Life is Strange – Review

I recently finished Life is Strange and I must say I don’t remember a game where I felt the weight of my choices like in this wonderful game. It left a good mark in me, one that I want to savor and for now I don’t want to change.

Let’s start this review, by explaining how I’m reviewing my games. I’ll create some base categories and I’ll review them independently and in the end I’ll make a global analysis. If needed, I’ll add more categories. MY REVIEWS WILL ALWAYS BE SPOILER FREE.

The Categories:

• Story
• Graphics and Sound
• Mechanics
• Repetitiveness
• Overall
• Recommendations

Story

The game is about a girl, named Max, that returns to her home town to study photography. She chose Blackwell Academy because of the reputation of the school in the art department and one of the teacher is worldwide famous photographer. Initially the game looks like a normal teenage story, with the cliché characters that we normally see in films, movies, books,  and the friendships around the characters. Life is Strange starts of with a killer moment that makes you glued to screen and makes you want to know what’s appending next.

It’s very well written game, the story is powerful, captivating and is easy to connect with the characters.  You can feel the bonds and the clashes of personalities in the campus that will make everything grow.

Graphics and Sound

It’s that type of a game with a comic book like visual that really suits the game and environment. As described in the game page, the visual are ‘hand-painted visuals’. It’s pretty on its own way, with a good vibe, very stylish and artistic. It has a lot of small touches that makes the world come alive, pulling you into that campus.

The soundtrack is superb and very well picked, I bought the Limited edition version and I can’t stop listening to the OST. Overall the sound is perfect, making a brilliant link to the game itself,  captivating even more and creating a really nice atmosphere.

Mechanics

This is graphic adventure, where you make choices throughout the game that will affect future events. The game changer it’s the power that Max discovers that she has, creating more weight to your choices… you will see what I’m talking about when you play. It’s a relatively ‘simple’ concept that works just fine to tell this awesome story.

There are some good puzzles, they aren’t that hard so you probably don’t need a guide to get the answer that you want.

Repetitiveness

Lately this is one of the most important things in games for me, I can really get bored with repetitive games and this game is not the case. The base of the game is the same but it gets a lot of whirlwinds that makes game fresh from start to end.

Overall

This game was a brilliant surprise, I think I had the game sitting around for a year before I played and I only regret not playing earlier. Great game, with an awesome and powerful story that will make you want more and get really attached to the characters and their development.

Recommendations

If you like this game, you would probably like this games has well:

• All Telltale Games
• Gone home
• Unfinished Swan

If you got this far, hope you’d enjoyed and see you around. Here’s an halloumi fry to reward you 🙂