Overall Feeling:
With elements that in some ways don’t immediately break the mold of the 3rd person action genre, Binary Domain is far from being a standard game that is either weak or average as its instead one of the strongest action games released this generation. Featuring a story that actually cares about creating feelings for its characters and fleshing out the world, Binary Domain has an immense amount of detail in it which thankfully pays off in combat scenarios that are not only varied but have the perfect challenge level to them. The action in the game is simply robust and doesn’t falter once in the single player campaign which thankfully doesn’t take four hours to complete. It may seem odd that the studio behind the Yakuza series has given us a 3rd person action game that has trumped other efforts but such a thing is indeed the definitive fact after playing the game.
The Pros:
+ Story is intricate, surprising, and never once buckles in what it’s trying to achieve.
+ Action is ever intense yet never follows a familiar pattern for long stretches.
+ Visual style is very crisp throughout and there are some massive bosses and environments which left me dumbfounded as to how they were pulled off.
+ Voice acting has some cheesy moments but it lives up to the Sega tradition and when it matters the most the dramatic scenes have the right punch to them.
The Cons:
- No co-op in the single-player campaign is a minor bummer.
- Having more interaction with the environment during combat would’ve been nice and matched the destructibility on the robots rather nicely.
There are things about certain genres that are to be expected like having a strong hero, some comical relief, and maybe having a hot and overly buxom female character to “spice” things up and appeal to the Maxim/dudebro demographic that finds such a thing appealing. In a lot of ways certain genre tropes are to be expected when playing a particular game whether it’s an open-world title, a RPG, or an action game and most gamers have become accustomed to such a thing.
