Life is Strange
PlayStation 4
When I got my PS4 last Christmas, one of the first things I did was to head to the PlayStation Store and look through the downloadable games selection. There was a holiday sale going on, which meant that many of these games could be purchased for dirt cheap. One game in particular caught my eye. It was called Life is Strange, and it was on sale for only a couple bucks. Since I had never heard of the game before, I looked up a few reviews to see if it would be worth buying or not. The feedback I read on the game was not just positive, but overwhelmingly so. It was enough to make up my mind for me. I was going to buy the game.
About five months passed before I finally got around to playing it. I came in to the game relatively blind. All I knew was that it was mainly story and conversation based, relying heavily on player choice. I also knew that it was split up into five chapters. Telltale Games and their library of titles immediately came to mind, for obvious reasons. Unlike most Telltale games, however, this was an original story as opposed to being based on an already existing property.
I was not sold on the game when I first started playing it. I played for an hour, if that, on the first night. The game felt too much like a silly high school drama to me. I joked around to my friends that I didn’t know this was going to be “Mean Girls: The Game.” Even though I didn’t have a great time with the game that night, I still stuck with it. Because that is what I do.
The more I played the game, the more interesting its story became. A quick recap for everyone who has never played: you play as a teenager named Max. Max has returned to her hometown after being away for several years. As a result, she feels like a bit of an outsider with some of the girls in her school. The first hour or so of the game is spent navigating through school and exploring some of these relationships. It isn’t long until you discover that your character has the power to rewind time. She uses this power to save a blue haired punk from being shot in her school’s bathroom. Later, she encounters this girl outside of school. Turns out that this is her old friend Chloe that she grew up with, now punk-ified and almost completely unrecognizable.
Is it just me or does the teacher look like Danny Gokey?
A good chunk of the game is spent hanging out with Chloe and exploring your powers. During this time you still have to go to school and interact with your classmates, navigating through tricky social situations. Using your power to rewind time and correct mistakes is definitely a power I wish I had in high school! As you play, Max begins to see visions of a giant tornado-like storm hitting Arcadia Bay. Weird unexplainable things start happening around town. Clearly this has something to do with her time altering powers, right?
As Chloe and Max hang out, the two begin to investigate the disappearance of a girl from town while Max was gone. This girl was Chloe’s best friend, so naturally Max wants to jump in and help. I will try not to spoil too much, but this investigation leads to the discovery of a killer in town, complete with a basement torture shelter straight out of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
Oh, look: her nose bleeds when she uses too much of her power. How original!
As Max explores her powers, things start to get out of control. The visions won’t go away. Time itself starts to act up. You can tell that all of this is taking a physical and mental toll on Max. In one of the game’s more heartbreaking sequences, Max accidentally jumps back into the body of her childhood self and stops a tragedy from taking place. But preventing this tragedy has unforeseen circumstances (Chaos Theory, Butterfly Effect) and the future turns out to be not as pleasant as she thought it would be. So she then has to go back and re-change time to its original setting.
Fortunately, as this is a story based game, the story is very strong. It got off to a slow start, but by the end I was completely invested in the journey of Max and Chloe. The pair has great chemistry together, and it was refreshing to watch two female leads take center stage. I never cried during the game, but there are emotional moments aplenty, to be sure. My main problem with the game’s story came near the end of the game. It is hard to say much without completely spoiling things, but there is a segment where Max seems to lose control of her time shifting ability and ends up jumping around through time all willy-nilly. She also experiences some very bizarre hallucinations. One common thread is that she keeps getting brought back to one specific place: the Dark Room. The game doesn’t explain much of what is going on at this time. Is this real? Is it going on in her head? What’s the deal?
That part aside, this was a pretty well put together story line. It is intriguing, there is lots of mystery, and the characters are memorable. Plus I felt like the choices I made impacted the way things played out. I always felt like a real, impactful character in the world of this game. When I finished playing, I immediately wanted to go back and play it again, making new choices this time around. I didn’t (that will come at a later date, probably around the time the inevitable sequel rolls around) but the fact that I wanted to says a lot about the quality of the game.
Make no mistake, though, that this is a story based game. Don’t expect a lot of actual video game gameplay here, if that makes any sense. You are not going to be jumping around and collecting coins and shooting enemies or any of that type of stuff. Gameplay mainly consists of walking around, talking to people, making dialogue selections, and the occasional timed sequence where you have to examine items in the environment and decide what you want to do with them. These timed sequences require a lot of trial and error, but since you have the rewind option they are often quite easy to figure out and complete.
On a technical aspect, I don’t have too many complaints. The game looks nice but it is not anything to write home about. The environments are the strongest part of the game visually. Everything is very detailed and the environments feel like real lived-in spaces. The character models are… fine. They don’t look bad by any means, but I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that this entire game could have been done using PS3 technology and you wouldn’t even notice one tiny bit. The voice acting and the music are, again, decent. My major complaint was Max herself. I didn’t even notice this the first half of the game, but around the time you sneak into the school’s swimming pool I began to notice that she speaks in this weird “whisper-shout” voice that often seems quite stilted and out of place. But that is a minor complaint, I guess.
The time travel mechanic in general has a lot of holes and flaws in its logic. Sometimes it works one way, sometimes it works another. For example, Max can go back in time where she simply transfers her mind into her old body. Other times, her whole body will physically move over to where she is when she jumped back. So if something is blocking your way and you need to move it without being seen, just push the thing out of the way and run through. You will be seen, but you can then rewind time to before you pushed the thing and you will magically appear on the other side of it before you ever would have had the chance to push it. You can grab objects and jump back in time with them as well. In fact, you need to do this to solve certain puzzle. Maybe this is all explained at some point and I wasn't paying attention. Physical jumps: the shorter time jumps, and mental jumps: the longer ones?
I don't know. In the long run, I think that those complaints are not too big of a deal. Some of them are simply just minor inconveniences to be honest with you. The game is still very entertaining. The storyline and time travel logic flaws simply bugged me because I always feel that things have to make sense! But I had to demonstrate that this is not a flawless game by any stretch of the imagination.
Not flawless, but still very good. It took a while for me to truly get into the game, but when I did I found it to be a very fun and rewarding experience. Just remember that when you play a game like this, you should be playing for the story and not for the actual gameplay itself. If you come into Life Is Strange expecting to have the same kind of experience as if you were playing Call of Duty or Ratchet and Clank, you are going to end up sorely disappointed. If my description so far doesn’t make it sound like a game for you, it probably isn’t a game for you. But if a detailed, mysterious story line with rich characters and the ability to shape your own experience sounds like something you would enjoy, you should check this out. It is not the world’s greatest game, but it is something I certainly enjoyed and can’t wait to play again.
Overall:
B
If you liked my take on Life is Strange, check out these following reviews:
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