10 people found this review helpful
Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 20.4 hrs on record
Posted: Mar 9, 2016 @ 7:56am

Life is strange, sure. Also, it's sometimes a bit disappointing no matter how many do-overs you get.

A review of the game really needs to start at the ending. After four episodes (a few hours each) of making choices, seeing consequences and constantly double-guessing yourself the game culminates in a final episode that goes completely off the rails. Setting aside player opinions on the climax and whether or not your choices were meaningful, the ending is bogged down in lengthy cut scenes interspersed with irritating mechanics such as a maze sequence or scenes that try to turn the casual interface into a twitch game. Your "rewind" power gives you infinite attempts to get it right but timing a kick or a trip just didn't feel right. The pacing was off as well -- one moment you're leaning back in your chair doing nothing for five minutes as people on the screen talk, the next it's hustle, hustle. Simply put, I didn't have much fun for the final hours of the game.

Up until that point though, Life is Strange is an interesting enough journey and occasional puzzler revolving around a teenage girl, Max, who learns in a moment of crisis that she has the ability to rewind time, using the power to attempt to solve the mysterious happenings at her school and re-connect with her estranged best friend. With the plot focusing on the teens, the dialogue is sometimes eye-rolling and Max is a bit too precious and twee for anyone's good but the story has moments of genuine pathos and the mysterious story line has its own twists. I may be a bit too removed from my teenage days to get "hit in the feels" (as I understand the kids are saying these days) but the story kept me playing despite this not really being my preferred genre of game.

Game play is usually very simple and casual: You walk around, items of interest get highlighted with a circle, you look at or interact with them in some way. Interlaced with this is your ability to rewind time, allowing you to prevent things from happening or alter the course of a conversation by presenting new information. Many small instances of choice pop up as you play and each chapter ends with a break down of the decisions you made (or failed to make) and how many others did the same. It's interesting to make a seemingly obvious decision and then see that only 35% of the players thought the same way. The art is usually attractive and visually consistent although some parts looked distracting low-res. The mainly acoustic indie soundtrack wasn't my cup of tea but fit the overall feel of the game.

Ultimately, I give the game a somewhat reluctant recommendation despite its unwieldy conclusion. The road to that ending was interesting enough and had enough bright moments to make it worth taking even if ending falls flat.
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