I didn't feel like making a new thread or writing a new review, but I just finished this via Playstation Plus and had some thoughts.

-- At first the shooting feels pretty bad, but by the time you've upgraded your accuracy, damage and health it slowly turns into a really fun shooting game. A lot of the robot destruction made me imagine (what I've seen of) Knack (via internet media) with some true creativity to it.

--So good that most of the distraction moments end up feeling even more boring than they are. I hated all the on-rails car sections, and failed ALL of the random "press O in the purple bar" QTEs 7 or 8 times before landing them.

--A lot of what I was responding to positively weren't objectively good things. The dialogue was terrible, a lot of the direction was frustratingly anime-like in execution and the voice acting was pretty stiff. I often felt like I was playing a Sci-Fi Original or blaxploitation game.

--Still, there were moments of actual brilliance. Most of the Hollow Children designs were great, as were all the scenes involving an exposed A.I. And the game was very smartly paced, even if I could tell early on we were swiftly moving on only to situations more ludicrous than the last. If they'd decided to commit to being an action game rather than an action-RPG, I can imagine a much better overall game being here. The length feels just right for the gameplay, but five-ten hours too short for the failed attempt at building characters or creating player agency.

--This game reminded me of the PS2 era in terms of how it controlled, how I felt confused about certain actions (randomly switching the mantle action to O instead of ^+X, never figuring out remote bombs), how very Japanese the storytelling felt...In a weird way, it felt like a nostalgia play even having never played it before.

--I'd like to see a sequel, but Binary Domain couldn't help but feel like a mimic of its betters (specifically Mass Effect and Blade Runner) and how often it made me laugh at its absurdity didn't always win out over how frustrating a few scenarios were. I didn't expect to breeze through this game as quickly as I did (4 or 5 days, mostly over the last two days) so I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it, but without the robots or the interesting canonical backbone, I'd feel weird recommending this to anyone who likes this style of game but has no idea what "feels like a PS2-era video game developed in Japan with modern western trends super-glued on top in what almost feels like a satire-like fashion" means.



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