Breaking away from the Horror theme for Halloween very briefly just to spice things up a little so people don't get bored!
Okay so this is a game that I have extremely mixed feelings towards. Part of me thinks it was amazing, the story was great and incredibly interesting, the art style was beautiful and it was just so much fun! Another part of me can't stand this game. It was an incredibly let down for the immense potential that it had, and Chloe was ridiculously annoying to the point that I basically hoped that she was going to die, and wanted it to be a very brutal and painful death.
I still can't contain myself and have to scream expletive intensifiers (fancy word for swearing) at her whenever she's on the screen.
A bit of back story for those who haven't really paid much attention to Life is Strange. It's a game that started off as an episodic PSN game for the PS3 (another thing I have major beef with and will explain why). Dontnod games, who made the gorgeous Remember Me (which for some reason reminds me of cheese and crackers) developed the game and released an episode every 2-3 months. The game let's the player join Max Caulfield as she deals with; suddenly developing the power to travel through time; reuniting with a long lost best friend; experimenting with her love life, and solving the mystery of Rachel Amber's disappearance in Arcadia Bay.
So I'm going to start with why I hated it, so that I can end this on a positive note. Short story; the characters were stupid and annoying, the episodic feature just made it redundant, and the actually storyline was pathetic. Long story; All of the characters in the game have unrealistic, tumblresque personalities which just made them get under my skin, especially Max and Chloe. Max was just an egotistic brat that treated people awfully in the past and now can't understand why she's alone or what she did wrong. Chloe is just a `tumblr girl` disaster that matches every `I'm not like other girls` cliche that could possibly exist.
The episodic style of the game originally worked, until Episode 2 - when the developers clearly decided that they were just going to search online and see what people wanted and try to loosely tie it in to the game. i.e. Max and Chloe's overly forced potential to be lesbians. If Dontnod had actually planned this I think it would've been amazing and a great representation for the LGBTQA+ community. However it is incredibly clear that they saw people `shipping` them on the Internet and just decided to make this an option suddenly through the sudden appearance of it from Episode 3 on-wards. The Episodic feature also failed because waiting 3 months for a new episode, getting really excited when it finally comes out, only to play it and find out that you just spent over an hour not progressing the story what so ever, just enduring Chloe being a nuisance, and get the tiniest bit of story progression right at the very end so that you can wait another 3 months. Which, personally made me think if there was any point - why get so excited in something that's ultimately just going to be a disappointment? Episode 1 and 4 however - on point. Those episodes are amazing, the plot line in them is perfect and exactly what the entire game should have been, and honestly you can probably get away with just playing episodes 1, 4 and sadly 5 to see the trash that was the two endings.
Now, storyline... this genuinely upsets me. The game's plot leaves many unanswered questions (which I can't believe was a developer chance to keep people interested, but more of just gaping holes in the plot.), and half of the game as previously mentioned is useless to the plot, and doesn't even give you that glorious `slice of life` feelings that I tend to love so much in video games. It just filled me with rage and ultimate despair. Like most games where you `shape the story` you basically... don't. Which is an issue I have with all games that claim that `Your choices effect the outcome!`. To be fair, through the most part of the game your choices genuinely do make a difference, which was absolutely wonderful and gave me hope again. But no, (sorry if considered a spoiler), after episode 4 on-wards - your decisions mean literally nothing, especially for the ending where it's all down to down basic options (without giving anything away, it was an easy choice for me personally and gave me what I'd been hoping for). but even then, the actual ending's are just sheer useless cinematic garbage.
None-the-less! With my debbie-downer rant out of the way... I actually do really love this game. While everything I said above is still true, and I'll never stop being angry at how much potential was wasted catering to fan posts on the Internet, the game is good.
The music in Life is Strange is a gift to the world. An actual gift. I can listen to it on repeat... I do listen to it on repeat. Especially `To All of You` which I'm listening to as I write this. It's exactly the perfect kind of indie that just suits the beautiful atmosphere that Dontnod put so much effort into making. It makes Life is Strange the only game that I've ever been able to see a point in the `Sit` option that just gives you a little animation of your character sitting down, then a mid close-up until you decide to move. It lets you just zone out, take in the music, take in the incredible detail of Arcadia Bay, and for a moment just forget how much of an ass Max is.
The actual time-travel concept within the game was magnificent for the most part, yeah it doesn't follow most time-travel theory, and yeah it was all solely incorporated so Max can invoke some Chaos Theory for a little and then lose it, but hey it still worked nicely. And getting the option to see both sides of every argument, every decision, every choice, made the fact that your decisions ultimately mean nothing that little bit more bearable. Just a little bit.
The actual Episodes that are worth the money and time you spend on them have some great content, and the actual storyline behind Rachel Amber's disappearance and the Vortex Club was so amazingly dripping with dark undertones and chilling truths that I can nearly forgive the pointless episodes for just draining my funds.
The game's mechanics are put together so well that even though you're technically seeing the same bit repeatedly, it's still fun and still feels like a game. And the strangely dark option to manipulate people through your powers, all be it to make friends, just added a weird feeling that while what I was doing was making people happy... maybe I wasn't that good of a person.
Now of course one thing the game deserves the highest praise for has to be the amount of Twin Peaks reference within the game, and in general all the references. Twin Peaks was always present in my house growing up, so picking up on all of these that I found just filled my nerdy heart with joy.
So when it comes to Life is Strange you can clearly see I cannot decide how I feel. But one thing is certain - I recommend that everyone who likes the odd cheeky game have a go at this one to make up your own mind! Sometimes I can be an ass with this kind of thing; and while the game had some terrible moments; awful lip-sync and some pointless wastes of pure potential, it's still a game worth playing.
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