Life is Strange: Complete Season

Starts a little bit slow, but got me completely and utterly hooked. Excellent storytelling and convincing characters. I don't normally get emotional over video games, but LiS had me so engrossed in the story that I could feel the weight of all of my decisions. I'd 100% recommend this game to anyone who likes story-driven games, and it's an absolute steal for 80% off.

I still remember when i was downloaded the first chapter in cracked version, once finished the first episode I realized the incredible quality of this game: the characters, the beautiful story full of twists, the locations and the musics was amazing. So i have bought he whole season on Steam ( 20 euros) in 2015 . After 5 years I am proud that my money went again to these incredible developers and this beautiful platform. I just want to say: THANK YOU DONTNOD AND GOG

One can easily be fooled by the apperance and the first trailers that Life is Strange is merely a coming-of-age story, maybe even more so a Bildungsroman. Yet, there is a well written twist withing this beautiful, yet rough gem that will show itself in the last two episodes: a dark psychological, yet very realistic thriller. Thus, I highly recommend completing this game, as this game does it the way it ought to be done: building a wolrd, emotionally entangling you within its characters, relationships, places and also gameplay mechanics and when it has it's grip on you it unleashes it potential in story telling. Yes, I must stay vague as the consequences of your actions are far reaching - as far as revealing themselves only after a few episodes - when you embark on your journey with Max, a shy, innocent high school student back in her home town to study photography meeting her old friend, Chloe. The story does heavily borrow tropes from "american high school dramas", but in a decent way and while it first starts out pretty innocent the story with the characters and - hopefully - the player matures. It matures so much that down-right dark and brutal elements of human society such as death, kidnapping and rape *tho there is no rape scene!! it is done very well* come into play. However, you are not powerless in these situations, as Max can manipulate time. And while the gameplay mechanics could have been used in a stronger way, the rough edges of the gem, they are well implemented nonetheless. In closing, I would recommend playing this game if you like emotional, well written stories that take every day people and make them heroes thru small and at times big actions. Having the option to alter the course of time and to take back your decisions is great, teaching you somewhat to reflect on decisions beforehand. Max by reflective inner monologue will make you doubt even simple decisions that first seem black and white and then become this complex thing: life.

What this is: Life Is Strange (LIS) is an animated "Choose Your Adventure" story (the older folk will remember the books, the younger folk will know Black Mirror's Bandersnatch). What this is not: While you are given some agency to move your character around, choose from a list of decisions and take prescribed actions at certain points, it is, in my view, not sufficient to call LIS an adventure video game - it is too passive an experience for that. What gaming element there is is far too trivial/restrictive/obvious/chore-like to really engage the brain or entertain. As an animated story it has charm, though it may be more appropriate for people closer to the age of the characters. I am sure I was just as teenage-y at 18 (if not more) but as an older adult I have limited capacity to sit through the angst or cringey affectations of youth which are abundant in LIS (the name-dropping especially - yikes!). The game does not let you think for yourself, for example: in one scene your character needs to get something off a display case. You cannot pull up a chair to reach it until first trying to do it without the chair, the game will only show the interactive action element with the chair after trying without. There are some really stupid actions which seem to be there only because someone must have suddenly remembered that they were supposed to be making a video game: for example, within a long (and unskippable) cinematic scene you look through a photo album with Chloe. The game is forcing you to take the action to turn the pages, an action which has no other function or purpose to it, so why it just couldn't have been part of the cinematic I have no idea. The music is cutesy. If you need to play it on a PC with mouse and WASD, like I did, then you may find the game play cumbersome: lots of walking into walls, lots of awkward camera angles, lots of needing to move your character out of the way to stop her blocking your view of the interactive action element.