4 replies to this topic

[Pasidon]

 

Alright... I slandered this game earlier this year for being a hipster French piece of trash.  To be fair, the first 2 episodes alone were.  Now that the final episode is out, and looking back at the game as a whole, it's quite good.  There is a very deep and personal story line that carries itself through, and even though the buildup is a bit rough, the ending makes it all worth it.  I'm not usually wrong, but Life is Strange ended up being a very keen story that I highly recommend to everyone.

[OmegaBolt]

I love this game. The first episode was wobbly, but not as wobbly as the last. Everything inbetween I just thought was fantastic... I cried for sure. Chloe is probably one of the best realised naturalistic character I think I've seen. Some really subtle animating, great voice acting, generally well written character. It's a game not without flaws but I think it can charm your pants off anyway.

[Pasidon]

I think my favorite part about the ending is that it's not open to a sequel.  I can respect a game that doesn't plan on pumping out tons of sequels and other nonsense, leaving the story just as it is.  Although... speaking of the ending, the dark room killer is such a great character.  I love how the universe just falls apart because of how you escape him / her.  Seeing more stuff like that wouldn't be awful.

[OmegaBolt]

It reminded me a lot of Alan Wake there, particularly on the DLC expansion. That had some cool psychological world bending stuff, your nemesis talking to you on TVs, an ocean of telegraph poles...

 

But I just felt the last episode of Life is Strange lacked work in general. People were having these really serious, emotional, dramatic conversations but their characters were just standing there doing their idle animations. It felt completely unpolished, unlike epside 3 or 4 that I remember having some amazingly detailed animation work that really brought it alive in a way that surprised me. I didn't dislike what they were doing in episode 5, I just felt like it was as clunky as episode 1 in terms of polish and "gamey-ness". Like when you're in the art gallery and you talk to people... they don't even look at you, but stand staring at their friend. It just fucking ruins the moments and takes some effort to ignore. In a way the game went complete circle, in a not so good way.

 

I was really happy to be back in the game after only completing the earlier episodes about a month ago, but it didn't reach the other games highs. The alternate timeline with Chloe, the end of episode 4 twist, the stuff with Kate, those were the excellent bits. There were some super hard choices in the game that I often pondered over for a few minutes, not really wanting to do either (in a good way). While the end of episode 5 tries to do that at the end, I for some reason just didn't care as much. I'm partly going to blame this on the gap between playing all the episodes, and I'd love to go back and do it again soon. I just hope they do a director's cut of the last episode.

[Pasidon]

I didn't really have a problem with the standing around and looking brain-dead part.  That sort of happened throughout the game, like the cop at the Two Whales dinner that didn't even look at you when you spoke to him. The time breaking stuff started to get a bit silly near the end.  Like with everyone making out with Cloie in the Dark Room, or just escaping people with flash lights in an art gallery... now that bit felt like Alan Wake.  Had the lighthouse, evil phantoms saying random stuff exclusive to their characters, flashlights and everything.  They stole a few things for those sequences.... even mechanics from PT.  But the bit with all of those birds hitting the window, and strange things happening in the classroom?  That may have been my favorite bit of the game.  That was a great, original piece of psychological horror.