Game Revue Club v. 52: Binary Domain

[Merve]

Hey Gameologerinos!

You selected futuristic third-person shooter Binary Domain as our Revue Club game for this edition. I know basically nothing about it, so I have no specific discussion questions in mind, but this might be a good opportunity to discuss shooter mechanics, futurism, and Sega's approach to game development.

I won't be able to start this game until mid-next week, so I'll be joining you all in the conversation then.

Happy gaming!

[Staggering Stew Bum]

I've played through Binary Domain twice, once on PS3 and once on PC. It's okay! Steam says I put in 8.8 hours on it, so that will give potential players an idea of what sort of time is in store.

The PC port is a bit janky but it works okay. Get ready for a dull as dishwater protagonist, same-y enemies painted the same shade of housing commission green, a couple of batshit cutscenes, and some longarse bossfights against ridiculous giant robots.

A unique-ish mechanic this game has is squadmate trust. In the PS3 version, apparently you could mic up and bark orders at your NPC squadmates, and good directions earned trust, while stuff like 'accidentally' shooting them in the head with friendly fire lost trust. I think this is all replicated with keyboard commands on the PC version, can't remember. It sounds nice in theory but makes little difference to the game, though apparently has an effect on squadmate effectiveness and a tiny influence on story events.

The story is sorta interesting. Absolutely bonkers, but sorta interesting. It's worth a look.

[Starkimified]

Booted it up because I found it in my library and played for about an hour.
Ironically, I'd just bought a mic, but I didn't want to be barking orders on it. Curious how detailed orders can go, as I'm limited with the button press. I'm not yet hooked. So far it's wave after wave of robots coming at me.

[Staggering Stew Bum]

If you're playing this with keyboard and mouse, note that when it asks you to hold down M early on (to use an energy blast to clear some barrel things blocking your path), it's referring to the middle mouse button, not the M key.

[Merve]

Originally posted by Staggering Stew Bum:

If you're playing this with keyboard and mouse, note that when it asks you to hold down M early on (to use an energy blast to clear some barrel things blocking your path), it's referring to the middle mouse button, not the M key.

Oh no, it's one of those ports.

[Staggering Stew Bum]

Originally posted by Merve:

Originally posted by Staggering Stew Bum:

If you're playing this with keyboard and mouse, note that when it asks you to hold down M early on (to use an energy blast to clear some barrel things blocking your path), it's referring to the middle mouse button, not the M key.

Oh no, it's one of those ports. :rfacepalm:

If you mean a port seemingly produced by people who have never used a keyboard and mouse before, then yes. It's not Dark Souls PC port level of terrible, but it has some questionable features.

[Merve]

Originally posted by Staggering Stew Bum:

Originally posted by Merve:

Oh no, it's one of those ports.

If you mean a port seemingly produced by people who have never used a keyboard and mouse before, then yes. It's not Dark Souls PC port level of terrible, but it has some questionable features.

Yooka-Laylee still takes the cake for having controller prompts even when you're using mouse and keyboard.

[Chum Joely]

It will have to share that cake with Binary Domain, which shows keyboard prompts even when playing with a controller.

[Starkimified]

Originally posted by Chum Joely:

It will have to share that cake with Binary Domain, which shows keyboard prompts even when playing with a controller.

If you configure the game beforehand, it will show controller prompts. There's just no in-game option.

[Starkimified]

The analog voice options without a mic are kind of hilarious. There's the typical tactics options, but sometimes your squad members ask you a question, and the options are generally "Yeah" "No" and "Damn!"

[Merve]

Good Lord, the voice recognition system in this game is terrible. Most common commands work only about 3/4 of the time. Some are completely borked. "Roger!" always gets recognized as "Wait!" while half the time, "Regroup!" is parsed as "Big Bo!" I think I'm going to switch voice recognition off.

I'm still on the first chapter, but I find it interesting that right from the get-go, the game takes aim at isolationist and nationalist sentiment in Japan. It seems like the game wears its politics on its sleeve, but maybe there are some twists and turns coming that will make me reconsider that observation.

[Chum Joely]

Per'aps it is becoze of yer ottRAGeous French acceng! Or something. Actually, it's probably just terrible.

I haven't gotten too far (a bit where you have to sneak through a mysteriously dangling freight container to escape robots), but I didn't get as much out of the story as even what you said. My take on the 15-second initial cut scene was: "It is the future. We just found out Japan might be making bad robots. Prepare to drop in 5... 4... 3..."

[Merve]

I'm about half an hour past the prologue, and I just defeated a twenty-story mechanical spider. I'm not really sure how the game can escalate from here. So far the bosses kind of remind of some of the ones from NieR:Automata, albeit with less elegant attack patterns.

[Staggering Stew Bum]

Well, I'm bailing. The horrible slippery slide controls are a bridge too far, which actually isn't that far because it's probably half an hour into the game. No idea how I got through this before with K+M, I don't recall the set up being this wonky.

I sincerely apologise to you all for nominating Binary Domain for Game Revue 52.

I leave you with my one screenshot:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1123550829

EDIT: Though I'll stick around for any discussion because it's got a sorta interesting story.

[Merve]

Let's talk about boss fight design for a minute. I just defeated the boss at the end of the sewer level, and I have to say, it's a masterclass in how not to design a boss fight.

The fight consists of a hover drone with four engines that need to be destroyed in order to bring it down. The drone releases smaller hover drones and a few ground drones as well. It also periodically fires a burst of missiles. You're given a homing rocket launcher to take it down. Simple enough, right? But the way it interacts with the level design and the game's mechanics make for a frustrating slog of a fight.

Problems:

• The drone sometimes hovers low above shelter, meaning you have to travel far outside shelter to be able to attack. If it hovered higher, it could be attacked from closer to shelter. In principle, travelling farther shouldn't be an issue, except...
  
• The drone's missile bursts are homing missiles, so they follow you around any place outside of shelter.
  
• Moreover, the missiles explode on impact, and in this game, explosions knock you to the ground, leaving you unable to move for a few seconds. This is immensely frustrating and ruins the flow of the game.
  
• Your own homing rocket launcher takes a while to aim and charge up, leaving you a sitting duck while the main drone fires missiles at you, inevitably leading you to get knocked on your butt again.
  
• The homing rocket launcher has no targeting control, so sometimes you'll end up shooting down smaller drones instead.
  
• The homing rocket launcher is a special weapon, so if you pick up rockets with the regular rocket launcher equipped, you can't transfer those rockets to the homing rocket launcher, meaning you have to make sure you have to pick up the homing rocket launcher every time you want to get ammo for it.
  
• Special weapons are dropped when you're knocked over, which happens often, because the missiles explode near you.

So to recap, you're thrust into a boss fight where damage is nearly unavoidable and ruins the flow of the game, and the weapon you're given makes it even harder to avoid damage while being difficult to use, because you're constantly dropping it.

Look, I'm no game designer. But the fact that I can point out so many glaring problems with this fight means there are at least a dozen smaller ones I haven't identified. Good boss fights are designed around the game's mechanics, not against them. If this fight had given the main drone a weapon that didn't cause knockback damage, then it would go a long way to working in concert with the game's mechanics.

[Chum Joely]

Well, shit. Merve is making a good push for getting me to actually play this game. I should be getting my Xbox One controller in the mail today (so I can stop screwing around with PS3 controller support that works about 1/3 of the time and screws up my computer badly the other 2/3), so maybe then I can give it a try.