UK Release Date: 24-02-2012
Platforms: Xbox 360 PS3
Publisher: SEGA/Yakuza Studio
Price: £49.99

Somebody get a forklift in here, we’ve got some crates to move!

First impressions (fighting through warehouses and corridors full of crates) can be deceiving. Binary Domain is Sega’s latest release from developers Toshihiro Nagoshi and Yakuza Studio. It’s a third-person, squad-based game set in 2080, that puts you in the boots of Dan ‘Survivor’ Marshall, a cocksure Yankee who is teamed up with six racial stereotypes on a mission to find the head of a maverick robotics company in a sleek, dual-layer Tokyo of the future.

It’s a Blade Runner/Battlestar Galactica/Ghost in the Shell sort of story: a Japanese robotics firm is suspected of creating outlawed ‘Hollow Children’ – robots that think they’re human. And while they look just as human as you and me, they have a nasty habit of infiltrating clandestine groups and/or killing people just when you felt you were getting to know them. Your role is to infiltrate Tokyo with your ‘Rust Crew’ and bring their creator to justice.

The plot, and the way it develops, is one of the reasons to play the game. Told through an impressively tight, well-written script and via effective cut scenes, it explores the twin themes of loss of identity and a society in which you can no longer tell if the person standing next to you is human or not. The importance of trust is also a major element in the way the game is played. Your teammates will chat during missions and require answers to personal problems and questions about tactics that, depending on your answer, will affect how they trust you and in turn, their effectiveness in combat. In a nice touch, these responses can be spoken though your Xbox headset and the voice recognition accuracy (which was good) can be tweaked in settings.

Gameplay can be a little inconsistent and, in general, level design suffers from too many old school corridors and warehouses full of those damned crates to crouch behind. There are multiple slowly-descending-lift-while-we-stand-our-ground-till-it arrives-sequences, a mine kart ride, and little context to the grenades often found by office doors or ammo-dispensing machines in sewer pipes.

The early levels offer bland colours and environments, but enemy encounters are fun and the combat works well. Later levels fare better as the environments gain more colour and detail. Chapters are also interspersed with some excellent fast-paced vehicle chases (including one around a Tokyo that looks very similar to the opening of Akira) and high octane assault missions that do a great job of breaking up the slightly more mundane levels. It offers standard Gears of War-style multiplayer modes as well, although the maps can feel basic.

Sound design is good; music is uninspired, but does the job. Special mention must go to the superb voice acting, though, which delivers the clever script most effectively. Japanese games have not always had the best luck with convincing western voice work, but the cast of Binary Domain manages to convey camaraderie and emotion more convincingly than do most games out there.

The more I played it, the more I enjoyed it. Its foundations are the formula set out by the Gears of War series, but it builds on that with a gripping plot, characters for whom you genuinely care and combat missions that develop from initially rather uninspired to bold action sequences and dynamic events that depend on just which of the Rust Crew you choose to have at your side. Should you play Binary Domain? It’s either a yes or a no.

Choose yes.