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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.