Unlike the other entries into my review deep-dive on the Life is Strange... Anthology? Saga? Descent into madness? This one will be spoiler-heavy for 2 reasons: firstly, I don't think this game is worth your time, unlike the other 3. Second? I need them. To even briefly explain this game.
It is impossible to describe the gimmick without a major first-chapter spoiler: you will be shifting between timelines, defined as "Living" and "Dead" world, the only difference being, in one your best friend is alive, and in the other, she is dead. Kinda. More later.
For now, let's reign in the basics as a "LAST TIME ON LIS!": Max is a grad student in New England. For... photography, question mark? Fine art? Can one actually obtain a graduate degree in photography? What about a doctorate? Genuinely asking.
For a supposed continuation of Max's story, which I think is quite literally one of the best-told stories in video game history, I sure as shit don't care about 1%er Max's "story" here.
Tell me: what is Max's story in OG LIS versus this game? Cuz, in the first game, I got the sense that Max was a human with flaws and grew into accepting her role in a very real world she considered separate from herself before realizing her power as a person with agency with or without a superpower. Just me?
Cuz in this game, Max is just rich, lucky, and also very stupid.
In the first game, Max is an outsider and likes that about herself at the very beginning. This time, she's a social butterfly - which could've been either shown or told but it's neither. I was actually excited when Max met Other Max and thought it was her from 1, because I literally thought, until that point, "This Does Not Feel Like Max."
I never got the sense Max 1 was dumb. I sure did feel dumb playing as Max 2 cuz she doesn't. Do. Anything.
90% of the time, if you check your current objective, it's "Talk to (someone)". You do a lot of listening. None of your choices matter and it's somehow impossible to fail at anything despite not being able to instantly rewind time.
But my biggest gripe with this game? (Aside from the last 2 chapters which were a disaster)
Your. Phone.
Do these 4 things for me, all the time, for a 12h game: Keep track of your social media, messages, notes and journal. Now, do it twice. 2 timelines, remember?
I spent half this game on my phone literally and metaphorically. None of it matters much, but if you ignore it it adds up and the stuff that is interesting or plot-relevant gets buried.
I took a solid shot at True Colors. Little did I know it could get much worse.
If TC is maybe a 7/10, DE is a 4. And it hurts to say so. But the story is so, so slow, so predictable, so boring, and so... unmemorable. If TC has pacing problems, this game is a 2-minute mile. At least in TC I can respect the bad guy as a well-written bad guy.
That brings me to maybe the worst thing about this game, and it's hand-in-hand with being a story sequel to the first: Lucas is not Jefferson.
I don't care he took out a restraining order on Safi. I don't care that his son hates him. I don't care that he plagiarized a dead student. I don't care that he's an arrogant prick. He never fucking drugged and kidnapped and killed his students. When I realized Lucas was the Final Boss of this story?
I needed a smoke break. Cuz I knew once I "exposed" him I was in for a slog of a last 2 chapters. Which it was. Lucas telling Safi "hey btw your mom was totally in on all this" is the reason Safi's last picture is Max With A Gun? (oh brother this guy stiiinks!)
LIS Devs, are you listening? Come closer. Closer. Closer.
YOU NEED TO SHOW ME THE STORM IN THE FIRST CHAPTER FOR ME TO GIVE A SHIT ABOUT IT AT THE END.
Cuz at this point I'm exhausted. I'm bored. I don't care if this random rich people school lives or dies. Oh, it united the timelines? That'll be interesting for Max to explain. What? What? FADE TO BLACK??
Oh, but it does have my favorite LIS line, which comes in the form of a threat! "Max Caulfield will Return".
Let. Her. Rest.
There are a few things I like about this game... I think... um... Amanda is a cute love interest. The bar is actually a very nicely-designed space. I think there was... potential for.... a few side-characters.
Unfortunately, the campus is remarkably forgettable as a setting, as are most of the side-characters. As are the "choices". "Choice" is certainly a choice.
I've never seen my end-of-chapter numbers so unbalanced. 99%s across many "choices".
By the way, devs, "Max sat on a chair in this chapter to think obvious thoughts to herself" is not a choice. It is a peril all of us avoid like the plague.
One chapter made "Max looked at X" a fuckin choice. Bitch, it was something I sprinted past to get. On. With. It. Cuz your game is a SLOG.
