A great and emotionally powerful adventure!
User Rating: 9 | Life is Strange PS4
Life is Strange follows the common build of Telltale game gems like Walking Dead, Wolf Among Us, and Tales from Borderlands. What you choose effects the story and then that in turn leads to various outcomes and...you get the idea. Max is a fun and interestingly relatable enough protagonist to boot. More often than not, the protagonist can sink or float the rest of the game. She's mellow, shy, artistic, pessimistic and generally funny. Her voice is very soft but she shows off her acting prowess when needed. You'll notice she loves indie music, and is very knowledgeable of old pop culture. That's right, no generic name drops for this game! You'll hear references to real bands, movies and shows of the like. That's cool in its own way and it's a great way to add a sense of realism to the game. Does Max sound like you? Not entirely to me but that's not all her fault. The writers tried a little too hard to make Max sound young to the point that her lingo feels like something out of the Rugrats All Grown Up spin off. Take that how you will though Life is Strange uses more cursing. It's more like a mix with that and Rocket Power. (90's Nickelodeon cartoons) The lingo does make some of the dialogue cringe worthy at times. At times being the key word. It's not like Max sounds like a 30 year old hipster trying to still sound cool. The rest of the cast is mainly believable. You got quiet nerds, that one foreign kid who draws well but other kids pick on him, rich kid bullies, jocks, lazy skaters and mouth breathers of the like. Interacting with them gives you more insight on the world in the game and thanks to Max's crazy powers; you can redo conversations to get better results. The ability to rewind time is a very innovative feature and it makes for interesting puzzles. Aside from conversation cheats, you can use rewind to overcome dangers ahead and it helps you get around with ease. Say a tree falls over and blocks the way. Just walk up to the fallen tree, rewind time to before it fell and you can walk right on through. Then the tree will fall behind you but you already made it across. The choices made in the story have a huge heft to them until you're forced to undo them later but the choices alone do add plenty of replay value. And we all love replay value! Everything about who Max likes to how she prioritizes her school life and friends is up to you. The story is a blast of emotional spectacles, unpredictable plot twists and crazy deep detective sleuthing that will keep you guessing what lies ahead. I promise you, you will NEVER see the biggest twist coming. No insinuations, no clues leading to it whatsoever. If you love point and click adventure games, you MUST play this! If you loved the Donnie Darko movie and Beyond Two Souls game, you MUST play this game. Life is Strange is one of the most unique and memorable games you'll ever play this gen and well worth the price.
