Life is Strange: Before the Storm
PlayStation 4
For my review of the original Life is Strange, click
Nostalgia Factor:
I enjoyed Life Is Strange, but I would never say that I was a HUGE fan of the game. When I saw that its prequel Life is Strange: Before the Storm was available for only a couple dollars during a recent PSN sale, I decided I’d check it out. My hopes for this game weren’t too horribly high, but I ended up enjoying it more than I did the original game.
Story:
This game takes place a couple of years (I don’t remember exactly how many) before the original Life is Strange. Chloe, this game’s protagonist, is lonely after her lifelong friend Max has left town. She lashes out, smoking, drinking, getting into trouble, and clashing with her mother and her fiancé David. She befriends a popular girl named Rachel, who is a student at the private school that the two girls attend. The two hit it off right away and share personal stories, most notably regarding the death of Chloe’s father. Maybe it was my own impending fatherhood at the time I played this game, but these conversations and the ensuing flashbacks always hit me close to home. I can’t imagine losing my dad as a teenager, or even thinking about my son losing me. The way the game handles this topic is very well-done and sparked a big emotional reaction within me, which is hard to do. It made the whole thing feel so much more personal than the original game. Kudos to the game makers for that.
Anyway, Rachel gets pissed after she sees her dad cheating on her mom with another woman, and accidentally ignites a wildfire when she burns his picture in a trashcan. The two girls get in trouble and Chloe is suspended. This is a choice based game, so I don’t know if the choices you make can stop the suspension, but that is what happened to me. The two girls fight, but quickly resolve their differences during a school play. They decide to run off together, but then a bomb is dropped that the woman Rachel saw kissing her dad was in fact her biological mother. Chloe discovers that Rachel's mom has been trying to re-enter her life, but her father has been blocking her at every turn. Some drama ensues regarding drug dealers and Rachel’s father, who is the DA, and Rachel’s mom, a drug addict. I won’t go into too much detail, but this plot comprises the major “conflict” of the game. There’s nothing supernatural to be found here, unlike the original Life is Strange.
The game ends with a moral decision over whether or not to reveal a potentially devastating secret to your best friend Rachel. Regardless of what happens, we know from the original Life is Strange that she goes missing sometime between the two titles.
Gameplay:
There’s not much to talk about regarding this game’s gameplay. You walk around, you talk to people, you make decisions. This game is almost 100% story based. I guess a nice thing about this is that anyone can pick up and play this game, even if they know nothing about video games. There are a few “puzzles” you have to solve, but they mainly involve interacting with people or objects in the environment in a particular order. If you’re looking for groundbreaking gameplay, you have come to the wrong place.
Graphics:
The game doesn’t look beautiful or anything, but I wouldn’t say it looks ugly either. It very much resembles the “real world” but brought to life with cartoon-ish graphics. The characters have a nice, distinctive look to them, although their facial expressions and movements can be a bit wooden sometimes. Interiors are well-decorated. There are fun personal touches everywhere you look. The dorms look like real dorms. Chloe’s room looks like a room a real teenage girl would live in. The dump… looks like a dump. Regarding the original Life is Strange, I said that the game looks like it could have been made on a PS3, and the same holds true here. Graphics aren’t why you play a game like this, though.
Sound:
The voice acting is really good in this game. Story-based games really have to sell you on their characters, and this game does just that. I felt an emotional connection between Rachel and Chloe that permeated throughout all three of this game’s episodes. All the voices match their characters. All the characters are very well-acted and bring something different to the table. I don’t remember much of this game’s music, but I don’t remember it being bad either. I have nothing to complain about in regards to this game’s sound.
Overall:
I didn’t expect to enjoy this game as much as I did. It tells a simple but heartfelt story that I really connected with. The game is filled with all kinds of tender, relatable moments that I look back upon fondly. In the grand scope of the Life Is Strange universe, this game may not “mean much”, but I think that Rachel and Chloe’s story is a story that needed to be told. I had a blast playing this, but this game isn't "fun" in the traditional video game sense of fun where you are constantly killing aliens and monsters or shooting up dens of bad guys. This is a much more subtle game than that. It’s more of a character study than anything, and it really dives deep into the psyches of the game’s protagonists and makes you care about them more than you should ever care about a video game character.
I’m a big fan, and this game has really made me want to replay Life Is Strange again to see if I’ll have a bigger connection with that game now that I know more of its backstory. In fact, I think I’m gonna do that very soon.
Final Score:
B+
A complete index of all of my game reviews can be found
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