2015's Best Surprise Game
It has been one... strange journey for this game.
When Dontnod Entertainment released Life is Strange Episode 1 back in January, it was hard to believe come October there would be more buzz surrounding the game's final episode then the bigger budget, big marque Tales from the Borderlands which concluded the same week. Dontnod had a single prior game under its belt, the incredibly forgettable Remember Me. And thus the first episode of their sophomore work, Life is Strange, a small budget adventure game was released to little fanfare.
In Life is Strange, you play as art school student Maxine "Max" Caulfield, an 18-year-old, shy, geeky girl who had just moved back to Arcadia Bay, Oregon to attend the prestigious Blackwell Academy. Within the game's opening minutes, you find yourself witnessing the shooting of a blue-haired girl in the school bathroom. When Max reaches out as if to somehow stop the inevitable, she suddenly finds herself back at her desk in class and comes to the realization she has gained the power to rewind time. The first thing she does is prevent said shooting, but soon finds herself wrapped up in the ongoing events of Arcadia Bay.
At its core, the game has much in common with modern Telltale episodic productions. You walk around the environment and engage in conversations and choose from a number of dialogue options. However, Life is Strange does not feature the QTE gameplay of Telltale games. Instead, the hook is the ability to rewind time. This mechanic fits in well with the adventure game genre, allowing for a decent variety of time manipulation puzzles as well as the ability to fiddle with conversation outcomes. Ever want to see the all results of a major decision in an adventure game? Now you can, and then choose which result you want to "lock in" before proceeding with the game. You never really know the ultimate result of any particular decision, or how much affect it will have on the future of the narrative, so it isn't as simple as picking resolution A or B.
Life is Strange feels like a small budget, indie art-house creation through and through. The game's lip-syncing has been widely criticized, and for good reason. Graphically, the water-color/cell-shaded look fits the game's style well, but can be at times a little off-putting. The soundtrack is a mix of folk and indie, yet is somehow used repeatedly exceptionally well despite the songs themselves not always being great.
Like with any adventure game, the story is the game, so any review has to dance around spoilers. Not touching on specifics, it's clear that Life is Strange's writers are big fans of David Lynch, most notably Twin Peaks. There have been a lot of attempts in gaming to create Lynch-style narratives, however most end up like Deadly Premonition where they feel like watered down Twin Peaks more than trying to utilize the style. Life is Strange manages to avoid this pitfall. Characters have many of those Twin Peaks-style quirks to them. Events progressively get stranger as the game goes on. The narrative "goes places" as well, dealing with many touchy subjects along the way. In the end, it successfully pulls off the "mystical, surreal soap opera" feel quite well.
Much has been made of the game's dialogue, which is something by the end of episode 2 you'll either come to love or hate with little between. Episode 1 in particular suffers from trying too hard to work in slang. At no point does it ever approach Shakespeare, but the writers start to tone it down as episodes go on to make it more charmingly awkward than grating. The game's voice acting is for the most part really good. The stand-out performance comes from Ashly Burch as Max's best friend Chloe, who is asked to run one sizable gamut of emotions throughout the game.
Speaking of the game's cast, the characters in Life is Strange are some of the most well-realized in adventure gaming. Your first impression of many characters will be proven wrong as the story moves along. There are few pure saints or sinners as you'll soon find out. Max meanwhile is the glue that holds the whole thing together. She represents a wonderfully refreshing protagonist, and not just because there aren't enough female protagonists in gaming or because she's not tall or beautiful or muscular or whatever cliche you want to throw out there about generic heroes and heroines, but because of the exceptional-ism of the character is something most can relate to even if they weren't once an 18-year-old high school girl.
If nothing else, the greatest compliment that can be paid to Life is Strange is it manages to take advantage of the episodic format better than any recent game I can recall. The concluding points for each episode make for perfect bookends. It's a shame that anyone who missed out on playing the game as it was being released will be able to immediately dive into the following episode and may not gain as much appreciation for how well Dontnod pulled this off.
I was glued to my television over the entirety of Life is Strange's five episodes. Max's journey might be the most lasting memory video games produce in one of the best years in recent gaming history. While there are a lot of opinions out there on the quality of said journey, there is a buzz and a reaction about it that I can't recall since Mass Effect. Considering the meager asking price of $19.99, a full $5-10 less than most episodic adventure games, this is one of the easiest recommendations of the year for me. It's hard to imagine you won't at least find it a journey worth taking even if you don't enjoy it as much as I did.
4.5/5 stars.
