I've always considered the Yakuza series to be a guilty pleasure of mine. I love the uniqueness of its setting, the ridiculousness of its story and characters, and the comic brutality of its combat. But I've never felt these games were the product of an extremely talented studio. The team has released 6 Yakuza games in 5 years, and none of them have really been all that different from the last. And while I've often wondered what this team might create if they ever branched out, I was never too confident that it would be great.

Well it appears like they are finally branching out with Binary Domain. And this time with robots, guns, and American soldiers. The trailer below is cringe worthy. The writing is awful, the characters are hilariously bad cliche stereotypes, and the art is a disaster all around. Sure, maybe the same could be said for Yakuza -- but at least Yakuza wasn't a cover based shooter. And if the gameplay footage of the new Yakuza zombie shooter game is any indication, I'm not so sure this studio should go anywhere near things that shoot bullets. Binary Domain is clearly an attempt to appeal to the shooter fans of the West. But this game needs to have a huge ace up its sleeve if it is going to have any chance in a region that won't even give Vanquish the time of day.

And what's with the characters? Someone on neoGAF pointed this out, and now I can't unsee it:

Comments

  • Avatar
    roughplague
    13 years, 11 months ago

    wow...that looks awful XD
    also that image is so awesome, it's like they just copied the characters and put them in HD XD

  • Avatar
    Waari
    13 years, 11 months ago

    This looks so bad..it is not even funny. They are burying themselves with actions like this.

  • Avatar
    J52
    13 years, 11 months ago

    I yawned so hard, I hurt myself.

  • Avatar
    Corvus
    13 years, 11 months ago

    God this looks terrible.

  • Avatar
    Binary-79
    13 years, 11 months ago

    What are you guys talking about

    The OTT action was awesome

    Under the legs kill Mid air ammo reload

    This is the new shit!

  • Avatar
    xzr
    13 years, 11 months ago

    SEGA: Sorry Shinji Mikami, we know you're the guy who made RE4 and all... but this Vanquish sci-fi shooter you're making... yeah it's not sellin, so no more of that.

    -10 days later-

    SEGA: Y'know I know that Shinji Mikami guy made some "crappy" sci-fi shooter, but this time we'll use the quality first party (SEGA) devs, the Yakuza team! They're experienced at shooting mechanics right?

    Fuckin' Sega.

  • Avatar
    Bayonetta
    13 years, 11 months ago

    Can't wait!

  • Avatar
    Al
    13 years, 11 months ago

    Flop confirmed only by lookin at the name.

    I'm also a Yakuza fan,and import this game as many others.But man...

    I think even Time Crysis looks more exciting than the action parts in this.

    LOL, You will forget main characters faces in 5 minutes after quting the game.

    The only thing that would make this interesting,is if you could control Will Smith,and the name of the game would be I-Robot: The Robotcalipse.

  • Avatar
    Fady
    13 years, 11 months ago

    How can people say this looks bad? It's a cinematic trailer with no gameplay footage whatsoever. And the video was actually good. Sure, it's not very original, Terminator already did that, but fuck it was good regardless.

  • Avatar
    Windalfr
    13 years, 11 months ago

    Is this going to have Karaoke bars?

  • Avatar
    Keglunek
    13 years, 11 months ago

    The robots look a little like the ones in the movie 'I, Robot'...

    Sure the designs aren't really original, but we'll see how game play turns out. Hoping for the best for some talented devs.

  • Avatar
    Comradebearjew
    13 years, 11 months ago

    I actually liked it... it was SO bad it was good imo.

  • Avatar
    Warpedpixel
    13 years, 11 months ago

    Ya I felt this was awful as well.

  • Avatar
    Marsh D Teach
    13 years, 11 months ago

    No way in Hell. It amazes me that games this ridiculous are even still being made. One would think that in this day and age, a game company could look back to the past and see what failures they've made, and make sure to not repeat the mistakes of the past.
    However, Sega proves time and time again that gaming companies hate studying history, thus damning them to eternally make hiccups like this project.

  • Avatar
    Geremy-Tibbles
    13 years, 11 months ago

    Something tells me it'll be better then Daikatana...

    Mostly because they aren't telling me John Romero's going to make me his bitch.

  • Avatar
    One
    13 years, 11 months ago

    The yakuza games were meh but still better than this generic shooter they're making. Just another developer that thinks they know what westerners want which is probably the reason why the next yakuza game (in japan) will have zombies shoehorned in it.

  • Avatar
    Arxidus
    13 years, 11 months ago

    Now, looking at a game like this from the Yakuza team, sure, it looks bad. Really bad. But I'll be dammed if I said I didn't like the design of the larger robot near the end of the trailer. And that last bit at the end really caught me off guard, something I wouldn't expect to see in this kind of trailer. And at first, when that green plated robot, all beaten up, raised its head, I had thought the trailer was going in a different direction, showing this struggle between man and machine through the eyes of the machines, which I honestly think could make for an interesting game. Not a great game, or even a good game, but an ambitious game that we haven't really seen before Something like, you play as the robots, and the humans are the ruthless killers.

  • Avatar
    Hegs94
    13 years, 11 months ago

    I already said this in the forum that it looks like another Japanese developer is trying to appeal to Americans.

  • Avatar
    Heliowebguy
    13 years, 11 months ago

    this looks...awesome.Just kidding looks like crap!

  • Avatar
    Binary Domain gets a new trailer, looks less terri
    13 years, 7 months ago

    [...] person shooter and that it was targeting a Western audience, and I got sad. Then I watched the first trailer, and I was mortified. Well, we have a new trailer now. And it doesn’t look nearly as [...]