



After my last post about Until Dawn, someone suggested I give my thoughts on Life Is Strange. While distinctly different than Until Dawn, there are also some areas in which these can be compared and contrasted, including the fact that this game has its ups and downs. I would probably recommend this game, although looking back on it (I finished this a couple months ago) my reception has cooled a bit as I had the opportunity to reflect on my experience.





What Is It?





A couple years ago, new life was injected into the "Adventure" genre of games. Telltale released The Walking Dead, which reinvigorated interest in the point and click style game where you interact with items and people within the world to advance the story. Many other games in a similar vein came out after Walking Dead, especially from Telltale (perhaps too many from Telltale). While some people may think adventure games sound like action games, the truth is that the genre is closer to a puzzle game than a "twitchy" action game.





Life Is Strange for the most part runs along the same lines as Telltale's adventure games. The character you control, Max, is a girl who is studying photography at a private school in a fictional Oregon town heavily inspired by the show Twin Peaks. Max is clearly the protagonist, and like many high school protagonists, she's not the most popular kid in school, but she is soft spoken, identifiable, and easy to like. What makes this game unique is the mechanic of reversing time, which is a power Max discovers very early on. The time reversal mechanic is used constantly, mostly in interesting ways, like exploring how other characters react to different dialogue choices, or undoing an accident that may cause some damage. It's also the central plot device. Max uses this ability very early to avoid a life changing tragedy which I won't elaborate on since it's a spoiler. But in essence, Max's ability to rewind time is what advances the plot and is responsible for much of the conflict and resolution of the main story.





If you read my Until Dawn post, you should immediately see one of the biggest differences between the two games. Until Dawn forces you to live with your decisions, while Life Is Strange encourages you to play with your choices and settle on what makes you comfortable. As a result, Life Is Strange is much less tense (not a bad thing...just a thing). Perhaps you don't know the full impact of your decisions over the full course of the game, which is 5 episodes, but generally you know how other characters will perceive Max as a result of your decisions.





The game also uses the time reversal mechanic for puzzles. You try something, it doesn't work, and you discover the right way to make it work by reversing time. Or you move a bunch of stuff around and then reverse time so it moves back. Sometimes you go back in time a few seconds, and other times you go back much, much further (with significant plot consequences).





It takes about 10 hours or so to complete all 5 episodes, and since it is episodic it's not very expensive to purchase. In fact, I got my Steam key from Newegg on sale for less than $10. It's also available on consoles.





Do I Like It?





Yeah, I like it. When I finished the game, I felt at the time like it was one of the best games of the year. But now that I've had some time to reflect on it, there are a lot of negatives and I think in the end I would rank Until Dawn ahead of it (although that's entirely subjective and even I'm not 100% sure I will feel that way a month from now). I'll discuss my thoughts without getting into spoilers.





Let's start with the positive. The game is paced reasonably well. It's subtle, but the music and sound are well done. Arcadia Bay, Oregon really does "feel" like the Pacific Northwest. There is also something artistic about the general design of the environments. Personally, the Twin Peaks references are a welcome addition for me as a big fan of the show, although if you haven't seen the show you probably won't get it. It's fun seeing the different options when you use your time reversal abilities.





There is some nice depth to the presentation as well. Max gets text messages from other characters throughout the game that call back to some of the earlier ways you interacted with them. Sometimes, it's a threat from someone who doesn't like you. Other times, it's gratitude or admiration for something you did. This is a really nice touch. I did feel things towards these characters, and they had a lot of depth to their personalities. All of the characters have interesting elements to them, even those that I found myself resenting. You can shape Max's persona with the decisions you make. I appreciated these qualities very much. For a game that allows you to reverse time, the characters themselves felt very real and believable.





The graphics, simply put, are not great. There are basically no textures to the environments. When the characters talk, the movements of the mouths I found to be somewhat like that of a puppet. Part of that is clearly a style choice, but clearly they didn't come close to any kind of realism. At times it's almost cartoony. To me, this wasn't a big deal. The game didn't need to rely on graphical fidelity to get me interested. But it's worth mentioning.





Artistically, it's not bad at all. Graphically...meh.





The story and plot are also a mixed bag. While I'm generally satisfied with the overall arc and how my game finished, there are way too many loose ends when all is said and done. So many things were discovered throughout the game that seemed like they deserved explanation, including the actual origin of Max's power. There is a nice twist towards the end of the game, and it did get me (although a friend told me he figured it out ahead of time).





There is some decision making that impacts the outcome, but ultimately you really only have two choices in the end. It's a little unclear to me why you have to make that specific choice as well and why it makes such an impact to the resolution of the game. Plus this choice speaks again to the origins of Max's power, and it feels like the creators didn't want to have to come up with a complicated, but logical, connection. Many of the other characters in the game simply aren't a part of the finale. You spend a lot of time developing relationships with these characters, but in the end they don't really impact the resolution. This is a shame, because when you go to great lengths to make secondary characters that have complexity to them, they should be a part of the main story and resolution. And much of the game is spent thinking about how you want to respond to another character's dialogue or actions. As you might be able to tell, I'm having a hard time articulating these gripes without spoiling the plot.





The gameplay is...OK. The general adventure style, including most of the time reversal puzzles, kept me interested enough. However, this game does something I absolutely can't stand (and many games do this today), which is introduce gameplay mechanics that are totally out of place when placed in context with the rest of the experience. Specifically, there are two sections of the game that require you to utilize stealth in order to proceed. And since you can just reverse time, mistakes can just be undone. So what's the point of the stealth? It feels clunky, and to compensate for the clunkyness, the creators simply made it easy to grind through using Max's time reversal. If I wanted stealth, I'd be playing Metal Gear, Mark Of The Ninja, or even an RPG like Fallout or Skyrim, which utilize stealth in clever ways (or makes stealth an option, but not the only option). It's not good that for a game I played a few months ago, one of the most distinct memories I have of it is me groaning over the fact that I had to play this junk stealth section.





There was a puzzle regarding putting clues together, and while I suppose the puzzle was fine, it just wasn't something I wanted to do when it came up. I was more interested in advancing the story, rather than have to break down a bunch of clues and connect the dots by repeatedly pointing and clicking. It seems to me like in the resurgence of adventure games over the past few years, they lack the quality of puzzles that existed in the classic games in the genre such as King's Quest, or even Leisure Suit Larry. The exception to this is Broken Age, which looks modern but plays very old school. Of course, those games have really no decision making whatsoever. The story is what it is.





Should You Play It?





If you like this genre of game (casual adventure games), sure. It's cheap, and it should keep you interested. Even with my criticisms, it gets the job done. There are plenty of things that aren't perfect but still enjoyable, like most games, movies, TV shows, or any other media. Would it be the first adventure game I would recommend? No. I think if someone was starting off, I would recommend A Wolf Among Us over this (if they like comics).





As always, thanks for reading my post. I try to be thorough and informative but also interesting, so feedback is appreciated so I can make my content better for you, the reader.