How Binary Domain makes boss fights exciting again

It's a giant robot spider, and we all know how to deal with giant robot spiders. Here as elsewhere, Binary Domain never tries to impress you with the concepts it brings to the table. Sega has other ways of doing that.

By this point in the campaign - around six or seven hours in - you'll be heavily familiar with the new shooter's slippery cover system, its taste for dismemberment, and its hard-boiled squad mechanic that sees comrades performing better or worse depending on how they feel about the player. They're all concepts the game borrows - Gears, Dead Space and Mass Effect, to tick the boxes - but Binary Domain's potential brilliance lies in how it adapts or distorts them, and this giant robot spider is no different.

Sure enough, a passing glance at the beast's belly reveals glowing weak spots, easily picked off if you're willing to tempt a rocket barrage. Our snarly English chum Charlie glues himself to a shipping crate, popping away gamely but ineffectually at the angry metal abdomen swivelling overhead. Outspoken Cole-surrogate "Big Bo" takes up station at the other end of the crate, his light machinegun making rather more of a dent than Charlie's silly shotgun.

We risk a scurry across the open ground in the centre of the arena, ducking under a gradually tightening tracery of targeting lasers. The ensuing rockets miss, but then the beast lashes out with (what we think is) a hindleg, downing us just short of cover. Waving away offers of help from Charlie and Bo, we drag ourselves to shelter, stab ourselves in the chest with a healing syringe and return to the fight. Shit just got real, but we've brought a massive dustpan and brush. Or some other stupid macho metaphor.

It's a 10 minute battle that ends exactly as you're expecting - Team Humanity chiselling away at the spider's legs to knock it sideways, then letting rip at its huge exposed belly button. And yet, it leaves us breathless. The battle chatter is one reason for that - it's free-flowing, varied and context-specific, Charlie and Bo spouting dozens of lines of well-voiced snark/brouhaha between them.

Whether it's running low on ammo, spotting an opening, calling for support, pointing out a heavy weapon drop or complaining that they've just been trodden on, this back-and-forth with our squad really hammers home the frenzy. Which may sound a bit much to you at home, but it's amazing what deep, responsive dialogue scripting can do for a firefight.

The other ace in the sequence's hand is how the spider animates, or rather, how it adapts to having its legs blown off. Binary Domain's handling of garden variety enemy dismemberment is impressive - shoot the gun arm off a robot, and it'll spin from the impact, then coldly stoop and collect its weapon with its remaining hand - but this is something else.

With every joint evaporated, the spider alters its posture to spread its weight across the remaining limbs. Reduced to a single leg, it hops and flexes with a chilly, computerised efficiency, a far cry from the large metal animals that pass for robots in other sci-fi efforts. Lord knows how much R&D the Binary Domain team splurged on this sequence, but such thoroughness and craftsmanship is rare indeed.

Neither Charlie's acidic quips about overweening bravado nor the spider's inhuman precision entirely obscures the slight messiness of combat - a general Binary Domain failing, from what we've played so far. The spider's area effect strikes make victory or defeat feel a tad arbitrary, a question of endurance and luck rather than skill.

Expect more on that, of course, in our review; in the meantime, know only that Binary Domain does things no other action game does, while appearing to do no more than other action games do.