Life Is Strange: Complete Season - Episodes 1-5

The Good
We’ve all had those moments where we wonder what could have happened if we had said or done something differently. Maybe we’ve wanted to re-do a test after realizing we had put down the wrong answer. Maybe, if we had said something else during a conversation, it would have steered us in an entirely different direction. The smallest decisions and actions end up snowballing into huge shifts in our lives.

Life is Strange is an intriguing game from French developer Dontnod Entertainment that explores choice and consequence and the butterfly effect. It works as a surreal mystery tale and a mature coming-of-age story, that’s about learning to live with the hard choices we make. It also tackles more contemporary themes including bullying, surveillance, class divide, and urban decay.

Life is Strange details the adventures of a young girl named Max Caulfield. Max is a budding photographer attending a prestigious art school in the city that she had moved away from five years ago. One day, Max sees a boy shooting a strange girl in the school bathroom. This traumatic event awakens something in Max, gifting her with the power to rewind time, allowing her to alter decisions made in the past. After using her power to stop the shooting,  Max learns that the girl she saved was none other than her old friend Chloe, whom she hasn’t seen for years. Over the course of the week, the two friends get involved in investigating the mysterious disappearance of Chloe’s replacement friend, Rachel Amber, who hasn’t been seen in six months.

Life is Strange is an adventure game, though it is narratively focused, rather than puzzle-focused. There are puzzles, but they are mostly pretty basic and generally involve Max utilizing her time-manipulation powers to answer questions or manipulate the environment. There are even a couple of stealth sections, something which is downright unorthodox for this type of game. That said, the puzzles mostly do a good job of feeling like an organic part of the narrative, rather than an arbitrary obstacle as in other adventure games. I say mostly, as there are several annoying “find these objects” sections where you’ll need to search a scene for various objects, which unfortunately slow down the pace of the game.

The main mechanic is making choices which have both small and large impacts on the story. Choices are designated as major and minor. Major choices are the most important, but the game makes sure that you can see the impacts of your minor decisions as well, even if they ultimately end up being a text message or an additional line of dialog. Some of the major choices aren’t always binary A/B choices - rather they are scenarios that can play out in several different ways. Take for instance a scene early in the game where Chloe is smoking weed while Max hides in the closet while Chloe’s father enters the room. Max can stay in the closet, or she can come out and either take the blame for the joint for herself. She can even pass the blame to Chloe (it is her joint, so she will be quite angry if you do this). There were even a few times where I thought that something was scripted only to find out after the fact that the outcome could have been different. This forces you to pay attention to every decision that you make, because you never can be sure exactly what kinds of consequences it will have.

Most decisions can be re-wound to see their immediate effects, though there are a few key moments where the game takes away your power or forces you to stick with a decision. Once you leave a scene where a decision is made, it becomes permanent, and you cannot go back and alter it if you end up hating the consequences, due to the limitations of Max’s power.

Technically, the game runs off of Unreal Engine 3, which is a rather odd choice for an adventure game, as the engine is typically used for either first-person shooters or action games. As a result, the game has more of a typical third-person controls setup, with one stick moving Max and the other freely moving the camera around. There are no fixed angles while controlling Max, unlike in other 3D adventure games. As a result, the world feels highly detailed and realistic. Textures are hand-painted and photography style filters are applied to give the game a environments a Polaroid look, which is fitting since Max is always carrying one around with her.

The voice acting is very good, and I don’t think there were any noticeably bad performances in the game. The soundtrack, by indie musician Syd Matters, is influenced by folk and indie rock, and the game includes licensed music from various bands and artists that you’ve probably never heard of, but that Max obviously loves.

It’s really hard to review a game like this, as its appeal comes primarily from what can’t be spoiled, which is the story. What I will say is that the writing is generally pretty enjoyable, though it is at times easy to raise an eyebrow at the obscure pop-cultural references and overuse of teen slang. There are some amazing twists and characters to be found throughout the story, and the game always makes sure to leave you on-edge for the next episode. The storyline is also quite a bit darker than the games soft-toned appearance and folky soundtrack let on. <br><br>**The Bad**<br>The graphics range from not bad to appealing, but the same cannot be said of the character models, which are stiff and at times occasionally ugly. The lip-syncing is laughably bad, arguably some of the worst I’ve ever seen. The lip-sync does improve somewhat starting at Episode 4, but it’s not enough to make up for the problems beforehand. In addition, there was some screen tearing on the PS3 version, as well as shadow pop-in, though this is sadly typical of many Unreal-based games on the system.

The ending is moving and emotionally powerful, though you’ll easily see it coming if you’re familiar with a lot of time-travel stories. Even when the game gives you a different choice, the other ending is a cheap, short animation, while the former ending features highly developed cutscenes and voice acting. It’s obvious which one the developers prefer for the player. This kind of preferential choice goes against the idea that there IS no “right way” to play the game.

In addition, the choices up to the last episode are effectively rendered meaningless by the game’s conclusion - only the final choice gives you a different ending, everything else that you did up to that point has an almost negligible impact. it is you, the player, who provides the meaning and context for the choices. While this has been a failing of other choice-based adventure games, Dontnod instead made the proverbial “illusion of choice” a core part of the game’s themes, so the ending still somewhat works. Having said that, I would have been even more impressed if Dontnod had actually solved the problem, instead of merely sidestepping around it. The clear action-and-reaction of the rest of the game seemed to suggest that Life is Strange was fully capable of delivering on its ambitions, only to have them constrained by the narrative Dontnod wanted to tell. It essentially means that the game is really only good for a one-time play through.

The Bottom Line
I’ll say this much, however: If you’re looking to get away from the robots, aliens, dragons, mutants and macho soliders found in many of today's games, then you owe it to yourself to play Life is Strange. It’s a clever and emotional exploration of settings and themes that aren’t usually seen in games.

As with their previous game, Remember Me, Dontnod has crafted one of the most believable and “real” feeling game worlds that I have seen in quite some time, and this time they managed to do it within an almost mundane setting. That, combined with the innovative time travel mechanics and engaging characters, was enough to mark Life is Strange as a satisfying effort. Dontnod has said that they wanted to make a game that felt like an indie film, in contrast to the blockbuster feel of just about everything else. Despite its faults, Life is Strange, strangely succeeds at doing just that.