To be honest, I was drawn to the game because it reminded me of Snatcher (a Konami game! O_0). As for "the gameplay can be found in basically every other 3rd person shooter ever made in the post 2005"... I don't get that. I played the game for the complete package (the story, the teamwork mechanic, the gameplay, the boss fights) and I ended up loving the game for the boss fights, the teamwork mechanic, the story (love a good robot story) and some gameplay elements that do NOT exist in most other TPS games: the strategy of shooting robots in very specific areas to take them down or to make them turn against their own, the boss fights (as mentioned) and selecting the ideal team (with the ideal trust levels) to complete a mission. I also loved that it was very much a one player game.
Its not as simple as saying one could simply play another TPS, what made Binary Domain so special was the setting, the mix of characters, the unique gameplay elements that I noted and the story (like I said, it reminded me of Snatcher and I freakin' love Snatcher).
We're wayyy off-topic here now but that's my fault. I can sort of see where you're coming from. It hasn't
entirely changed my opinion though, lol; I still feel that Segabits and other Sega fansites are really the only places where you can find people who thought Binary Domain was an A+ effort, and I think there's a reason for that that goes beyond the game itself.
Anyway, just to comment on this, lol. I did like Binary Domain's gameplay, which I thought was more fun than Mass Effect 3's by a longshot, and several of the bosses. What bummed me out about the game was some of the reasons you liked it; the teamwork mechanic felt useless to me, as the dialogue trees, which were not situation-specific and oftentimes did not fit the situation, were too easy to "mess up," and your AI teammates would run right into your line of fire, resulting in them "losing respect" for you quite often. I enjoyed the game much more when I stopped worrying about the team dynamic entirely and I wasn't punished for it, as the game almost never requires you to "give them orders" anyway. And I can't help but feel that when a game's main feature can be so easily brushed aside, it's a major issue.
I wished the story was crazier, more "Japanese" I guess...Japan's done some batshit crazy stuff with robots over the years, lol, and Binary Domain's story played it so safe, basically content to be a Michael Bay/Hollywood movie (shit being blown up and the characters running around and pulling off one-liners) and never really going beneath the surface or anywhere cooler. The gameplay took little risks and brought little new to the table, except the team thing, which, like I said, felt like it was very tepidly added. The love story I thought came off as cheesy, mainly because the game expected you to care about characters you barely got to know, and the character designs were beyond generic. I liked the game, but would have liked it better had it embraced its Japanese origins instead of trying so hard to be Western, and had the innovations it brought to the table not been added so hesitantly, but the game almost felt afraid to try anything new because it was trying so hard to be accepted by the Gears of War crowd; the exact opposite of Vanquish, in other words, whose new ideas became a central force in its gameplay instead of something that felt like an afterthought.
