![]() ![]() Backbone also has that vague "animal species as allegory for racism" flavour - rodents are rarely allowed to be scientists, gorillas are in charge of everything, and most people dislike raccoons, for some reason - in a way that's ultimately so surface level that it may as well not exist to incur the slight eyebrow raise that it does.īut I'll largely forgive Backbone these missteps for two reasons. It pulls off the noir tone throughout, but its central point does feel laboured after a while, and there are a couple of events in there that I couldn't quite understand, either on a metaphorical or literal level. What do you think the marquee reading CALL MOM represents? ![]() Once I shook off the surprise and got in the right headspace, though, I was still picking up what Backbone was putting down. There is a point in Backbone that I guarantee will make a lot of people mutter, "Wait, what?", which represents the final nail in the puzzle coffin. If EggNut wanted to make a full-blown puzzle game, they'd probably pull a blinder.īut these elements are gradually phased out as you carry on playing, until eventually you're fully in fever-dream-full-of-metaphors territory. ![]() Like figuring out password reset answers to brute-force access to a PC, or deciphering someone's clues for remembering a keypad code. The puzzles in these early sections are good, and while some don't really let you fail, a few of them are fabulous. You're initially digging into the suspect activities of a nightclub owner (who is also a bear), including blackmail, drugs, and good old fashioned organised murder. In the first part of the game, you're doing a bunch of skulking around as betrenchcoated raccoon Howard Lotor, following leads and collaborating with a cool investigative journalist (who is also a fox). Backbone is a good game, but if you were expecting something more like Monkey Island meets Zootopia then you might end up with some buyer's remorse.īackbone does want you to get into the mindset of a detective to start with, though. And I won't spoil the specifics of this transition (which are incredibly, incredibly weird) but I do think it's important you know that up front. About halfway through, for example, the detecting/solving a murder bit gets, for all intents and purposes, dropped entirely. Backbone isn't as unrelenting or dense as Disco Elysium, but it progresses in a similar vein. ![]()
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