Telltale and The Walking Dead opened the door for the modern adventure game. Played from a third-person perspective, with a puzzle-solving and a focus on decision-making, it made new types of stories possible. Square Enix entered the space with Life is Strange. Playing the role of a teenage girl in a small town, you go through a really rough week in her shoes.
You’re Max Caufield, an awkward teenager with a passion for photography who has moved back to her small home town after years of living in Seattle. In this first episode, you go through a day of school filled with teenage drama. It’s not every day that a game puts you in in the shoes of a teen girl dealing with teen girl things, and I appreciate being able to live that through the game.
There are a number of obvious moments where the game needs you to make a key decision, but there are a lot of smaller moments that could be easily overlooked if you aren’t looking for everything you can interact with. After playing through the first episode, I was taken aback at how many decision points there were that I completely missed.
On top of that, a chance encounter with an old friend makes Max realize that she has the ability to rewind time. Not only does this allow you to replay specific moments where you don’t like the outcome, but it also plays a role in how the main story plays out. There are times where the ability to rewind time allows you to change your choices to your liking. In other instances, you’ll need to use your ability to rewind time while retaining your previous knowledge in order to solve certain puzzles. The ability to alter your choices does feel like a cop-out at times, though it does put limitations on this ability in key moments.
While there are elements of sci-fi sprinkled throughout, with it making a huge impact a some point in the season, it’s the human drama that is the star of the show. The focal point here is the strained relationship between protagonist Max and her sidekick Chloe. With no shortage of baggage between the two before you account for all of the crazy stuff that happens during the course of the game, it’s all presented wonderfully thanks to how real the two have been written and portrayed. Special kudos go out to voice actors Hannah Telle for her work as Max and Ashley Burch for her portrayal of Chloe.
Life is Strange is a challenging game. Not in terms of difficulty. But it tackles some really heavy subject matter in a way that most games don’t. It doesn’t always work, as some may take issues with some of the game’s plot twists or the number of plot holes its time-travel mechanic creates, but the journey to the end is something that feels so genuine and gripping in a way that I wish more games attempted. Regardless of how you feel about its destination, its journey is one that will strike a nerve.
Buy Life is Strange Now From Amazon.com
In Third Person 