REVIEW – The short adventures of Maxine Caulfield continue in Episode 3 of Life is Strange. With the previous episode finally moving the plot along at a nice pace, will this episode do the same? Will we finally find Rachel? Do we get to save JFK with our time traveling powers?! Or will it be a boring hipster ride for another two hours. Find out here!

 

Choices from the previous episode are carried over, just like in the previous game. However here the choices made actually have a lot of meaningful impact on the story. Certain characters will be in different situations, some might have lost their jobs, some might have been expelled. I was genuinely surprised how the choices were permanent, and there was no Telltale esque forced rerouting of the decisions. The decisions stick from the previous episode and it shows, which is a welcome breath of fresh air compared to a lot of other moral/ chose your action type of games.

Now on Life is Strange

Not much has changed in terms of graphics or audio design for the series. Sadly the lip-synching is still pretty horrible at times, the animation is still subpar, but it still has a great music selection and camera work. Because of the previous two, the series does start to feel a lot like a miniseries, and less like an actual game. Which can be a good thing for some, and bad for others.

Episode 3 seemed to have balanced out the cinematic/ non-cinematic parts of the series, and was able to provide tense moments. Yes the gameplay finally has some stealth and even more “collect items” to combine it into one parts, however even these clichés are well thought out. As the actual solution to these require a bit of an out of the box thinking from the player. The actual length for the episode is around two or two and a half hours, however this time there are no long cinematic sequences.

The game still lacks to be an actual adventure game in some parts though, and feels more and more of a compilations of Mass Effect style conversations. Where upon after every conversation choices the mysterious :”This will effect the future of the game” noise came up. It can get annoying that so many little pieces are touted as big game changers for the future episodes.

Time travel and puzzles

With the two previous games being busy setting up the characters, and Max’s powers, there was not much of actual gameplay related to the episodes. However here there are multiple puzzles, and one stealth section that require your powers and wits. It’s well done and really hope that the next two episodes will also have this level of interactivity / time travel usage to spice up the gameplay. The puzzles themselves were not really difficult, or that complex once you figure out what to do.

Should have been a movie instead of a mini-series

Many complaints would actually be non-existent if this episodic nature of the game would be instead one big game. The gameplay would be more important, and more varied, and the choice system would function a bit better. Still though Episode 3 is even better than the previous ones, and hope this trend will continue, though this ending does raise some questions on how our choices will remain.
Once all of the episodes will be released this will be a game that will warrant a multiple play through.

-Dante-

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Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: Dontnod

Genres: adventure

Publication: May 19, 2015