L.G.C. |Reviews| — Life Is Strange

Your intrepid heroes head to Oregon, take selfies, and watch credits. Life Is Strange faces the CHAIRQUISITION!

Game: Life is Strange
Webzone: http ://store .steampowered .com /app /319630/
Devel: DONTNOD Entertainment / Feral Interactive
Engine: Unreal Engine 3
Price: First Episode Free + 19.99 / CDN 21.99 for the full game.

Wazzat: Follow the story of Max Caulfield, a photography senior who discovers she can rewind time while saving her best friend Chloe Price.

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Makes with the working

V-

Getting a solid 60/100 average @1080.
And I should since each area is about 6X6 meters.
20sec of unskippable bullshit credits *ding*

J-

#WINTEL
Runs at +120FPS on the desktop, 60+ on the laptop @1080
Thought why can’t it autodetect your resolution instead of starting at 720P

P-

I had read in several places that Life is Strange on Linux had issues with Pascal GPUs
Admittedly, I did find it odd the game was capping at 43 FPS if I had a browser window open.
So I installed the game on the Steambox and even though I didn’t have the overlay FerPS counter to prove it, the game played much more smoothly.
Feral, you done goofed on me again!

Total-

Shiny / Sounds

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It looks a bit meh for something released in 2015 but considering they are using UE3 (originally released in 2004) it could look worse.
Immortal jaggies.
HAIR NO MOVE
Non ironic use of “hella” twice three FKN FOUR times in the first 30min of gameplay #smileyface
The “music” makes me want to watch Felicity and build a log cabin.

J-

The voice acting is spot on, which is not saying much considering it’s Squenix, who is well known for their good animation and voice direction (minus Tidus)
The one thing that bugs me is the textureless tornado. It looks bad and they keep coming back to it.
- Also the water effects from a certain pool scene. Man, unreal 3 particle effects really do not hold up
Indie rock. My eternal nemesis

P-

They minimized the feeling of uncanny valley you get from looking at all of those heavily stereotyped people around the pair of pants you would call a main character.
It was definitely a good idea to make everything heavily stylized.
The background music, country… there’s a lot of country music, fits the small Oregon town All American atmosphere.
When it comes to aesthetics, I can’t really complain.

Total-

Control

V-

J-

Sometimes you have to be in the exact right spot for the context sensitive menu to pop up. Other than that, no issue

P-

Well, when the Mistress wasn’t timing out on me during the cutscenes without me realizing it, the controls worked well.
For the limited use they get…
But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Total-

FUN?

V-

This was not a better love story than Gone Home: You’re Drunk
At least that had a believable story.
I’ve always wanted to experience American high school through the lense of game developers trying to be with “it” #cringy
Why am I forced to play as a cisgendered female? #airwolfkin
I was finishing my first year of uni at the tender age of 18.
And I was responsible enough to use my time traveling powers to overthrow 3rd world dictators for fun-and-profit not mope around solving teenager drama problems.
Yeah, I’m unable to relate to anyone / thing in this entire game… with the possible exception of the tornado.
Not something you gift to your tween nieces.
Needs a X Tiny Venn, bitches! Button.

J-

Ugh, high school drama. HIpster high school drama
No beans about it, this is an interactive movie, the precotious stepchild of the point and click adventure genre, a genre which I’m not partial to
I didn’t really get into Fahrenheit and Heavy Rain never appealed to me
Still, since the gameplay is literally just trial and error, I gotta judge it on the story it’s presenting
Which isn’t actually that bad. It does have a few problems though
A lot of the characters are cardboard cutouts, straight from TVTropes. They do attempt to mitigate that if you spend the time to talk to them, but the in the next scene they’re all back to being propped up by tropes
Still, having come off binge watching the first season of stranger things (which suffers a bit from the same characterization issues sometimes), I was in the mood for urban fantasy/sci-fi in a small town with a secret
Although I keep expecting Special Agent Dale Cooper to show up
Most of the critique I have for the game is critique I would levy on a movie, not a game, and that’s where it sort of falls apart
It’s a movie, not a game. I get what they were going for in terms of gameplay mechanics interacting with the narrative, but this is literally dragon’s lair with high school girls
I didn’t hate playing it, but I’d much rather just sit back and watch the cutscenes

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Max is not a character, she’s a pair of pants for a certain segment of the market to project into.
I’m not dissing the Tabula Rasa syndrome, that’s how many videogames give the sense of immersion. By having the player project into their character.
Max isn’t exactly a Tabula Rasa, though. She has a past, a history with many of the characters around her.
It’s just enough to stop her from being a blank slate but nowhere near enough for her to be an actual character.

Now that that is out of the way, let’s talk about the rest of the game.
The thing that separates videogames from other forms of entertainment and art is the interactivity.
After more than three hours of “game time”, the Mistress timed out (it’s on a 5 minute inactivity timeout) on several of the cutscenes.
This is a very finely crafted narrative, yes.
But books, TV shows and Movies also give you that.
This is just my opinion, there’s a reason we call this the subjective part of the Chairquisition.
But in my opinion, a video game lives or dies on its mechanics.
And there’s only one mechanic at play here.
After resurrecting a bird which came flying head first into a window in the first episode, it’s pretty clear Max is Chronos. Goddess of Time.
Or Chronos’ pet project judging by how the game ends.
“But Pedro you didn’t finish the game!”
Tell me again how my experience would have been different playing all the way through it or just watching a well done Lets Play on YouTube.
“It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey”
Fair point! In a video game, that schpiel is often the best way to describe an experience.
It’s what creates those “watercooler moments”.
But of what use is the journey if the Endingtron 2000 gives you 2 choices which completely invalidate everything you did up to that point?
Like I’ve mentioned before, I can enjoy my time with a game which has the single most inconsequential or incoherent story. I spent near 30 hours playing Bound by Flame, didn’t I?
I can do it, so long as the game has something else going for it.
But story is all this game… and I hesitate to call it that. I guess the correct term would be “barely interactive movie”. But story is all it has.
And it’s not just inconsequential, it’s a slap to the face of anyone who spends the full 8 hours playing it.