Backstage

I know what you’re all thinking; “lol Solitayre ur so dumb this is the original, ur thinking of Backstage 2 BAAAAKA!!!111!” No I’m not, I am talking about Backstage, which is, in fact, just a shallow retread of The Longing Ribbon.

Is this inherently bad? No, of course not, many great works of art are reactions to older art, and this certainly had the potential to do that. But there are two problems here. The first problem is that the elements of this game are not just inspired by the Longing Ribbon, but often lifted wholesale. The second problem, is that this game is simply inferior to its predecessor in pretty much every way.

But it isn't really fair to make comparisions to such a great game and expect another project to live up to them in every aspect. I shall make numerous comparisions throughout this review in order to show the reader, and the author, just where mistakes were made. But I shall, of course, also evaluate how this game stands on its own.

Tom Keller seems like an average guy, down on his luck, going through a rough time in his life. But when he is suddenly pulled into a nightmarish mirror reality filled with demons and repressed memories, it starts to become clear that there is far more to him than even he himself seems to realize.

Balance 1/5:

Battles are handled in a unique manner in Backstage. When you touch a monster, combat happens automatically, based on whatever weapons you may have on hand at the time to protect yourself. If you have enough HP to survive the battle, you win, but if not, you’re out of luck. Basically the emphasis is meant to be on survival, there is absolutely no reason to seek out fights and you’re better off avoiding monsters whenever possible.

There are numerous problems with this system, however, largely because it takes the survival of your character completely out of the player’s hands. There are two basic weapon types, glass shards, which can be used once and don’t work on certain enemies, and firearms which work on everything. Unfortunately you cannot choose what weapon your character will use; if he has a firearm on hand he will always use it, meaning he may waste shots on enemies you’d prefer to use up glass shards on. Another problem is that enemies tend to simply move much too quickly, making it all but impossible to avoid combat, and at certain points battles are inevitable. Health restoration is fairly rare, found only at certain locations that you can use immediately or come back for later, but many areas get arbitrarily closed off at certain points on more than one occasion, meaning it is possible to get stuck in an unwinnable situation because you do not have enough health to survive unavoidable combat situations.

Level Design 1/5:

Somehow, Legion has taken all the atmospheric elements that made other horror games great and managed to completely butcher every single one of them. This will require some explanation. The Longing Ribbon, which Legion has claimed is the inspiration for this game, made use of fantastic stylistic choices to create a truly dark atmosphere. You are walking alone, through a dark, empty house while dramatic music and genuinely creepy ambient sound set the tone. Legion has somehow translated this into horrible, garish lighting and loud, obnoxious noise. Perhaps this is supposed to represent being in Hell, which is a very evocative of how it made me feel.

But most importantly, most effective horror games/films emphasize fear of the unknown, where you were never quite sure exactly what it was that was lurking all around you or when it might strike. Legion, who claims this is a classic psychological horror game, has forgone the psychological part of fear and instead settled for having demons jump out and scream at you every five seconds. This loses its novelty very, very quickly, and completely ruins any ambient creepiness the setting might have had. You’re no longer wondering what’s out there; it’s demons, they’re coming to kill you right now, and you’ll be dealing with this every step of the way for the rest of the game.

Aside from the utter failure to establish any sort of frightening setting, there are plenty of utterly hideous design choices that drag this category even further. For example, early In the game is dark area filled with what look like perfectly ordinary tiles that are actually instant death traps. There is absolutely no way to tell there is anything suspicious about these tiles until you have fallen into one and gotten an instant game over. Making me start the game over for not being psychic is unfair and discouraging. I am officially making an example of this; traps that arbitrarily give instant game overs with no warning are generally incredibly bad design.

There are quite a few puzzles in this game, including some riddles that are fun but can ultimately be solved by process of elimination. Very little direction is given in how to solve most puzzles, and any hints are vague and cryptic. Many times you will be required to examine a variety of environmental objects to figure out how to proceed. The problem is that the game has now taught me that random things in the environment can kill me which makes me reluctant to touch anything. I hope I don’t need to explain why this is a problem.


Get used to it.

Characters 3.5/5:

Your protagonist at first glance is an everyman in every sense of the word, going through a rough patch in his life, although we are never given any details into himself or his life before now which makes it quite hard to empathize with him. As he travels further through the nightmare world, Tom begins to learn some difficult truths about himself, and slowly becomes more and more unhinged. Along the way, he meets a few other characters who are clearly even more unhinged than he is.

Among the cast, only one character really stands out, Detective Aaron Wilks, a man so obsessed and consumed by vengeance that he is easily more terrifying than any of the monsters lurking around. He was sadly underutilized as a character, leading me to suspect that the developer simply ran out of things to do with him. Given the surrealness of setting we are ultimately left to wonder if he ever existed at all.

Storyline 2/5:

Once you enter the nightmare world, and it won’t take long, common sense pretty much flies out the window and you’re left fending for yourself in trying to work out exactly what is happening in the world. Scattered throughout the game world are vague clues that offer insights into Tom’s past and what the real nature of the nightmare is.

Unfortunately, the ultimate revelation of the nightmare is revealed to be caused by horribly overused plot device, taken to pathological extremes, and also takes a moment to demonize religion for absolutely no reason that has anything to do with the rest of the story.

Music and Sound 2/5:

If you played the Longing Ribbon, you’ll recognize pretty much the entire soundtrack, because it’s all used here in exactly the same ways it was in that project! You’d think that would be a good thing, given how well it's made use of its musical score, but unfortunately this game suffers a variety of other flaws. Every time a monster appears you hear the exact same scream you heard for the rest of the game, and since the game ultimately relies entirely on this for it’s scare factor, its an almost shameful lack of variety. You’ll also hear a few soundbytes which are frankly completely out of context and make no sense.

Overall 1.5/5:

So there you have it. A tired retread of a genre that ultimately fails to capture any of the elements that make that genre enjoyable. I believe that the ultimate reason for this game’s failure to impress me was overlooking one important element that makes horror great. Sometimes, less is more. Any great horror game or film is great because it makes you jump at shadows, not because you jump when screeching demons leap out at you. The greatest element, fear of the unknown, is what lets us fill in the blanks with our own personal terrors. . Backstage did not accomplish this.

This game was completed in one month. Perhaps if more time was spent on it, something greater could have come of it, but this game was released before it was truly finished. And so it serves as little more as a shallow rip-off of a much better project which falls short in almost everything it set out to do.

Play the original instead.