So, so disappointed. Unlike this game, I won't keep wasting your time.
Stay Greater, and wish me luck the next game (LIS 2) sucks less than this. It has to suck less, right?
Alright, I gotta say, this is gonna be a bit biased because of 2 things: I love Chloe the Brat, and don't find her "backtalk" ability cringey, and I am the child of someone who discovered their dad was cheating on their mom.
Look, Chloe is a child. Her Backtalk lines are a bit lame, but if you came up with them on the spot, especially against a Real Adult, you'd feel cool. C'mon, let's have a bit of fun. That's how I excuse the Backtalk gimmick in this game; she's a child and smart. Let her be a little cringe. You know you were at that age.
Before the Storm is an interesting choice of title because the game isn't about what happens before the storm, it takes place YEARS ago, and tells the story of Chloe and Rachel, a completely independent, contained story that just so happens to be in the same universe.
I'm more willing to give this game some grace (compared to say True Colors) because it is a Life is Strange game that makes sense to have that prefix even though there's no time travel or supernatural elements in this game. It retains the characters and world of the first game, and to be honest, I think it's a good way of making a prequel. I know I personally wanted to know what Chloe and Rachel's friendship was like after finishing the first game.
That said, it's not perfect. It tries to rekindle the magic of The Storm by having Rachel accidentally start a forest fire after a genuine misunderstanding sets her off.
They also tried to parallel the first game with pacing. The first game takes place over the course of about a week. That's enough time for Max and Chloe to reunite - because we know they used to be close, it's easy to believe they'd become close again in a short period of time.
But Rachel and Chloe had never met, then they tried to make it a Max/Chloe dynamic immediately, and it just doesn't work. The game is only 3 chapters, so they have less time to build a more complex relationship and they bit off more than they could chew.
The characters are... disappointing. The first scene feels like Chloe. Everything afterward is very jarring because Chloe alternates between a passive sheep with no facial expression, a faithful puppy following Rachel around, and being a bitch for no reason.
Rachel is annoying, bratty and entitled. I really dislike her, and the reveal of her finding her dad kissing another woman doesn't do the heavy lifting required to make her become likeable or understood.
The closest I come to caring about her is the very end where you have to choose to tell her her dad is a killer or hide the truth. I respect this game for having the balls to go as far as it does, and the difficulty of the last choice is, in my opinion, well-earned.
The story itself feels undercooked. The first half is just a bunch of stuff that happens, then the second half immediately becomes a mystery to solve. The game doesn't seem to know what it wants to do with these characters.
It's a better story than True Colors, a better game than True Colors, and yet still feels like they're in the same basket. I think if this was a full 5-chapter game that took place over a month or two, it would be a much better game.
I'm currently playing Double Exposure, then LIS2, and by then they'll have released 15 more LIS titles and I'll have to play those too.
I'm just disappointed that LIS was such a masterpiece and they're trying over and over, failing over and over to try and repeat the past. You're never going to make another game like LIS, just stop trying. Just make interesting games, man.
I know they can do it, because Tell Me Why, another game by the same developers without the LIS prefix, is a great game. I don't know if it would be a good LIS spinoff, but without the baggage of that title, it can do its own thing.
There, I said it. If you wanted a Cinematic Universe tm, this was not the way to do it, I promise you.
Why? Because the game "Tell Me Why", made by the same developers as the OG LIS didn't have LIS in the title, and it is absolute 10/10 fire. While "True Colors" is a soggy wet noodle of a game, and certainly not fit to wear the LIS prefix.
Alex is a great character, Haven is a great setting, the twist villain is great, pretty much every supporting character is great. Even the story is mostly pretty good. And LORD the art. Beautiful game.
But uh, did you notice how I didn't mention what Alex's power is? Cuz it sucks and doesn't matter. Here's a quick sketch depicting how I think that meeting went:
[Interior: Board Room]
Boss: No, we can't re-use rewinding time! That was a perfect 10, we can't re-use something that worked absolutely beautifully the first time!"
Intern: Oh okay what about, like, feeling emotion?
(Group looks at each other in confusion)
Intern: Okay, imagine if you could like, realize other people have emotions?
---6 hrs later---
Boss: Perfect. Let's make them glow colors and always be mad or sad. No other emotions exist, as we have established.
