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

Game of Thrones (2014) by Telltale Games

As a huge fan of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice And Fire book series and Telltale's other titles The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, I was really looking forward to this title. However, I've found myself more and more disappointed with each episode I've played. I wanted to reserve judgment until the first season was complete, but playing the game seems more like a chore that I have to force myself to complete.

The first, and perhaps the most obvious negative, are the graphical capabilities. Telltale's games were never very impressive in the graphical department, but The Walking Dead was at least adequate, and The Wolf Among Us had some great art direction and used a bright, attractive set of colors. This game, however, fails to reach even a mediocre level. It has a similar style to The Walking Dead, but the textures are far muddier and at a lower resolution. The colors are unattractive; the artists seemed to rely on only a mixture of earth tones. It's not inspired artistically, and it's inadequate technically. Perhaps the artists felt too constrained by being forced to live up to the style of the HBO series. Whatever the reason, the game looks very poor, and it strongly affects the experience in a way that I didn't expect it to.

This leads me into the bigger problem with the series: Everything in the game seems grating and unpleasant. I play video games for entertainment and escapism, and playing this game is simply not an enjoyable experience. The beauty of A Song Of Ice And Fire is that things feel real despite it being set in a fantastical world. People are human and make choices that often best serve their own interests. It's somewhat cynical, but events occur that feel believable, which is an incredible accomplishment when you're reading about people living through decade-long winters and dragons. Terrible things sometimes happen to good people in the real world, and A Song Of Ice And Fire reflects that. The good guys don't always win, but when they do, it's special. The tragedies make the heroic moments all the more enjoyable. You find yourself grinning from ear to ear and pumping your first when a character you love finds good fortune or acts heroically and things go well. It's all about the payoff.

The problem with this game is that so far, throughout the three episodes of this series, only torturously terrible things have happened. There has not been a single moment of triumph. It actually damages any feeling of suspense or tension the designers are trying for, because I've so far been taught by the game that no matter what decisions I make, something awful is sure to happen because of them. Im fact, I'm not even positive that you can avoid any of the terrible occurrences from taking place, as I've replayed some sections and made different choices and had nothing change. The same people still die, the same people get angry with me.

About halfway through the third episode I found myself deliberately making the most aggressive choices possible despite their likelihood of leading to poor situations for the characters, and when I stopped to consider why, I realized that the game had trained my thought process to expect the worst, and thus attempt to get it over as quickly as possible. This is a very bad thing for a game, and playing through these episodes feels utterly masochistic. Literally nothing good has happened to any of these characters through three episodes. They die, they become grievously wounded, they're insulted constantly, etc. It's all absolutely punishing with zero payoff, and my desire to continue playing wanes with each chapter Telltale releases.

In conclusion: What makes A Song Of Ice And Fire so enjoyable despite its bleakness are the monumental triumphs of characters you've grown to love in the face of so much violence and despair. The writers of this game series simply do not seem to understand this, and as a result playing this game is an incredibly unpleasant experience. Everything about it is unremarkable at best, and ugly and unattractive at worst, from its graphics, to its characters, to its plot.

⭐

Playtime: 11 hours

The Wolf Among Us (2013) by Telltale Games

Telltale creates yet another engulfing, narrative-driven experience for the player to affect

Even though the horror genre is generally lost on me -- especially zombie fiction -- I'm a huge fan of Telltale's The Walking Dead. The writing, particularly dialogue and characterization, really sets the bar about as high as it can possibly get in video games.

I was naturally excited to play The Wolf Among Us, though I decided to wait until the summer sale this year to play it so I could experience it in a binge, like I did when I played The Walking Dead Season One last summer.

This series lives up to the high standard set by The Walking Dead, and it appeals even more to me than that series does. The characters are fantastic, the dialogue is expertly written and even quite humorous at times, though the story itself is really quite dark. The characters are all very relatable, and they've got their own issues they're dealing with. At the core of the story is the conflict between who people are and their struggle between their nature and who they ultimately wish to be. It's deep stuff, and the fact that the game is populated with a number of very real personalities makes it hit all the more harder. I particularly liked characters like Woody and Gren; people who come off as your typical villains when first introduced but eventually develop into fully rounded characters with very real flaws, should you allow them to. And, of course, Bigby. Though he ultimately is what you make him, I found that each path you could potentially take is a totally fleshed out, meaningful one. Kudos to the writers, because producing that kind of a narrative can't be an easy thing to design a video game around.

The gameplay is pretty sparse, just like it was in The Walking Dead. All quicktime events, with some very stripped-down '90s style point-and-click adventure exploration thrown in as well. I could understand how that may turn some people off, but if you're here for story and characterization (as I am) then it shouldn't bother you much. This game doesn't shy away from what it's strengths are to fit other expectations. It's a story-driven experience, first and foremost, and it's not self conscious about that, which is relieving. I think that trying to shoehorn in some shooting or deeper gameplay would have just distracted from its strengths.

The art style is, at its core, the same as The Walking Dead. But the color palette here is spruced up in various shades of warm oranges, neon reds and pinks, and cooler purples. Nothing is really gray or brown. The streets are a cold slate, buildings mimicking the streets, with glowing yellow windows throughout the buildings. Most of the game is set at night, and the artists are obviously shooting for a noir feel, which is helped along by a pretty solid soundtrack. While the basic art style is familiar to Telltale's other efforts, I have to say that it's much improved from the drabness that I felt hurt The Walking Dead. This is a really, really fun game to look at, and though the writing is utterly fantastic, it doesn't have to rely only on that to keep it standing like The Walking Dead did.

If you're a fan of Telltale's The Walking Dead, you already know that you should probably buy this. If you're unfamiliar with that title, but you're interested in a strong narrative with a good atmospheric feel, then I can't recommend this game enough. I'm really enjoying it, and I can't wait to play the finale this upcoming Tuesday. But if you're looking for more action, or a more "gamey" game, then you'll probably want to look elsewhere.

And man, I really can't wait for their adaptation of Game Of Thrones.

⭐⭐⭐⭐