It has been a long time since I began Life is Strange. Back in January, I had no idea what it was about, I stumbled upon it’s trailer the day of release and thought I should grab it. I had never played an episodic game like this before and it was quite the experience and I’m overall quite happy with the game as a whole, but since I’ve done individual reviews of the episodes in the past, I’m going to make this a review and a half, first covering what I thought of the episode on it’s own and then what I thought of the game as a whole.
If you want to check out my reviews for the previous episodes, here are some links
Episode 1 – Episode 2 – Episode 3 – Episode 4
I was so eager to get to this episode, the last one ended on such a huge cliff hanger that it pained me when I found out this episode was delayed by another month. That being said, it was by far the most “different” episode out of the series. It had a little bit of everything that the game has offered so far, time travel puzzles that I needed to look up how to do (it wouldn’t be Life is Strange without a google search), fetch quests (it wasn’t too bad this time), plot twists and somewhat rushed character development, though it was satisfying none the less.
The story and pacing for this episode was…Strange. First of all, you feel the constant threat of the storm that they’ve been leading up to this whole time, so when you take a very long time to talk to people like you would in any other episode, it feels out of place, like the urgency just disappeared.
There’s also this very jarring moment of the game which easily took up I think 20 or 30 minutes, where nothing makes sense, everything is just weird and wrong, I think as a consequence of messing with time so much. It just felt unnecessary and acted as padding to give the game 30 more minutes of play time. It was very well done, but unnecessary.
Overall, I, and a lot of the fan base (shout out to /r/lifeisstrange) predicted a lot of what was going to happen over the course of this episode. Obviously I won’t give anything away, but it’s not a spoiler to say that if you had a prediction about what could happen by the end of the story, you’re probably very close if not completely on point about what is going to happen.
I think that’s my biggest complaint about this episode, it was predictable. It’s also what happens when you write about time travel, there’s very few possibilities about what could happen and it becomes easy to guess what’s going to happen. And I want to clarify that the predictability isn’t a fault of the game, I fully believe there were no other good routes they could have taken it in. I just feel a little disappointed that there wasn’t another shock to my system with the final episode, like there was in episode 4.
With that, let me segue into the game’s final review.
Life is Strange is quirky, there’s no getting around it. The graphics are stylized but also somewhat choppy at times. The mouth movements don’t often match what the character is saying, and sometimes the dialogue just feels out of place because it wasn’t written to go with the dialogue route you took. And probably the thing that bothered me the most was the padding, there were lots of moments in the game where I was just stuck on what to do next, usually due to a fetch quest or challenging time travel puzzle.
But those are my only complaints. That’s it. The overall presentation for this game was outstanding. I loved the music for this game, I loved exploring and finding all the hidden things to take pictures of. I loved that there’s a collectible mode, so you don’t have to replay everything if you missed something. I loved that one of my favorite voice actors, Ashly Burch played a main character. I really loved the rewinding mechanic, using it to create new dialogue options or use it to solve creative puzzles was what this game offered most. Most of all I loved that it took place in the pacific north west, I felt right at home when playing it.
I think in a previous review, I talked about how the tone of the game had shifted. How when the the game first started, it was about a girl in high school, reuniting with an old friend, taking pictures and playing with a rewind ability, but it quickly changed into a murder mystery with very dark tones. I think that’s why I was put off, because the game was becoming more predictable, the less routes it had to take and because it had shifted into such a darker tone. But that’s all a reflection of my personal tastes, it does not and should not reflect the quality of the game as a whole.
My final score for Life is Strange
Like I rambled on about, I loved everything about how this game looked, felt and sounded. Presentation (visuals and music): A-
While I’m not very into the mystery genre, it wasn’t the story that hooked me but rather the story telling. There was one moment that I initially took for a bad attempt at creating shock, but I realized later was actually trying to illustrate a new ability, as well as the consequences of time travel. Story: B+
Overall, I really liked the time travel mechanic, I had never seen anything like it in a game before. Letting yourself openly control what happens in the environment around you, while still being in the world as a character was really fun. That being said, I cannot excuse the moments in the game where it was just mindless searching for the thing I needed to progress the game. Gameplay: A-
Total Score: A-
Life is Strange is a fantastic game. Playing it feels like watching a TV series, every episode left me wanting more, and it would be great to binge watch/play with friends.
Jack of Games 