Binary Domain - Die, Robot

The worst section in this game

Once you get past the weird controls, gunplay actually becomes quite enjoyable thanks to the aggressive bots you’ll face through your campaign. They’ll come in different shapes and sizes and even if you blow their legs or hands off, they’ll come at you like the Terminator till you pulverize their mechanical brains. Besides the hordes of gun toting minions, you’ll encounter gigantic boss fights some of which are more entertaining than the others. Running around a level fighting a giant spider, struggling to blow his legs out with a rocket launcher is fun but trying to lock onto a flying gunship that constantly assaults you with homing rockets isn’t.  And it really doesn’t help that your teammates constantly get in the way or you flop all over the map dropping your weapon when hit by rockets. The checkpoint system in this game is also quite erratic. Sometimes it kicks in appropriately but most of the time, it makes you replay painful sections like the one where you’ll be controlling highly unresponsive jet skies against a barrage of enemy fire.

In between all the action, the game lets you explore certain civilian hubs but these segments are just as frustrating because for reasons we don’t really understand, your character is made to walk painfully slow during these sections. It takes ages to just explore your surrounding and without any side-quests to tackle, exploration feels unnecessary. Once you’re done with the campaign, you can head online but you really shouldn’t because no one and I do mean no one is playing this game online (at least on the PC). I had to fire up the horde mode by myself just to test it out and it really wasn’t too much fun.

Ghost Rider?

So now you see why Binary Domain got me angry. It pains me to see such anal gameplay mechanics ruin what could have been an enjoyable game. I can’t even say this game requires more polish because frankly speaking, it doesn’t. When it works, the game is a blast making you feel like you’re part of some slick Jerry Bruckheimer directed Sci-fi flick. But these moments are rare. Most of the time you’ll question the stupid decisions made by developer Team CS1 while a significant amount of time will also be spent dreaming of choking the life from Big Bo slowly till there’s nothing but silence.

Test rig box:
Motherboard: Intel DP67BG Extreme Desktop series
Processor: Intel Core i7 - 2600K @3.40 GHZ
Graphic Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590
Ram: Corsair Vengeance 4GB DD3 @ 1600 MHZ X2
Power Supply: Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 1200W