I think the thing looks like a tank. The design is nice. But I perfer the previous versions style. The physical scope on the left side of the whole scope is completely unecessary for spartans because their scoping is HUD based. It has no use unless it was also designed for marines. But it would seem to me that in a war games setting that they would have a sniper rifle that would suit a spartan and is not a hybrid.
I think the binary rifle is a 5 shot weapon that does not have much effect when you get a headshot. I do also think that it is automatic kond of like the Needle Rifle, but it has a slower rate of fire.
To me it seems so far that it takes down shields pretty quickly while having less effects on health. I think we can think of it that way because the pulse grenade is designed to emp and I could see shield destruction in the forerunner weapons.