Life is Strange is an episodic graphic adventure in which your choices help shape the story. You play as Max a 18-year-old senior high school student that ability to rewind time. During this 5-part episodic series, you must figure out a missing person case as well visions of your local town being destroyed by a storm.
AS THE GAME IS MATURE RATED WE DID NOT PLAY TESTED THE GAME WITH ANY OF OUR YOUNGER GAMERS FOR THIS REVIEW.
General Gameplay
Life is Strange is more set up to be a 5-part episodic experience in which it more plays out like a television show. The choices that you make in the game effect either good or bad throughout the game on the people that you interact with. As the Game Visuals goes, the game is very detail in its presentation. As the game is very story driven, the graphic both for characters, background, and everything else is very detailed. Even the character animations are done very well. This helps to better tell the story and in our play testing we did not run into any issues. For those that are either colorblind or have a red/green difficulty there was not much in the colors to make it hard to see the game graphics. As the game is M rated there is a lot of drugs references and use, sexual conduct and other mature rated topics covered graphically in the game, however they are done tastefully and not over glorify it in the game (More on this in our Family Friendly Section). The game Audio is where Life is Strange shines. As the game is a very heavy story driven game, the audio, voice acting is done very well. If anything, it is like watching a movie unfold right before you from the acting that is done with the audio. The game background music from using a lot of indie rock songs to ambient music sets the games tones. As being a M rated game, Life is strange does not hold back on its colorful language, but it is done in a tasteful way. The game does support 5.1 surround sound and we would recommend for older gamers to play with headphones as the game sounds better with headphones. The Controls for Life is Strange are very easy to pick up and play the game. As the game is more centered on choices that you make via the dialog and Max ability to “rewind time” makes the game more centered on a very easy button layout where everything is easy to do in the game. As the game is slower paced, the game will guide you onto what you need to do and what buttons to push. This is especially helpful for those that have not played a story driven game and need to know how to control the action. As the game does not need any special type of controller, you should be ok using your standard controller to play the game. In our play testing, we did not encounter any issues with our older gamers playing the game in its controller default settings, if anything they enjoyed how the controller was set up for them to better enjoy the game and experience. For those playing on the PC, using the keyboard and mouse is just as fine as using a controller.
“Take a great story, phenomenal voice acting, great indie music, great controls and an ending that you will talk about for weeks to come and this is what makes Life is Strange a fantastic game”
Family Friendly
As Life is Strange is a M rated title the Family Friendly section will cover the game from the teens and adults that played the game and their thoughts on Life is Strange. One of the many great things that makes Life is Strange a great game is how they tackle the story, subject and gameplay. When we first started to play test, Life is Strange right away we notice that because of the M rating that we had to limit our gaming family to only our late teens and adults to play this, however as we went through the game we notice that we felt that it was ok for our teen ages from 14-17 to play the game. As the game is about teenagers in high school and a missing girl named Rachel. As you go along in the story as the main character Max, you meet up with your best friend Chole and help her try to find the missing girl Rachel as well manage your day to day in the high school (For the sake of spoilers, we will not go further into the plot) As you go along in the 5 part chapters in the game it develops into more choices that you make that will affect the outcome of the parts as well the ending. On of the great things that we liked about the game is what choices that you make in the game will affect how the in-game characters will react to you. This is a great way of kind of making a story driven game more tailored to what you want to be. There are people that you can be nice to, or be more condescending, or even neutral to and this will change how they and others react to you. In ways when we were watching the play testing of the game, different family members answer and approached the game in different ways making it different to see their outcome. This is one of the things that makes the game a great game for those that like story driven games. Another thing that we notice was that language (which there is a lot of) is used for the setting and not overused. This allows the story to feel more natural and not artificial. Again, as the game carries a M rating this is not for everyone in your gaming family. We highly recommend that if you are planning to pick up the game (and you should!) One of the reasons why we scored it very high in our review is because Life is Strange is a fun game for anyone to play. Everyone in our play testing had a great time playing the game and even went back and replayed it a second time around making different choices just to see the outcome. We highly recommend this game for anyone in your gaming family that is a fan of story driven games.
Closing
Life is Strange is a game that should not be missed by anyone that loves story driven games. Overall, it’s a great game for all that love story driven games and a must have in your digital library.
