14 DAY TRIAL // 
Life Is Strange takes time travel and manipulation and makes them feel a little boring, simple tools to be used by a teenager who does not really want the power she has but is willing to use it to its full extent in order to make sure that she finds the best possible timeline for her and her best friend.
Dontnod has created a game that explores a lot of interesting themes, but the one that dominates, especially towards the final episodes, is the impossibility of finding the best timeline, even for someone who can rewind time to find the best solution to a given situation.
Main character Max starts off as an already world-weary 18-year-old, and it's interesting to see her evolve over the course of one real world week that packs multiple realities and plenty of time shifting, gaining strength while also dealing with losses that will mark her entire life.
The ending is divisive and there are moments when the gameplay does not match the quality of the character-driven interactions, but Life Is Strange manages to make its five episodes a journey that any story lover will want to explore.
The title is developed by Dontnod and published by Square Enix and can be played on the PC, the Xbox One from Microsoft, the PlayStation 4 from Sony and older home consoles.
Story
Life Is Strange is a complex, decision-driven experience that manages to ask some important questions about the way each human being, with or without special time manipulation powers, can influence the world around and choose the fate of both friends and enemies.
The game starts off with the meeting between main character Max Caulfield and old friend Chloe, who is about to get shot in a bathroom, and the two quickly start to investigate a disappearance, with the case quickly growing to involve both their friends and some of the most powerful people in Arcadia Bay.
As the episodes progress, Life Is Strange becomes less about time manipulation and more about the power of relationships and the way the two main characters interact with each other, with the developers offering just enough hints that romance exists between them while allowing gamers to extract their own conclusions.
The fourth and fifth chapters of the story introduce some big twists and then allow the player to explore some parallel realities before making the big final choices and it's here that the game delivers both its best moments, including a big twist, and its lowest points, with some sequences that feel like they simply exist to add some playing time.
The writing is good for most of the game, making it clear how Max is dealing with her power and the situations she is in and there are plenty of scenes that reflect the complexity of adolescence and the difficulty of accepting the responsibilities associated with maturity, but there are also moments when the game is rather over-written and a little brevity could have served the villain well.
It is hard for video games to create an emotional attachment and Life Is Strange should be praised for its ability to connect gamers to Max, Chloe and the rest of the cast, even if some of them fail to show the depth that's initially suggested.
The video attached to this review is taken from the fifth episode of the game and contains spoilers for those who have not yet played the previous ones.
Gameplay
Life Is Strange is an adventure game with a big twist, the player's ability to direct Max to rewind time at any point and to sometimes explore alternate time frames using pictures as the point of entry.
Across the five episodes that are bundled in the new retail release, gamers will see much of Arcadia Bay and will also get to explore the mind of the main character, seeing how her feelings and fear affect reality when she employs her power to try and set things right.
“Life Is Strange is a game about conversations and interactions, with the gamer asked to sometimes solve light puzzles, that never feel too difficult, and employ their time powers to escape dangerous situations.”
There are arbitrary limits placed on the rewinding that can frustrate gamers and the timing on some action scenes feels a little off, but most of the time the gameplay mechanics are not a major obstacle for those looking to push the story forward and find out more about the final fates of Max and Chloe.
When Dontnod tries to tweak the basic formula to add some variety, most prominently in episodes two and five, the results are sections that feel too difficult when compared to the rest of the game and add nothing of value to the overall experience.
Life Is Strange makes time manipulation a central part of the gameplay, but the game also manages to subvert its ideas by making it clear that the very efforts to use Max's powers to keep Chloe alive have disastrous effects on the very fabric of the world.
Graphics and audio
The presentation of Life Is Strange manages to be very consistent across the five episodes, even when the team moves to new environments or tries to show alternate takes on situations that were already explored.
The slightly washed out colors and the combination of expressive faces and painting-like touches for all the main characters make the game feel constantly eerie, a little out of focus, preserving the mystery that surrounds the core story.
I also appreciated the attention that the development team had for art and design, which is easy to see in the gallery scene and its many pieces as well as in the attention paid to the environments that the player explores.
Some more detail for the character models would have been appreciated and would have contributed to the attempt to ground the story in the real world to a certain degree, and I sometimes felt that the models and style make it too easy to manipulate how gamers feel towards certain NPCs.
The sound design in Life Is Strange is uniformly good, with voice acting for both Cloe and Max that manages to make their relationship and interactions believable, while the rest of the cast also does a good job at conveying emotion, even if the main villain sometimes is over-verbose and a little immersed in his love for language.
The mix of licensed tunes and original songs that make up the soundtrack also serves the game well.
The Good
- Character interactions
- Time manipulation
- Emotional moments
The Bad
- Limited gameplay appeal
Conclusion
The episodic format is well suited for the experience, and the game finds its footing in the fourth and the fifth installments, which manage to introduce some truly harrowing choices while offering closure for most of the characters involved.
The ending and the fact that Dontnod does not include as many details as players were expecting will disappoint some, but to me it feels like a good way to allow gamers to insert their feelings into the story and become a part of the world that they have already explored.
Life Is Strange is an imperfect video game and the actual mechanics of playing it, including the time rewind, can become annoying of frustrating, especially when the development team tries to borrow from another genre.
But the game makes it easy to create a connection with Max and to care about her choices and trials, a rare feat, and that means any fan of narrative-driven experiences should try it out to see how he deals with the feelings of the protagonist and the impact they have on Arcadia Bay.