/Scene
Sorry but it really is fuckin dumb. Sometimes she has mind reading abilities, sometimes she can absorb the emotion but it never carries to the next scene, so like did she even do anything of moral virtue?? The rules are so much more confusing than LIS.
And again, they do not matter. There are no puzzles to be solved or lives to be changed here, you just press A to pay respects. Then in a non-choice-able moment, a strange man lures you, a young vulnerable woman, to an abandoned mine shaft at night while the rest of the town is occupied.
He shoots you down a hole. You're pretty much fine tho, cuz you walk out and go to a town hall meeting and don't stop at the hospital first or anything.
Then it's like the literal "You made x choice" at the end of each chapter but in the form of: how many townsfolk trust you. Luckily I got all but Ryan (understandable tbh) and Charlotte?? (Sorry for saving your child's life after meeting him THAT DAY you dumb bitch).
Bad guy is exposed, you are the town hero and reign supreme. Your face is miraculously unscarred a few days later. You get to kiss pretty girl. Game end.
It left a lot to be desired, is what I'm saying.
But it also had a lot to live up to. I keep coming back to it, but on its own merit, untied to the LIS CU, this would've been a solid title. But trying to brand it as the Next Big LIS Title really didn't give it the nepotism boost they thought it would, in my opinion.
And even though Alex's "power" is just empathy in 4K color, I still think something interesting could've been done with that but they just didn't.
This game is very undercooked. I spent almost an hour in the barn in LIS trying to climb the platforms and open the door before realizing I needed to undo one thing, boom door open. So frustrating at the time but that's cuz I was being dumb. Big dopamine when big door open!
None of that is to be had here.
One last gripe: PACING. LIS is perfectly paced in my opinion. It's less than 8 minutes from opening cutscene to *that First Thing that makes shit real*. This game is a walking simulator with "press x to notice an obvious thing" for about an hour before anything happens. It does this a lot. And yet, from the start to the point where the First Thing in this game is almost a goddamn hour. If you skip a lot of the filler. Maybe even 2h if you try to see it all.
It gets worse: these people talk at 0.25 speed, I swear. I've read the subtitle in 1 second. It takes 45 seconds for it to change. They talk so fuckin slow. And say very little.
I do like the characters... but again, undercooked. Elenor is the flower lady with dementia. Her personality is "the flower lady with dementia". Same with Duckie the Boomer and Mac the Brooding Misunderstood Jock.
I do think the story is passable, if you can suspend a lot of disbelief - not even in a magic way, just a plot-point way. The worst way.
Stay Greater Flamingos. And get True Colors at 90% off otherwise pass.
I played the OG LIS for the first time about 2 months ago. I still think about that game every single day. Mostly in the form of "what if I'd done x instead of y?" because the game is that choice-driven. You get a different ending if you befriended the Drone Girl enough to let you fly her drone for 20 seconds than if you don't.
Maybe not literally but you get the point: among games that claim the coveted Steam tag of "Choices Matter", the first Life is Strange reigns king.
Sure, Detroit Become Human technically has more endings, more branches, more... stuff?
But LIS does it a lot less ham-fistedly.
I've since played LIS three times, back-to-back-to-back because I *had to know* how each major choice tree played out.
I breathed a sigh of relief and uninstalled DBH after one playthrough because it was exhausting to see all those damn progress/choice trees and imagine how many playthroughs it would require for me to see every outcome imaginable. LIS is not like that, and you'll know it after one playthrough.
I"m going to bitch about the differences between the games but one (1) good thing is consistent: It tells you your choices at the end and how many people either chose to do something or, more interestingly in my opinion, how many people *didn't think to make a choice*.
If you're me, your first LIS playthrough kept shoving in your face, "YOU DIDN'T HELP ALYSSA" but then follows up with, "...like 85% of players". I'm not the asshole, the game is.
You can help Alyssa 4 times in the game, and only on my third playthrough did I get all 4, because they're either blink-and-you-miss-it moments when you're chasing your cat off the counter for 1.5 seconds, or background noise while you're literally trying to save the world and you miss the tree for the forest.
Anyway, here's my review for the first entry into the Life is Strange universe (LISU).
It's the best game I've ever played. It's old by video game standards. It ran flawlessly and with amazing graphics from the art asset department especially. Great posters around campus, guys.
