Life is Strange Episode 1: “Chrysalis” – Review

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

Life is Strange is Dontnot Entertainment’s attempt to enter the interactive story telling genre dominated by Telltale Games. The studio’s previous game, Remember Me, received mixed reviews from critics. Is their latest game one for the ages or better left forgotten? Read on to find out!

Story

Life is Strange is about a young girl named Maxine Caulfield who wakes up from a dream in the middle of class to find that she has the ability to rewind time. She changes certain events after she uses it to keep her friend Chloe from getting killed. From there the game turns into a mystery where Max and Chloe try to figure out what happened to a missing student as well as warn a town of an impending natural disaster that threatens to destroy it in four days.

 

Gameplay

Life is Strange is a point and click adventure game. life-is-strange-screenshot-05_1920.0.0You walk around collecting information, progressing through the story all while occasionally solving a puzzle or performing fetch quests. The gameplay relies a lot on trial and error; by using Max’s power to rewind time, you can go back to previous conversations yet retain the knowledge of what would happen if you say a certain thing and try to say another. Additional dialogue options can open up after discovering a particular piece of information about someone after saying the ‘wrong’ thing. You are limited to how far you can go back in time, but the game encourages you to try out many different things to solve problems. Over time, as options and consequences stack up, you’ll be stuck with those choices for the rest of the game and possibly for the rest of the episodes left to come later this year.

 

What Could Be Better?

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I played Life is Strange on an Xbox 360 and while the graphics looked pretty good, I couldn’t help but feel like they could have been a little better. The game is available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4, and PC. The games would probably look better on the newer consoles or a highly optimized PC, but the game ran smooth for the most part on the Xbox 360 with minimal sound issues and zero loading problems. While the rewind option can be useful for seeing all of the outcomes that can potentially happen, constant rewinding and replaying the same segments repeatedly can be time consuming. This is slightly remedied with an option to skip over moments previously viewed but it can rack up minutes on the play timer.

Final Thoughts

Life is Strange is on its way to being an incredibly intriguing story. Episode 1 had a great mix of puzzles that took advantage of the rewind mechanic as well as a story full of mystery and an interesting cast of characters. It also goes beyond the games that Telltale Games has done by charting not only the main choices at critical junctures, but also keeping track and recording several little things that you may not have done. This encourages you to rewind back to past choices to see different outcomes and change the future. You’ll take extra care after seeing immediately how your actions can change the game. Which moments matter and how many of them will influence the later episodes still remains to be seen, but Life is Strange is definitely worth a look. Episode 1 will run you about $5.00, and if you like the story enough to continue, then the season pass will cost about $15.00.