Life is Strange Review: Prepare for Heavy Emotions!

Life is Strange is a story driven, episodic graphic adventure game developed by Dontnod Entertainment and published by Square Enix in which player choices make significant impacts on the rest of the story.

When a game is this rich in story, how can one truly capture the essence of how wonderful it is by writing a spoiler free review? Because I want this post to be as spoiler free as possible as one tiny detail can completely ruin the shocking and horrifying experience Life is Strange can offer. What is really left to talk about if I can't describe the story or how certain parts affected me and how they completely changed my perspective? Well; nonetheless, I will try my best and promise that I will not ruin anything for anyone. 

Life is Strange tells the story of Max Caulfield, an aspiring but also insecure young photographer who attends Blackwell Academy in a fictional town called Arcadia Bay. Blackwell Academy has become an attractive option for photography students as it has the prestigious and famous photographer Mark Jefferson working there as a teacher. Even Max herself picked that school just to learn from him as she feels inspired by him and his work.

So far things may seem very normal at the peaceful small town Arcadia Bay until at the very start of the game Max has this horrific vision of a tornado bringing death and destruction to it. After this vision and following some events I will not spoil, Max finds out that she has the gift of reversing time. Our protagonist tries her best to use this gift to help people in need while also desperately trying to find an explanation for her gift and vision. However, all this time travelling to help people will have serious, undesired and very ugly consequences that Max will keep on trying to fix while breaking something else in the process that leads to even more unexpected outcomes. Story wise, I really can't tell more than that because anything I say will have the potential to ruin the stunning and shocking experience this game provides to its players so I will try to talk about generic things.

I already mentioned that Life is Strange is based on player choices. Some of the choices you make will significantly affect the story. For example a choice you made in episode 1 will be reminded to you in episode 5, so do not take these choices lightly! The dialogues you opt for will also change how characters see you. Don't forget that you can travel back in time if you get an outcome you don't like after a dialogue or decide to make a different choice; but there will be times where you won't be able to reverse time so always think very carefully as they have the power to completely change the course of events and how things play out.

Apart from the extremely powerful story, another great feature of Life is Strange is the soundtrack. Original Life is Strange score is breathtaking and songs are absolutely beautiful. Especially in the final episode; the 2 songs that play for 2 different endings can both easily get people hooked. I definitely suggest getting Life is Strange with its soundtrack as bonus content as I believe you will not regret it!

When I first started playing Life is Strange, the reactions I got from my gamer friends around me were pretty much the same. "Prepare to cry", "have tissues ready", "your life will never be the same again", "oh, the feels are real". These are all exact quotes and I was a bit skeptical at first because no game has ever made me feel so emotional other than Telltale's The Walking Dead. Thus I was prejudiced in that I didn't think that my experience with Life is Strange would compare to it. Don't get me wrong, I am not comparing the games, I am just comparing the feelings these games made me go through. As a result, now that I finished both of these games I can safely say that Life is Strange made me much more emotional than The Walking Dead maybe because it has a more realistic feel to it (excluding time travel) or most possibly because I have personal experience with certain elements that were in the game. All in all, especially episode 2, 4 and then 5 were seriously tough for me to play through. 

Life is Strange is not a game for the weak of heart. It is not a game you can "enjoy" cause it has a lot of sick and disturbing things happening that will chill someone to their very bone (provided you are an actual human being with feelings and a functioning conscience), but it is an absolutely breathtaking ride anyone should choose to take. See? This must be one of those very important choices in your life. Don't play Life is Strange and continue living like nothing happened or play it and let it transform you. Go with the latter one, it is "hella" worth it! (This is the original ending of the spoiler free review).

I know I said this would be a spoiler free review but I just have to let this out. So the following paragraphs will contain HEAVY SPOILERS about Life is Strange and its endings so DON'T READ if you haven't played the game!!! Again I am warning you, HEAVY SPOILERS INCOMING!!

Personally, I was very underwhelmed by the very final choice. To me it was such a clear decision of sacrificing Chloe to save Arcadia Bay and all those people from the tornado. I totally understand those who say they would feel like it was all for nothing if they sacrificed Chloe so they let Arcadia Bay get destroyed to let Chloe live; but I don't see the events taking place in the game would be worthless if I didn't save her. 

To me it felt like that one week Max and Chloe spent together after being apart for so long was filled with events showing us that no matter what Max did to save her, Chloe would always somehow end up dead and in her attempts at doing so would cause even more cracks in the original timeline which caused the tornado in the first place and all these other unfortunate natural disasters that could have all been avoided. Yes, again I understand those who are of the opinion that they didn't want to lose their closest friend that they worked so hard to save but don't tell me it's a logical option :P I would never let hundreds of people and a whole city get destroyed just to save 1 person however close she might be to me. Also bear in mind that it was Chloe who was doing dealings with all these shady characters. Of course she doesn't deserve to die for that but can you explain why hundreds of people have to pay for her mistakes and poor life choices after tragically losing her caring father in a car accident?  

I also want to give a huge credit to the writers for making us believe that Jefferson was just an innocent character without ever allowing us to suspect him for a second until of course the horrible revelation that he was the antagonist all along, not Nathan or David. The story did a fantastic job of making Nathan and David look like antagonists while hiding the real one in the shadows which made the ending of the episode 4 all the more brutal, shocking and stunning for me. Well I admit, I was a Jefferson fangirl, so of course I was upset and disgusted! And while Nathan is not innocent at all, he was just a pawn for Jefferson to manipulate and use or even frame for his evil plans. Incredibly well done writers!