[PS4] Life is Strange

Thanks to my PC Gamer magazine, I learned that Life is Strange 2 is coming out soon. Or is it the prequel? Oh, who cares. It’s the second game in the series made by the same people. I finished the first game about a year ago, only on a few of sittings. Ya, it’s not a long game. It’s an interactive, choice-making game that kind of resembles the Walking Dead game series. There are five episodes all together but you can play through them quite quickly once you know what kind of choices you want to make.

You play as Max, a college girl dealing with regular youth drama who just discovers that she has power to rewind time. Which means, playing as her, you can also rewind the choice you just made and go with a different direction if the first one doesn’t work out for you.

However, with each choice that you make, you will end up with different outcomes or consequences, as what this game calls them. For example, you see a girl getting bullied. You can choose to not help her but that might damage you in the long run. Or you can choose to rewind time and help her instead, which will piss off the bullies and give you a different outcome. You can’t exactly win in this type of game. You can try to make a choice for the “best” outcome that you think but then it always turns something else upside down. The best way is to play through it like a “what would you do” kind of situation. And play through again with different choices that you made in the first try and see what would happen instead. Since your character can rewind time, you probably will never settle with the first thing you say or the first choice you may. It’s kind of cheat of course. But whenever you’re playing other choice-making games, you would find yourself saying, “oh, shit. I wish I haven’t done that.” In Life is Strange, you don’t have to wish, just gotta rewind.

Now, the story is very fresh. In the beginning, it felt very much like typical high school drama. Unpopular vs popular, jocks vs nerds kind of situation. A girl has recently gone missing. Max is dreaming about a massive storm while reuniting with her childhood best friend, Chloe. Along the way, you can read Max’s personal diary, take photos of people dancing like idiots, meet new people, make conversation choices, make breakfast choices and rewind the shit out of every choice you make. Which by the way, you don’t ever find out why/how you have this ability. I guess that’s why you have the Prequel? For me, it didn’t get interesting until the end of Chapter 4, when the hidden villain in the end, which I didn’t expect to be whoever it is at all.

The whole Chapter 5 felt intense. It was very well done. But they end it up with you making a choice of your life. Okay, I get it. It’s the end so they gotta give you something. But what about the choices I made throughout the game? None of that meant ape-shit by the time you get to the end. I thought I initially got to that point is because of the stupid choices I made in the game. I went on a second play-through but end up with the same choices in the end. I finally looked it up and it turned out, it doesn’t matter what kind of choices you made throughout the game. You will always end up with the same ending choices. You choice one of the two, and you will watch the outcome of your choice and the game ends and leaves you wondering what the other end is. And no, you don’t get to rewind this time. The credit is too long, you can’t rewind pass all of that shit, you’ll get bloody nose. Wooo….bloody nose. That’s serious ok. So I’ll think the only way to see the other end is to replay the entire chapter or watch it on Youtube. That’s what I should’ve done. I got really bored replaying it the second time knowing how it would end. Knowing that you can’t change the ending no matter what, that’s what’s sucks about it. I still enjoyed it though. Hopefully second game is better. I don’t think so you get to rewind this time.