were fun at the beginning but slowly degrade towards the end and just become bullet sponges sadly, making some sequences ( that damn gorilla ) a slogfest to get through.

The companion system albeit basic is a nice feature to this game and makes playing with the different characters fun and varied, some are more fleshed out than some others though so I felt forced to pick certain ones to get better dialogue/ scenes for a more interesting playthrough. There is also a trust system that actively effects your relationship with your companion when you have them in your party, this can either make them like you or hate your depending on your choices of dialogue to them or committing friendly fire :)

The story is a fun time, dumb but entertaining cutscenes with some funny dialogue and good set pieces, apparently the Yakuza developers made this game and it shows with its Japanese influence in some of the scenes, main plot focused on the presence of AI and how it effects the human race, very prevalent when playing today and has a few twists and turns in the story.

fun and goofy, would recommend as long as ya dont mind fixing the fucked up controls on start up

nc game

This game is a very big mixed bag for me.
sometimes its fun but then it throws a needless qte at you. i've died so many times to those.
the weapons are neat and the characters are fun.
but to whoever approved and made the gorilla segment of the game? fuck you. i hope that every time you put on your shoes, theres a lego in them waiting for you. I hope that whenever you turn on your car the "check engine" light appears for you.

i hate you with a passion.

wack ass game from the creators of the yakuza/like a dragon series, really good if you want a cover shooter with the first actually good squad controls ive ever used
heavily recommend giving it a go on sale (it goes down to like 3 dollars its nuts) though do install the mouse fix on github to make the game playable

RGG Studio's hidden gem.

was alright

One of the masterpiece that i feel like it got thrown under the rag, i dont even know this game existed and only discovering it randomly when doing a doom scroll on youtube-short

ps: camera movement sometime feels a lil bit too clunky, but maybe thats only happening on mouse, not affecting the gameplay that much tho

While it features large amounts of misogyny and some truly trite dialogue, there's a lot to like about the quirky Binary Domain.

The third-person cover shooting feels very Sega with outlandish setpieces, a truly barmy plot and satisfying game mechanics that tie everything together. Outside of the robot Cain, the characters are instantly forgettable, all based on cliched tropes that we've seen dozens of times before in these sorts of games. Mechanically it's excellent though with a solid range of weapons, a fairly solid cover mechanic and slick shooting. Less effective is the voice-control system that feels rather limited and doesn't give you many options during play. Luckily your AI allies are intelligent enough and rarely cause you to die.

Binary Domain really excels thanks to its phenomenal robot design, imaginative bosses and varied play mechanics. Yes it's probably just a 7/10 game, but it's the best 7/10 game you'll probably ever play.

It was fun and I enjoyed the story. Lots of cool big robot bosses. Got this on sale so it was well worth the small price.

Binary Domain is one of the best Gears of War Clone that i have ever play

Great story which feels particularly relevant in today's world of AI. I liked the trust mechanic, and satisfying gun play of dismembering the robots.

its good the qte are bullshit sometimes other then that its good