The first episode of Life is Strange leaves us on a cliffhanger, well, cliff-sitter. While sitting on the bench located on a cliff, Max reveals her ability to reverse time to her friend Chloe, and also mentions there is a bad storm coming to their tiny port town that is going to tear apart everything they know and love. A lot of heavy stuff for Max’s rekindled friendship, but nonetheless a jumping off point for the next episode “Out of Time”.
The story begins with the same faces. Max leaves her dorm room to meet with Chloe at a diner, to prove her power, while along the way helping others, such as her enormously religious friend Kate. Kate is the focal point in this episode, so paying close attention to her ‘problem’ is key to not getting the ending I obtained. Kate, if you played the first episode (and you should), was involved with a group led by antagonist Nathan Prescott (a real prick), who has parties through something called the Vortex Club. Kate’s main problem is that she is allegedly drugged and is caught on video making out with boys (and her religious parents don’t take too kindly to it). Of course, no one believes her side of the story.
Anyway, Max has the choice to help Kate out several times during episode two, which gamers should think long and hard on when the time comes. Aside from the Kate storyline, the other part of the tale surrounds Chloe and unraveling her shady past one incident at a time. Chloe, I suspect, plays a huge part, though not yet revealed, in the disappearance of Rachel, a storyline continued from the first episode.
Can you tell what’s driving this game?
Stories can be so vital when it comes to weak gameplay. Most of the gameplay in Life is Strange is pretty weak. Aside from doing remedial tasks, like collecting items (books, bottles, etc.), the gameplay mechanics and controls, which were fun in the first episode, sometimes seem like a chore in “Out of Time”. For example, my patience was severely tested when it came to locating beer bottles for Chloe to shoot at while at her secret lair. After 10-15 minutes of searching, and pressing ‘X’ when the time came to pick up a bottle, it just seemed like the game was stalling for time and making you do something that wasn’t fun. Of course, once Max found them and the story continued, all was well. That one moment almost led me to take a break from the game. It was seriously boring, and sometimes enormously irritating.
But then the gameplay got interesting. Choices made while shooting the beer bottles made certain things happen. For example, Chloe has the opportunity to shoot herself (by accident) during one of the beer bottle moments. It was frightening and added some real value to what was going on. Pressing a button on the controller to choose a direction (and sometimes item) for Chloe to shoot, directly led to some type of event happening.
And things got better from that point on.
Chloe gets her foot stuck in a train track and has just a little time to get it out before getting run over by a train. With the help from Max’s time reversing abilities, gamers get to navigate to a solution, while the music and urgent dialogue leading to Chloe’s potential death heightens the situation. This type of gameplay, when mixed with the story, almost forgives the shallow control mechanics. Like I said previously, the story makes this game work so well.
At the end of the episode, when you think all is well in the world, you get a shocking moment where your choices dictate how an event goes down. I will stop there. Giving too much away would only suck the enjoyment out of the episode, and almost all the enjoyment (good or tragic) exists within the climax of ending. It’s pretty damn intense. It’s also certainly worth the remedial task of finding beer bottles.
If you liked the first episode of the game, then stick with this one. The controls may lose their charm while playing, and the graphics certainly haven’t improved to PS4 caliber (still lots of stiff hands, dead eyes and jittery textures), but the story will grab you and convince you that the $4.99 you spent was well worth it.
“Out of Time” adds more fuel to the fire, which should ignite when the third episode rolls around on the Playstation 4. Until then, make the right button choices along the way to ensure the health of the everyone.
