Life is Strange is fantastic. It’s one of those games that I’ve always heard great things about, but never got around to playing. This summer sale I decided to fix that by picking up Life is Strange Remastered Collection. It’s not really what I expected, but I have enjoyed it immensely. It starts off as a very slow game that feels more about it’s characters and setting than it’s overall plot, but by the end, the plot gets quite intense and dark in a fantastic way. It feels like one of those low budget slice of life indie movies that also has a great plot and isn’t solely carried by its characters.

While there is definitely a plot in the game, and it is quite interesting, for a lot of the game, it feels like background to the characters hanging and living their lives. Life is Strange could easily be a much shorter game if it cut out this “bloat” and focused on the plot more but that would make it a completely different game, and probably not for the better. Part of why I like this game is because I get to see the lives of these characters, taking my time in every room to look at all the stuff, learning about the characters and their lives. I would happily play a longer game where I got to spend more time in this world, hanging out with these characters, even if the overall plot remained the same.

Without spoiling too much, the game revolves around Max, an 18 year old high school student who learns she can rewind time. You then go about high school life, occasionally using your powers to rewind time to use information you got in the future to get additional dialog, change recent decisions, or occasionally save people. There is some darker more mysterious stuff happening, but it often feels like it takes a backseat to the characters, interactions, and settings. Throughout the game you repeatedly interact with the same characters and re-visit the same locations. It makes the game feel small in a good way. You really get a sense of all the characters, their lives, and how they change over the course of the game. Towards the end of the game, however, the plot really starts picking up in an interesting way. I definitely saw some of the plot twists coming, but others took me by surprise and without spoiling anything, the entire ending sequence was absolutely gripping.

While there may not be much gameplay, the overall feel of the game, including its soundtrack, is fantastic. While there are definitely intense and dark moments that deal with mature themes, especially in the later chapters, for the most part this game just feels calm and cozy, and I really like that. From the feel of the world to the fantastic music, it absolutely nails its sense of atmosphere. I also really liked how at the end of each chapter it shows you how your decisions compare to the rest of the community as well as your friends (if only I had friends who played this), but I do wonder how this game being a remaster, and therefor possibly many peoples 2nd time playing, changed those statistics. I also really liked how the game often made callbacks to decisions I had made, both big and small and it did feel like my decisions mattered. Of course I’m sure that like most of these games, all or most major story beats remain the same regardless of decisions, but because much of this game feels more character driven than plot driven, it matters a bit less. The simple act of other characters commenting on things I had done really made the world feel alive and the characters feel more real.

On a technical level, this game is fine. I noticed a few small graphical glitches, and the UI is a bit awkward at times. It’s also annoying that my ultra wide monitor has black bars on the left and right, especially when this is a recent remaster, but the game does support high frame rates and doesn't have any mouse issues, which would have been more annoying issues to deal with. The lip syncing is also not always great, which was a bit surprising because I was under the impression that the point of this remaster was to go back and re-do all the facial animations with mo-cap to make them better. Maybe the original was even worse? I also notice that some of the cutscenes, usually towards the end of an episode and quite frequently throughout the final episode, were pre rendered and looked much worse than the gameplay and real time cutscenes. This is always disappointing to see. I also had 1 crash, but 1 crash in the 20 hours it took me to beat this game is not horrible, and I only lost less than a minute of progress. Speaking of that though, the game only has auto saves and they are much less frequent than I would have liked.

Overall, I am blown away by how good Life is Strange is. I really do feel like I may never find another game that scratches quite the same itch. It definitely has some similarities to some other games I’ve played, like The Quarry and Disco Elysium, but overall it feels completely different. I know there is a prequel, which was included in my purchase, and some sequels, but I just can’t see them living up to this, especially when the sequels have different characters and settings. Then again, I’m not sure that a direct sequel with the same characters and settings would be as good either. Back to this game, if you like slower paced narrative rich games with strong characters, this game truly is top tier and I cannot recommend it highly enough. I think I'll always look back fondly at this masterpiece.

