Binary Domain So Far
Nov. 9th, 2013 05:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xyzzysqrlI'm about halfway through Binary Domain now and... I feel like Binary Domain is like... two different games, and one of them isn't a game? Or maybe that the way the story plays is kind of at odds with... but connected to the gameplay? This is hard. I've lost a lot of my knack for game blogging. Let me try to explain.
Binary Domain the GAME is a cover-based shooter, and a really competent one. You hide behind large solid objects and you pop out and shoot robots, because the robots are trying to shoot you right back. Sometimes there is a boss fight. You can shoot limbs off the robots and they scuttle around, shifting arms if one gets shot off, crawling at you with a relentless drive to kill if you shoot their legs, etc. Good wholesome family fun.
So that part makes sense to me.
Binary Domain the STORYLINE is a revolutionary genre fusion I like to call "CyBROpunk". In the distant futuristicly futuristic future, robots are commonplace. But there's a new kind of robot. A robot that doesn't know it's a robot, human by all measure (until it cuts itself shaving and there's metal underneath and it flips the fuck out.) They are called... SNATCHERS.
I'm sorry, wrong script. REPLICANTS. ... No, I'm... it's here somewhere. HOLLOW CHILDREN. Yes, that's the right one.
You play as Dan "Squaremeat" Chestmuscles, a grizzled smirky mid-twenties guy with stubble. You and your partner, Big Bo (a seven foot tall man with a face like Mister Potato Head who watches only porn movies) are invading Japan to find the source of the Hollow Children. You hook up with the rest of Rust Squad, an elite robot-shooting unit: A cynical british man in a ski cap, a chinese sniper whom Dan primarily refers to as "Rice Farmer", and a butch lady with a shotgun. Later, a whimsical French combat robot joins the team. The robot is awesome.
The dialogue mostly goes like this:
Teammate: "GOD DAMN DAN GOD DAMN ROBOTS DAN DID YOU SEE THAT DAN THE MAN GOD DAMNNIT MAN"
Dialogue buttons: A - "Yes!" X: "CHARGE!" Y: "GOD DAMN!" B: "Fuck!"
Pushing these buttons will either make their "Trust" level (measuring how much they like you) go up or down. Generally speaking I've found that "Yes!" and "Charge!" raise it, while swearing back lowers their opinion of me.
There is also an option to put on a headset microphone and shout "GOD DAAAAAAMN" at the game in NATURAL-LANGUAGE RECOGNITION. I actually feel like that's probably a primary selling point and I should be exploiting it, but I don't own a mic.
(The robot mostly talks in very polite French. Again, the robot is awesome.)
Meanwhile, there is PHILOSOPHY trying to happen. Is making AI with enough self-loathing for itself to commit suicide a bad thing? If a robot is indistigushable from a human, is it okay to shoot them? These are the kinds of questions that Binary Domain has set up, gestured at, and then walked past humming.
The shooting part is fun, though.
Binary Domain the GAME is a cover-based shooter, and a really competent one. You hide behind large solid objects and you pop out and shoot robots, because the robots are trying to shoot you right back. Sometimes there is a boss fight. You can shoot limbs off the robots and they scuttle around, shifting arms if one gets shot off, crawling at you with a relentless drive to kill if you shoot their legs, etc. Good wholesome family fun.
So that part makes sense to me.
Binary Domain the STORYLINE is a revolutionary genre fusion I like to call "CyBROpunk". In the distant futuristicly futuristic future, robots are commonplace. But there's a new kind of robot. A robot that doesn't know it's a robot, human by all measure (until it cuts itself shaving and there's metal underneath and it flips the fuck out.) They are called... SNATCHERS.
I'm sorry, wrong script. REPLICANTS. ... No, I'm... it's here somewhere. HOLLOW CHILDREN. Yes, that's the right one.
You play as Dan "Squaremeat" Chestmuscles, a grizzled smirky mid-twenties guy with stubble. You and your partner, Big Bo (a seven foot tall man with a face like Mister Potato Head who watches only porn movies) are invading Japan to find the source of the Hollow Children. You hook up with the rest of Rust Squad, an elite robot-shooting unit: A cynical british man in a ski cap, a chinese sniper whom Dan primarily refers to as "Rice Farmer", and a butch lady with a shotgun. Later, a whimsical French combat robot joins the team. The robot is awesome.
The dialogue mostly goes like this:
Teammate: "GOD DAMN DAN GOD DAMN ROBOTS DAN DID YOU SEE THAT DAN THE MAN GOD DAMNNIT MAN"
Dialogue buttons: A - "Yes!" X: "CHARGE!" Y: "GOD DAMN!" B: "Fuck!"
Pushing these buttons will either make their "Trust" level (measuring how much they like you) go up or down. Generally speaking I've found that "Yes!" and "Charge!" raise it, while swearing back lowers their opinion of me.
There is also an option to put on a headset microphone and shout "GOD DAAAAAAMN" at the game in NATURAL-LANGUAGE RECOGNITION. I actually feel like that's probably a primary selling point and I should be exploiting it, but I don't own a mic.
(The robot mostly talks in very polite French. Again, the robot is awesome.)
Meanwhile, there is PHILOSOPHY trying to happen. Is making AI with enough self-loathing for itself to commit suicide a bad thing? If a robot is indistigushable from a human, is it okay to shoot them? These are the kinds of questions that Binary Domain has set up, gestured at, and then walked past humming.
The shooting part is fun, though.
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no subject
Date: 2013-11-10 08:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-10 10:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-10 10:03 am (UTC)That isn't the twist.
Its fun to expect that to be the twist, and then find that it was a total red herring, and the real twist is something so Japanese that it's kind of dissorienting.
Also, big Bo is kind of fun. If racist caricatures are the only way the Japanese can write black people, big Bo is a pretty good one of those.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-10 05:07 pm (UTC)