I almost skipped Binary Domain.
Its hackneyed boxart, its plastic characters and environments and its
Final Fantasy-esque user interface -- all of these things gave
me the impression of a game attempting to emulate, rather than adapt,
the modern standard. But the third-person shooter is such a stagnant,
conservative beast that even minor changes in its formula tend to
pique interest. So while Binary Domain is still "just
another shooter," it's the minor differences that are worth
mentioning, and ultimately what prevent the game from being entirely
forgettable. For the first time in a while, a shooter feels human.
For one, there's a lot more talking in
Binary Domain than I was expecting. The central question of the game,
whether sufficiently sophisticated AIs can be considered human, gets
harped on constantly by the entire cast of the game at length. But
rather than give me varying perspectives, though. Binary Domain
makes its mind up early on, and
makes it point to tell me how terrible automatons mixing with humans
would be. Only in the last act of the game did I ever question the
game's stance and, call me a extreme futurist, but I don't find
integrating robots and humans all that offensive.
The amount of cutscenes and
conversations with teammates (including dialogue choices that are
anything but, since agreeing with the person asking the question is
the only viable option if you want combat to go more smoothly) in
Binary Domain sound completely removed from the image of the
average shooter, but the surprise isn't that it was there, it was
that I liked it. Much as I disagreed with the game's thesis, the fact
that I was even arguing with it is noteworthy, and I much preferred
that to engaging in combat.
I haven't said much about how Binary
Domain plays, but that's because it's "just another shooter."
A crash-course on the design of Binary Domain: the level design is
poor when it isn't boring, the bosses are tedious, and most of the
guns, upgrade system an all, are interchangeable. Of course, those
criticisms are important, but they're the robotic failures. The human
failures are there too, but that Binary Domain even has human flaws
is the most interesting thing about it. The theoretical prototype
android will likely have plenty of defects, but I think most of us
would say its existence will itself signify a success.
*Yes, I hate coming up with titles.
