Reviews

Backbone is a distopic noir adventure/investigation game set in a world where animals have antropomorphic features and lives in a flawed society ruled by money, power and lust. I will try to keep this review spoiler free, for those who wants to play it, but I have to say I just finished it and it felt weird and unsatisfying.

You play the game as Howard Lotor, a raccoon detective, going through the city and its alleys snitching your nose where you were not called and looking for its secrets and bad people. And boy, you find plenty. The first half of the story was my favourite. Looking for clues, talking to people, walking around just feeling the city. The ambiance itself is fantastic. It felt so good to just walk around the town's neighbours, I did that for a longer time that it felt it was necessary. The places really brings close that noir vibe from investigation stories. The characters are deep and well built, each one with their own stories and interests and I give a big praise for that.

But in the second half, everything starts to feels unrelated and pointless. Everything the game plot gave it so far felt discarded, since it gives space to new ones which are just to me have little correlation to what happened before, sounds almost forced at times. The lore of this world sounds interesting, but a big chunck of it is not explained, it leaves the player wondering what's about. I don't know if this lack of closure was intentional for a sequel game, which... ok, it would explain a little, but I really felt the game could give more meaning and sense to it all. The dialogues are well developed, but player choices doesn't really matter most times, since the them are shown as different ways to a same end. Some are just a reason to get an achievement, and personally this doesn't mean much to me. The ending was so abrupt it felt like I made a wrong choice or that there would be a second part to the game. I can't see myself recommending this game to others past the Prologue (which was great). I look forward to future games from this promising developer, but this one felt like it was rushed and not well fleshed out.

TL;DR I had fun playing it. Great beggining, great art and music, nice characters, but I can't see myself recommending this game after half of it. Looks rushed and messy.

Necromunda hits all the right spots: fast-paced combat, a variety of weapons, brutal 40k setting, gore, and excellent movement options. In the middle of a level when the gameplay hits its stride, it feels right at home with DOOM 2016 and RAGE 2. Unfortunately, it's severely lacking in polish.

 The most obvious shortcoming of Necromunda is the sound design. The environmental sounds are all too muted. I would be standing next to some infernal piece of machinery with gears grinding and steam seeping out of the cracks and hear only the faintest sound in one ear. This is an everpresent issue in all of Necromunda's levels, but it's most obvious in the hub world you return to after each level. Unfortunately it ruins some level of immersion. The metal soundtrack is actually really appropriate and fun to listen to, but it doesn't play anywhere near often enough. More fights deserved a metal backdrop, and the post-mission menu is completely devoid of any music whatsoever, ruining the flow and momentum the level had created.

 Voice acting in Necromunda is actually really great, but the dialogue system makes it *crawl*. There's an awkward 1-2 second pause between the delivery of every line, canned animations, and sometimes you aren't even centered on the character's face when you talk to them. Speaking of animations, the animation quality varies pretty wildly. When it comes to machinery and tech, the animations are great. Some of the main cast even have decent animations. But most of the character/humanoid animations are choppy, and could have used another couple passes of polish.

I was ultimately disappointed with the RPG aspects. It felt less like I was customizing my merc and more like I was just upgrading my stats. Upgrades would have worked better if they were worked into the story (like the hookshot was), but instead it's "spend all your money on upgrades after every mission." Gun customization is great, but looting chests for a 3-star version of your favorite weapon was not fun. Practically, all upgrades were just stat bumps, with no real changes to the gameplay.

 Some other minor complaints: the UI is a bit clunky, the scoring system is heavily biased towards headshots, and you have a mandatory sidearm that can't be upgraded. The end-game is pretty dry, but there's plenty of replayability on harder difficulties for the challenge (and loot) if you're into that kind of thing.

 Overall, I really enjoyed Necromunda. It's a flawed game, but it gets the most important parts of the moment to moment gameplay right, and nails the 40k hive-world aesthetic. I would recommend it to fans of Warhammer 40k or fast-faced arena shooters, but probably at a bit of a discount.