Binary Domain

It's a shame the idiotic A.I. and hit-and-miss recognition spoil it, turning this into a merely "solid" shooter. [May 2012, p.79]

A fun but short-lived futuristic romp that, despite not stepping too far outside of the third-person shooter box, likes to poke its head out and have a look around from time to time. [Issue#216, p.79]

BD's narrative smarts and satisfying combat are let down by terrible AI and a lack of polish. [Apr 2012, p.94]

While Binary Domain tries a few new things and fails, the basic coverbased gameplay in the entertaining story-mode is good enough to keep fans of the genre happy. The enemies may be robots, but they still feel more alive and interesting than most other opponents.

The bot is pretty special as their outer flies off, and you need to be tactical at times to get the best of them. Not bad, but not great either. [March 2012, p78]

It's the best kind of 7/10. The gunplay is raucous, but never revolutionary. The relationships make you laugh, if not cry. Binary Domain is unpolished in all the right places – the rough edges make it a unique metal snowflake in a production line of identical, shiny shooters. Fill that Mass Effect gap with a game that loves you.

One of the best Japanese-made third person shooters of the generation, and one that doesn't just seek to copy the West but offer interesting new ideas of its own.

At the present time this game looks obsolete and uses game mechanics which won't take anyone's breath away. [March 2012]

The online is like every other shooter, and that's the problem. Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, a horde mode, and few other standards-not very imaginative, are you? It's smooth playing online, so it's done well enough.

A very familiar experience, but it's also one that is well-presented, well-designed, and, most importantly, enjoyable to play.

After finishing Binary Domain we remember its great setting and atmosphere, but that's only because the overall story is the only thing worth remembering. No matter how exciting the setting may be, the characters populating it have the psychological depth of a goldfish. [March 2012, p.84]

Sega. The Yakusa series team. Stereotyped and super trained Mercs, looking forward to making their way through 2080's Tokyo. And robots. Everything was there to make an explosive and virile shooter. But instead, as its absolutely random title should have told us, Binary Domain ends up being only a globally passable game, wanting to succeed but often too close to an industrial misunderstanding.