I learned every single secondary and tertiery character by the beginning of my second playthrough. That's good characterization. I'm not good at it, so I'm saying 9/10 and moving on.
Setting... is where this game lacks a little. It's an 8/10 so calm down. It's solid, every area is packed with details but I fear they rely on too many details to the point that the important ones get drowned out. I didn't realize till halfway through my first go that Rachel Amber was the missing girl and that she would be Important To the Plot. Because I read the missing poster once, before learning the "translate into text I can read" button, and didn't think to look at it ever again.
The story is really the gem in this game. I won't spoil much but I'm comfortable that y'all knew the thing is, you can rewind time. A liitte bit. As a treat.
Like, you can't go back and stop Hitler, but you can make it so you talk to someone, then go back to before talking to them knowing what they're gonna say. Or steal their keys. Or... y'know what, lets not even get into the Time Travel Etiquette here, this is a safe space for people who just Like it cuz it's Neat and don't need a hard explanation on how it works.
To wrap up LIS:TOS, the twist villain got me, and I liked that they didn't try and give him some grand evil genius arc, he's just a sicko with a camera. Max was a bit flat as a character but I know that's the point. You literally learn that her GPA is 2.8. Just the average Jane.
Only because I know what's coming, I'll say something that seems very obvious: I like that Max's power actually mattered to not just the plot but also a few cute puzzles. Get inside the room with fire, undo fire, unlock room without fire. Very well done.
I know it seems like I'm praising the game for doing what the game is supposed to do, and yes. Yes I am.
Look forward to my next reviews, to which I am bringing the fury of a thousand waves. Cuz they fuckin suck, in case that wasn't clear thus far.
Expressing deep gratitude to find himself surrounded by those so dear to his heart, local crab Dan Herscher told reporters Wednesday that he was just happy to be in a bucket with all his friends. “Yes, sir, there’s nothing better than hanging out in a plastic bucket and clambering all over a couple dozen of my best buds,” said Herscher, adding that the warm, convivial atmosphere fostered by the bucket was such that he couldn’t help but pull back any comrades attempting to escape over the edge and give them a big, crabby hug.
I love getting comments on really old fics. It's like a little tap on the shoulder that says, "hey the art you create is going to last forever even if you don't think it matters anymore"
Saying he found the activity enriched his life and provided him with a real sense of purpose, local man Martin Berens, 43, spent his afternoon volunteering opinions about the homeless, sources confirmed Monday. “Nothing makes me feel better than heading down to the park in my spare time and serving up a bunch of heated diatribes about homelessness and what I perceive to be a declining work ethic,” said Berens, adding that he truly believed that just one person loudly opining to strangers that the homeless needed to be “rounded up” could make a significant difference in the world.
it’s easy to forget, so I’ll remind y’all: you can make fantasy versions of anything. yes even things you might not think about. like soil types. I am thinking of fantasy soil types right now
Truly the all time funniest writer thing is when you're doing edits and you think to yourself "omg I've got the PERFeCT sentence to add right here!" and then you stick it in all excited, only to find that literally three lines down you have virtually that exact same sentence in the draft already.
Is it bad that I feel slightly bad that I keep coming to the library to use its quietness and its desk space and its pleasant atmosphere for writing but I never check out books?
Why would you feel bad? You’re using the library for one of its intended purposes. The desks, WiFi, space etc are LITERALLY there for you to do exactly what you’re doing AND each time you go in you add to the foot traffic numbers that prove hey people are coming in to use our stuff mr. government so keep funding us.
I think it's a bit sad that with more and more public spaces vanishing, people are feeling bad about not "buying" stuff to "earn" their time at a library.
A library is like a park, you're allowed to just. Exist in it.
I check out books every 4 weeks, when the learning period from my current books is up, but I go much more frequently with my kid to just sit there and read to them, and that's okay. In my school days, we'd go and do our research for presentations there, just reading, never checking out.
I was homeless for a few months, kicked out of the shelter from 7am-8pm. The Library was more accommodating than the shelter.
I had a laptop I used to look for housing and work, and when that was done for the day, I played Neopets.
Then I realized there was a piano for public use in the basement and took full advantage and kinda felt bad cuz I already felt I didn't deserve to exist in public spaces and now I was using?? An instrument?? For my own fun and enrichment??
That piano saved me from going insane with boredom. It was a very short period of my life, but it's one that I remember intensely due to the trauma of it all.
