Life Is Strange (2015) by Dontnod Entertainment

Life Is Strange does a lot of things really well, the strongest of which is the game's commitment to its 'vibe', for lack of a better word. It's at its absolute best during its quiet moments; moments in which the tedium of its gameplay and its wonky, cringeworthy, how-do-you-do-fellow-kids dialogue are relegated to the backseat and no longer permitted to ruin the experience. Sitting on the swing in Chloe's parents' backyard as the neighborhood dogs bark and the children play in the background. Lying on Chloe's bed with light rock music twanging along in the background. Walking through a massive party as the grooving, ambient club music plays and the red lights flicker. These are by far my favorite portions of Life Is Strange; the parts where it sucked me right in and made me want to do nothing but stand around and take in its atmosphere.

Unfortunately, actually playing the game is more often a chore than not. Its gimmicky time-rewind mechanic is something which, on paper, is a fantastic fit for this sort of adventure/RPG game, but its actual, practical use in Life Is Strange is so limited that it's barely ever used interestingly, and never even comes close to living up to its full potential. It's at its most tedious during fast-paced action and suspense sequences—which ought to be when it's at its best. Instead of allowing the player to search for creative solutions to the problems at hand, they're left mostly fumbling around looking for the correct HUD pop-up out of several in order to properly progress the scene, which often leaves you failing the game's scenarios repeatedly and continuously rewinding until you've found the option the game deems 'correct'. It's a clumsy, obtuse, tedious experience which requires zero creative problem-solving from the player. Ironically, all you need to progress through these sequences is time.

There are a couple of moments in Life Is Strange in which this mechanic is used well, particularly a conversation with my favorite character in the game, Frank, in Episode 4. This conversation is focused mostly on dialogue options and does a phenomenal job of incorporating past decisions the player has made in prior chapters. I found using rewinds to be thrilling and compelling in this particular scene, and I really enjoyed the way the game factored in my previous decisions into the outcome of this particular conflict, while allowing the player to have an open-ended progress state (for the most part—there is still one outcome in the conversation which leads to a forced rewind, which I hated). I spent a significant portion of time rewinding, trying different approaches with both Frank and Chloe, and being pleasantly shocked at the amount of differing outcomes that were possible. I didn't feel nearly as much tedium when free to take my time and progress the conversation as I did when it was an action sequence, and the game was rushing me to click different options, despite having infinite rewinds and ultimately being able to arrive at the correct one through sheer trial-and-error since, in contrast with the Frank conversation, there was only one outcome in these action sequences which would progress the game. The rewind mechanic is far more enthralling when you're free to progress the story with whichever outcome you deem appropriate (or, perhaps more appropriately, the best outcome you can manage given prior decisions, or the best one you can find), and I wish the game had used its gimmick like this more frequently than it does.

The characters are probably the most engaging part of Life Is Strange's writing, though they're frequently hampered with awful, cheesy dialogue which always ends up sounding embarrassingly like a 40 year old man trying his best to write 18 year old girls. I didn't jive with Max, the main character, very much, nor did I find Chloe to be much more than a whiny, entitled brat. But some of the side characters have some real texture to them that I quite liked. Nathan and Victoria are excellently written and grow as the series progresses. David and Frank, likewise, seem initially to be rather one-dimensional, before sprouting into dynamic, well-rounded people with engaging histories and clear motivations. Life Is Strange does its best work when it allows its characters to be human and fallible and gives them real motivation for being why they are, but it tends to let its most one-dimensional, least engaging characters occupy the majority of the spotlight, which was a shame.

Life Is Strange will probably appeal to folks depending on how strongly they can relate to its main characters. I found them to be whiny and I thought the game was trying a bit too hard, and I found the plot to be a bit contrived in certain circumstances—as if the writers knew where they wanted to go, but were at odds with exactly how to get their story and their characters properly in-place. Ultimately, what sinks the game for me is its tedious, dry, and grinding moment-to-moment gameplay, and I wish the developers had chucked out the majority of this and chosen to rely more, instead, on polishing Life Is Strange's plot and characters, because that's where I feel the majority of the impact is.

Moments of Life Is Strange do continue to stand out for me, but I can't recommend it just due to how much I hated the act of actually playing the game. There's lots of "walking simulator" criticism out there today, but I'd much rather a walking simulator with good dialogue options than the ineffective time-rewind gameplay that was jammed into Life Is Strange as "gameplay". No gameplay at all is a much better option than bad gameplay, in my book, especially with a game that aspires to quality storytelling as much as Life Is Strange does. Just look at games like Disco Elysium for a solid example of how to chuck out sub par systems and lean heavily into things like story, character, worldbuilding, and dialogue. Life Is Strange is not that, of course, and likely never would have been. But all the same, it could've been a far better game if its developers had chosen to trim some of its fat and rely more heavily on what it does well.

⭐⭐

Playtime: 27 hours