ZPage Entertainment 

June 2017 has brought me to play a game I had long been debating playing. I had heard so many great things about Life Is Strange, but the gameplay and style never really pushed me into purchasing. The game is a visual novel type game where you walk through the world interacting with items to learn more about the world, and there are a number of key interactions where you have 2 options to choose from. PS Plus gave me the sign that now was the time to go forth and play Life Is Strange, and unfortunately, I am disappointed so far by the results. The ‘choose your own adventure’ style of the game doesn’t seem to have many different effects (so far), the character development seems somewhat shallow, and the gameplay simply isn’t fun for me. While the story is interesting and could turn out to be worth the time of playing through the game, I’m currently unsure.

 

Firstly, I will begin by saying that I am writing this after playing through only the first of 5 chapters. This is important to note because while I am currently not impressed with the changes in story that the different options give you, they could provide drastic changes in the future that I am unaware of. For those who don’t know and wondering how I could know what the different options are effecting, the game has a rewind option to go back and choose the other option after making your first choice. I have gotten into the habit of choosing what I don’t want to do first just to see the option play out, and then go back to do what I actually intended on doing. As mentioned before, there is a chance that these choices will turn out to play a bigger role, and I can’t say that this is a huge issue for me just yet. If the same continues, however, I would argue that the seemingly most important aspect of the game (choosing your own adventure) is in fact pointless.

 

Next, playing as the main character Max made me want to learn more about who she is, what got her to this point, and how I thought she would actually make the decisions throughout the game. Instead there were a few journal notes that were buried in the menus that really didn’t help when it came to figuring out what she would choose in the scenarios. If the game wanted me to make the choices that I would make, then why would they give us a character who is completely pre-built? I think a quick cut scene of a life recap could have really changed how I made the choices (not that they have made that big of a difference yet).

 

While the gameplay hasn’t gotten me excited about the Life Is Strange yet, the story is so strange and yet somehow relatable that I am curious to see what happens next. As of now I almost wish that this was a Netflix series where I can just watch the story unfold rather than have to go around getting a few nuggets of important information among a treasure trove of useless interactions. To its credit though, the overarching plot is interesting enough for me to want to keep playing.

 

I almost don’t want to score this first chapter, knowing that all of these gripes could be solved in a way that I’m not expecting in future chapters, but the fact that I almost don’t want to continue the game shows me that this chapter simply wasn't good enough for me. The potential of the plot is going to get me to continue onto the next chapter, but I’m not sure yet whether I will get further than that.

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***** PLEASE NOTE: After much deliberation I have decided that I will not be continuing the game, and will not give an official score. At this point I have no real need to play a game that doesn't speak to me. I think my time is better spent playing games that I am actually interested in.