Xbox 360's Binary Domain

I've been playin games. What have you been doing?


Aaaaaaaat any rate. I love single player, 10-20hr, third or first person shooters that hardly make waves.

Binary Domain is one of those games. The Japanese made this game. It has a very heavy Final Fantasy/ MGS vibe to it. But come on, you can't beat a straight-forward shooter with a simple concept, simple storyline, and solidly presented gameplay.

Something about robots looking like humans, and an evil robot manufacturing plant taking over the world. Or something. Post-war soldiers all group up from different countries and head out to arrest the leader of this evil plant. Yup, simple storyline.

I mean, in a sense it's simple. A group of soldiers trying to capture a single person.

The storyline allows for lots of strange situations, giant robot creatures (a robot motorcycle-thing with a rail-gun chase on a highway), but they all seem.... plausible? Well, if nothing else, they'll remind you of some of the weird summons you find in FF.

It's a third-person shooter, on a solid engine. You can rush to and from cover, shoot from cover, roll, duck, dodge, dip, dive, and... dodge. I never once was frustrated with the controls. That's more and more a big reason why I'll continue to play a game, if the controls are solid and effective.

You play as Dan, an American teamed up with a bunch of others, blah blah blah. Dan is a relatively likeable guy, if not a little stubborn. The interactions between the other characters are standard for the most part. You're given opportunities to reply to teammates questions and statements, which builds or destroys their trust in you.

This trust system is pretty common in games today, if not a bit overused. I was generally well-liked by most people on my team. You do lose trust for friendly fire, which to me didn't exactly seem fair since the AI sometimes has a tendency to try to take the same cover spot you're using, or just blatantly walk in front of you while you're unloading a clip. But it's nothing a "good job" later on from you can't fix.

I like to keep these short. So think Gears of War if they wanted you to finish it in about 20 hours, not remember any of the characters names, and just overall like the game. There's multiplay too, but no one plays it. Sorry, fact.

Will I play it again? Probably not. Was it worth buying? Absolutely. A good action shooter is a nice time-waster if you don't have hours and hours to devote to a game. Any major flaws? Not really, a few cover hiccups here and there. There's depth in the game if you really search for it, but on the surface the game is just fine enough. Think of it like any number of rainy Saturday afternoon movies. They're entertaining as hell while you're watching/ playing, don't make much of an impact, and only take up as much time as you'll allow it. I say give it a chance, you most likely won't regret it. If nothing else, it's a good rental for a few days.