I am not exaggerating when I say that Life is Strange is not only by far my all-time favourite game but also it is an experience which really had taken over me and gave me an emotional roller-coaster like no other game ever did.

I will not go into detail of the plot or anything else I will mainly talk about the astonishing experience I had playing Life is Strange.

My favourite thing about the game is the character building. In Life is Strange we have early adults with problems like, the question of who you really are, your sexuality, your lifestyle, what to do with your life but not only that, further addressed topics are drug abuse, suicidal thoughts, violence and so much more, which makes the characters so unbelievable relatable and understandable for someone in the same age and same position. You not only get a real feeling for the characters thoughts and actions but also you get to the position where you think that the figure on the screen could easily be yourself, Dontnod did a fantastic job designing characters and their stories so close to reality that you become more than just a part of the beautiful, sad, depressing, loving roller-coaster story that is Life is Strange.

Talking of which you play the 18-year-old Max Caulfield a student the “Blackwell Academy” the local Senior Highschool with focus on the art by the famous artist Mark Jefferson. Max originally comes from this area but left with her family for Seattle, later she came back for the arts class. Max discovers in exactly this art class her ability to turn back time. You more or less in a hurry meet the most important figure after Max (I really don’t want to go into detail of how you meet), the 19-year-old Chloe Price, she and Max were best childhoods friends. The two could not be more different as to what their character is. Max is a very good student and is very calm caring and always there for you if you need something yet she is more or less a shy person, then Chloe she is a young rebel but also an outcast which not only costs her many friends but also the right to go to school in the Blackwell Academy. The main plot is to find what happened to the “very good friend” of Chloe, Rachel Amber but also there are many side stories to explore and to dive into.

Enough about the introduction lets focus on our two main characters as I said we have two very different yet in the bottom very same personalities. I can assure you; you will somehow find yourself in one of the figures either the very calm Max or the very temperament full Chloe, you will be laughing with them but you will also cry with them and love with them, they will grow you to your own heart. This is what the game does like no other game I ever played.

Don’t get me wrong here, the game is not only capable of producing great character, in fact it does pretty much everything right what a game can possibly do.
The story is brilliant told and it only get substantiated by the beautiful yet typical Comic art style of Dontnod. Your around 13hour long journey gets also supported by the goose bumps triggering soundtrack. The gameplay obviously has the focus on Max´s ability to turn back time, for example you can recreate conversations but also at nearly any point in the game you just can rewind a bit and see what the character over there with his skateboard just did for a trick. I said nearly because Life is Strange is playing with the idea of Soft Magic (it means basically that not everything can be solved with the ability. If you want to learn more about the topic watch the Video “In Defense of Soft Magic Systems” by Hello Future Me on YouTube but watch out it contains deep spoilers for Life is Strange.) this makes some points in the game even more intense as you know you have only this very chance. The game works with a remembering system like the games from Telltale do, so depending on how you play the story will evolve around it. This makes a very heavy impact on most of the characters which are secondary yet very important and you surely will be not wanting to hurt their feeling I can tell you that. Further you can interact with so many things in the game so taking a look around is more than just recommended. So, does this game make mistakes? Yes, one very significant but I will come to that at the end of my little review.

So Dontnod thanks for this brilliant masterpiece of software that is Life is Strange you did pretty much everything right and I was stunned at any point in the story, I bought this game on sale with the expectation to have something interesting to play by the side but I played it through as in two days mid-week and as I were at the end I could not stop thinking about the game, the characters, the decisions I might have done wrong and if I could have done anything better. I were kind of depressed and sad that I were done with the game. That’s a feeling I never thought a game could give me especially as I come from the FPS genre, yet I am very happy to learn it better. I can recommend the game to basically everybody it addresses very modern thinking (less than Life is Strange 2 but anyway) and offers a very fresh style.

Last but not least the one mistake Dontnod made: It is the mistake of not making a sequel with this character (at least we got a prequel :D).

Sincerely
SVPPB