Life is Strange is fantastic. It’s one of those games that I’ve always heard great things about, but never got around to playing. This summer sale I decided to fix that by picking up Life is Strange Remastered Collection. It’s not really what I expected, but I have enjoyed it immensely. It starts off as a very slow game that feels more about it’s characters and setting than it’s overall plot, but by the end, the plot gets quite intense and dark in a fantastic way. It feels like one of those low budget slice of life indie movies that also has a great plot and isn’t solely carried by its characters. While there is definitely a plot in the game, and it is quite interesting, for a lot of the game, it feels like background to the characters hanging and living their lives. Life is Strange could easily be a much shorter game if it cut out this “bloat” and focused on the plot more but that would make it a completely different game, and probably not for the better. Part of why I like this game is because I get to see the lives of these characters, taking my time in every room to look at all the stuff, learning about the characters and their lives. I would happily play a longer game where I got to spend more time in this world, hanging out with these characters, even if the overall plot remained the same. Without spoiling too much, the game revolves around Max, an 18 year old high school student who learns she can rewind time. You then go about high school life, occasionally using your powers to rewind time to use information you got in the future to get additional dialog, change recent decisions, or occasionally save people. There is some darker more mysterious stuff happening, but it often feels like it takes a backseat to the characters, interactions, and settings. Throughout the game you repeatedly interact with the same characters and re-visit the same locations. It makes the game feel small in a good way. You really get a sense of all the characters, their lives, and how they change over the course of the game. Towards the end of the game, however, the plot really starts picking up in an interesting way. I definitely saw some of the plot twists coming, but others took me by surprise and without spoiling anything, the entire ending sequence was absolutely gripping. While there may not be much gameplay, the overall feel of the game, including its soundtrack, is fantastic. While there are definitely intense and dark moments that deal with mature themes, especially in the later chapters, for the most part this game just feels calm and cozy, and I really like that. From the feel of the world to the fantastic music, it absolutely nails its sense of atmosphere. I also really liked how at the end of each chapter it shows you how your decisions compare to the rest of the community as well as your friends (if only I had friends who played this), but I do wonder how this game being a remaster, and therefor possibly many peoples 2nd time playing, changed those statistics. I also really liked how the game often made callbacks to decisions I had made, both big and small and it did feel like my decisions mattered. Of course I’m sure that like most of these games, all or most major story beats remain the same regardless of decisions, but because much of this game feels more character driven than plot driven, it matters a bit less. The simple act of other characters commenting on things I had done really made the world feel alive and the characters feel more real. On a technical level, this game is fine. I noticed a few small graphical glitches, and the UI is a bit awkward at times. It’s also annoying that my ultra wide monitor has black bars on the left and right, especially when this is a recent remaster, but the game does support high frame rates and doesn't have any mouse issues, which would have been more annoying issues to deal with. The lip syncing is also not always great, which was a bit surprising because I was under the impression that the point of this remaster was to go back and re-do all the facial animations with mo-cap to make them better. Maybe the original was even worse? I also notice that some of the cutscenes, usually towards the end of an episode and quite frequently throughout the final episode, were pre rendered and looked much worse than the gameplay and real time cutscenes. This is always disappointing to see. I also had 1 crash, but 1 crash in the 20 hours it took me to beat this game is not horrible, and I only lost less than a minute of progress. Speaking of that though, the game only has auto saves and they are much less frequent than I would have liked. Overall, I am blown away by how good Life is Strange is. I really do feel like I may never find another game that scratches quite the same itch. It definitely has some similarities to some other games I’ve played, like The Quarry and Disco Elysium, but overall it feels completely different. I know there is a prequel, which was included in my purchase, and some sequels, but I just can’t see them living up to this, especially when the sequels have different characters and settings. Then again, I’m not sure that a direct sequel with the same characters and settings would be as good either. Back to this game, if you like slower paced narrative rich games with strong characters, this game truly is top tier and I cannot recommend it highly enough. I think I'll always look back fondly at this masterpiece.