Life is Strange Episode 2: “Out of Time” – Review

 

Developed by: Dontnod Entertainment
Published by: Square-Enix
Reviewed on: Xbox 360 (also available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PC)

Story
Episode 2 of Life is Strange starts on the day after Max discovers that she has powers to rewind time after saving her friend Chloe. Most of the episode is about Max learning to control her powers.  She tests the limits of what she can and can’t do at the suggestion of Chloe, who is excited that her friend has the ability.

Gameplay 

Episode 2 of Life is Strange has more puzzles that involve rewinding time. It’s mostly plays the same as the first episode with a couple of new elements. For example, you’re shown early on in Episode 1 that if you go through one set of dialogue as Max, rewind time after learning a specific piece of information, you will gain additional dialogue options that can change the direction of the conversation. Episode 2 has a segment where you have to watch a specific series of events closely before going back in time. Then you  have to recite what happens to Chloe just before it happens to prove that you can manipulate time. In fact, a good amount of the episode is Max getting used to her new time altering powers.

In my own particular run through of the game, I began to wonder if I was making the right choices since you’re constantly reminded of both the immediate and potential consequences of your actions as you continue through the game. There’s one of two major events that happen towards the end of Episode 2 that entirely depends on how you played the game in Episode 1. Even though I managed to clearly succeed in Episode 1, I felt like I was destined to fail in Episode 2. The choices of Life is Strange feel less like Telltale’s Games’ The Walking Dead and more like Bioware’s Mass Effect. I wouldn’t be completely shocked if somehow there was a way where my choices could lead to Max getting killed before all of the episodes are released, especially if the stakes continue to increase like this.

What could be better?

I noticed a lot more issues with the game’s performance than in Episode 1. It’s mostly screen tearing from moving the camera in certain areas of the game, but towards the end of the game I notice the audio stuttering at a few key moments. But the game still loads well and plays just fine. This time around I made sure to use the auto skip for sections that I’ve previously viewed each time I rewound time. This made the game go by a lot faster than the first time I played Episode 1. One other issue I ran into was that some items you observe in the game leads to Max sharing her personal thoughts about the object you’re looking at. A few of the same objects appear in Episode 2, but she says the exact same things that she said about them in Episode 1. Some of the things you can look at does have Max offer a different set of inner thoughts in case you like to click on everything just to make sure you 100% complete the whole game. You’ll be hearing a lot of the same dialogue over and over, even outside conversations between other characters.

Final Thoughts

Episode 2 of Life is Strange is a strong continuation of the main story. The puzzles were more interesting to play this time around and the story takes a sharp, dramatic turn. Based on the online statistics that show the decisions other players made at the end of Episode 2, mine could’ve taken an incredibly harsh turn. Not much more is revealed about the impending disaster that’s going to hit the town, but it clearly sets up events coming in the next episode. If you liked the first episode, then you don’t want to miss continuing Max’s adventure in Life is Strange.