Life is Strange

I've been stuck in a bit of a gaming rut lately. There are no new games out that I'm interested in so I've reverted to replaying the old reliables.  Unfortunately I can only kill so many demons in Diablo III before I get bored.  Last night, when confronted with the choice to do some bounties or clear another nephalem rift, I decided I would peruse the Steam store and see if there was anything out which looked interesting.  A notification popped up informing me of the release of the new episodic story game Life is Strange.  I decided to try it out and see if Square Enix has managed to improve upon the TellTale formula.  (Spoilers ahead regarding part one of Life is Strange)

I had read a little bit about Life is Strange and was intrigued by the idea of having both main characters be female.  This seems like as interesting choice but could be an intentional effort to gain more of a female audience.  I think the episodic point-and-click story games might appeal to some lady gamers who are new to gaming.  They're easy to learn and fairly simple while being engaging and allowing players to craft the story according to the choices they make.  Perfect for someone who is a novice gamer.

The story in Life is Strange revolves around the main character Max Caulfield.  Max is a typical teenager with a gift for photography that lands her at a trendy, private art school located in a small town in Oregon (yay Oregon!).  The game begins with Max sitting in class and listening to her semi-famous photography teacher giving a lecture.  This acts as a sort of tutorial as you learn how to navigate and interact with the world around you.  You are also thrust back into the super cliquey modern high school and are immediately bombarded with the fact that Max doesn't really fit in well here.  One of your first tasks is to navigate the hallways to find the bathroom because Max needs a minute to have a minor breakdown.

It's when you finally manage to make it there that you learn that Max isn't typical at all.  While in the bathroom gathering her strength for the return to the teenage labyrinth, Max witnesses a popular male student enter the bathroom.  She hides in the corner while he rants and raves to himself.  Then another student enters the bathroom and an argument breaks out between the two.  Max peeks around the corner and sees a girl with blue hair struggling against the male student.  The argument is fast but involves drugs and money.  Then the male student pulls out a gun and in the struggle shoots the blue-haired girl.  As this happens Max reaches out in shock and the whole world collapses around her.  She wakes up and finds that she's back in photography class listening to the same lecture as before.  It's here that Max realizes that she can manipulate time--rewinding it to go back and change how things turn out.  She can go back and save the blue-haired girl!

I know what you're thinking, and I was thinking it too.  Being able to rewind time seems pretty cliche and maybe a little cheesy.  It actually makes the game and the choices in it more interesting and more difficult to make.  If you don't like how things turned out you can go back and do it differently.  The game also points out when you have made a decision that will have some sort of impact on future events which can make you a little uneasy.  Instead of feeling that I had made the right choice I found myself going back to see if the opposite choice would turn out better.  Generally it didn't make me feel any better and I doubted almost all of the choices I made.  This is a big change from TellTale games where you are forced to make your choice (in a short timespan) and replay an entire scenario to see how things play out.

It's making me doubt my decisions so much that I think I'm going to go back and replay it.  More about Life is Strange tomorrow!