I received this game as a gift from a member of a message board I frequent. I asked whether Binary Domain was being praised for being legitimately good or simply because it was a Gears of War clone that happened to be made by a Japanese developer. In response he bought me the game to decide for myself. Having now played through the single player campaign, here are my thoughts:
Comments on the PC port - Overall, this game ran well on my PC. I have an older Phenom II X4 945, with a GTX560 and 8GB of RAM, but was able to get a solid 60FPS (with no drops that I noticed) at maxed settings. The graphics options are a little bare. You can set your FOV, choose FXAA or MLAA, and a few other options but that is about it. You can only change these options in the game's configuration tool, and cannot tweak anything in-game.
I started the game using KBM but hated the default keymapping and decided to switch to a 360 pad instead. If you are set on using KBM, you are going to want to change your mapping ASAP. I play PC games from my couch on my 37" TV. While the subtitles are nice and clear from the 8 foot distance I play from, the key prompts use a different font that is hard to read. What is more annoying is that, after switching to a 360 pad, the prompts still referred to KBM keys. I am not sure if this would have been different if I fiddled around in the configuration tool. Either way, it doesn't take long to figure out that Space = A, Q = Y and so on.
Comments on the Game - This is a game that you need to give a chance before deciding whether you like it or not. I don't know what portion of the game is covered by the demo, but if it is the beginning segment, know that chapter 1 is probably the weakest part of the game. In fact, I really disliked the first 30 minutes or so. The generic robot enemies seemed lame, and Big Bo wouldn't shut up. It initially struck me as a B version of Gears with worse voice acting and graphics. However things really pick up if you make it through those first few sections.
Positives:
- Boss battles with big ass robots. Miss boss fights in your shooters? This game has like 10 of them, including a few that are absolutely massive. The boss fights were by far the best part of this game. Furthermore all of them are unique and none are reused. How you take them out also depends on the boss. Some can be defeated using your regular weapons. Some require you to use the environment, and at least one is fought from the back of a moving truck during a chase sequence.
- The shooting. You carry 4 weapons in this game. Your main weapon which is an assault rifle, a side arm, and two open slots for a third gun and a grenade that you pick up from enemies as you go. Your main weapon is upgradable through in game item vending machines. All of the weapons fun to play with, but your main gun is especially satisfying. Once you make a few upgrades you will be tearing through enemies. You almost exclusively fight robots in this game, but you can blow off their limbs, head, and armor in satisfying sprays of sparks and shrapnel. This is a cover shooter, but the cover mechanism is mostly intuitive.
- Enemy AI. Like any shooter, regular grunt enemies will shoot from behind cover, come at you with body shields, or rush you with shotguns or melee attacks. However, since they are robots, they react to the damage you do to them. If you blow off their weapon arm, some will pick up their gun with their other hand, and others will switch to a secondary gun. If you blow off their legs, they will drag themselves towards you (like in Terminator 1), grabbing your legs in an effort to self destruct.
- The story and characters. If you like cheesy 80s/90s action movies, you will probably like this. Most of the characters are big stereotypes, but the game doesn't really take itself seriously so I didn't mind. If you ever wanted to lead an elite international squad of soldiers that include a gigantic black man (your main bro), a Chinese sniper, and a French Robot, this is your game. The plot itself is interesting enough, but like most games, the final execution could have been better. The dialogue is b-movie cheesy. One character justifies killing sentient, organic robots that are mostly non-violent, and have blended into society by saying that the world already has enough racism without adding robots to the mix.
Negatives:
- Your Squad AI. Your squad is dumb. While they can kill regular enemies fairly proficiently, expect them to crowd you at a cover point (even if there are 10 others) or run blindly into your line of fire. This is especially annoying since your teammates have a trust system, and shooting them lowers their trust score. I'm not sure if the trust score means anything, but it does unlock a few of the Steam achievements. I will mention that the game has a squad command feature that I made only light use of. It is designed around voice command using a mic (which I don't have). You can issue some basic commands from the pad (charge, regroup, cover me, and fire) but I didn't really use it much.
- Quick Time events. There are only a few, and they are pretty easy, but they were annoying because I couldn't read the key prompt (which was also for a keyboard instead of my 360 pad as mentioned above) from my couch at times.
- The game is linear. You spend most of it fighting in corridors and small rooms. There is a little exploration in some areas, but not much. If cut scenes bug you in action games, be warned that this game has a fair number of them. What's worse, the game will sometimes take control away from you (forcing you to walk slowly and stopping you from using your weapons) when a team member is giving you instructions before or after a gun fight. No reasons why the same thing couldn't have been done without the semi-loss of control. I thoroughly enjoyed the boss fights but most of them could only be beat in a specific way (sometimes using a specific weapon).
Final Verdict:
This is not the best or most polished shooter I have played this generation, but I definitely think it is worth the current sale price of $10. Especially if you are a big fan of boss fights and can stand (or better yet, like) B-movie stories. The game took me just under 9 hours to beat going by my chapter complete times. Even if you rushed through, this is a solid 7-8 hour game. Blowing away hordes of robots is surprisingly satisfying, and the game performs well on older, mid-range machines. The port was lazy when it comes to default key-mapping and button prompts, but those were minor nuisances. I am not a graphics person, so I can't tell you how the the textures look at higher resolutions. I didn't notice any screen tearing, or glaring graphical hitches like I did in the Mass Effect PC ports. To answer my own question, yes this is a more Japanese Gears of War, but that isn't a bad thing. Thumbs up for me.