But also because Every Single library employee knew me by name or the more flattering "piano guy", and I'll never ever forget them. A few would spend their breaks listening to me play and lament having to get back to work. One even said they looked forward to my visits.
The Library is one of the oldest public institutions for a reason. It's a haven for people who need a quick Wifi for 10 minutes or need a piano for 30 days.
It makes my heart so damn full to see anyone of any age for any reason in a library. Don't ever feel like checking out books is its only purpose. It's one of the only 3rd places we have left and using it as such is what keeps it alive.
I grew up with parents that bought my love, which usually sucked, but once a year, it meant my mother brought me and my 2 best friends to Canada's Wonderland and was too afraid of revealing her abusiveness in public to deny us any purchase we so desired.
I realize there's a lot to unpack there.
Anyway,
I went to Wonderland yesterday for the first time in 9 years. Since my last visit, they dropped 2 new coasters.
I'm immobile today, but it was so damn worth it. I'm going to review the newest coasters - one from 2019, one from this year.
But first, I want to review the park as a whole in terms of someone whose legs turn to noodles after standing for 15 minutes.
It actually wasn't quite as bad as I expected, and I went on a goddamn Sunday like a masochist.
The park is a shitty walk - to go from one coaster to the next is a minimum 5m walk because there's a lot of bullshit in between. The main path hasn't been updated since its opening in 1981. Not enough bathrooms. Food is expensive, but not as bad as I expected after a 9y hiatus tbh. Yes, 20$ for a meal is a lot, but I was legitimately expecting double that for one singular slice of pizza. The park desperately needs some updating to its infrastructure and theming, but it gets the job done.
What I mean by that last bit is that some rides - for example Flight Deck, which was the newest coaster in 2007 - has an extremely large footprint. Its line never gets over an hour, yet it takes a solid 5 minutes to walk through the windings all the way to the end of the line. Like, at one point they needed a lot of space for the line for this ride. Not anymore, bitch, tear that shit down and redo the line to be smaller.
Also, they removed my favorite coaster this year, Time Warp. You lay down like Superman. It was pretty popular, I don't know why they ripped it out.
Since my last visit, CW put out an app - it's kinda shitty, but it was also kinda mind-blowing. It had wait times that updated constantly, and the app crashed just as constantly. But compared to being a goddamn loser with a paper map, it made me feel a lot less frustrated, which I can only imagine is the goal, because every line took at least 10 fewer minutes than the app said.
Definitely done on purpose, and definitely worked on me.
Let me set up our specific scenario: we don't have Fast Lane, we don't have any food passes, and we weren't in the park until 1pm, and again, it's a Sunday. None of this is ideal. If you consult the CW subreddit, you're in for a shitty day.
But I know what I'm doing, map in my head, and managed to get all 4 of us to have a great day, which is honestly a minor miracle. Again, went on a Sunday. I cannot emphasize this enough: Don't do that if you can help it. It was packed.
But still, minus the newest coaster, I never spent more than 45 minutes in a line.
Fun fact! CW is 3rd in the world in terms of number of (non-kiddy) roller coasters at 18. Without Fast Lane, you'd be VERY lucky to hit the Big Four - Behemoth, Leviathan, Yukon Striker, Alpen Fury.
That said, we did not hit the Big Four. I did Yukon (2019, world-record holder for longest, fastest, tallest, steepest drop coaster) in less than 50 minutes. I did Alpen (Canadian-record-holder for the same as a launch coaster plus WR for most inversions on a launch plus world's only 360 inversion on a launch) in... exactly 2 hours. Which, for the newest coaster, on a Sunday, isn't too bad.
I was sitting on the ground in the line, constantly rubbing out cramped muscles, occasionally crying, but it was worth it.
When Behemoth launched, it was cool. Leviathan was sick. Yukon (my first of the day) was incredible, and Alpen (my last of the day) was by far the most fun coaster I've ever done.
We didn't hit the other 2, but we did pretty much every other must-do: The Bat, Thunder Run, Stunt Coaster, Flight Deck, Dragon Fire, 4 flatland rides and White Water Canyon, the raft ride.
That's mostly the review, but I do want to talk Yukon and Alpen a bit more.
Yukon was probably the most thrilling - I'm not scared of coasters but even my friend that did the coasters with me wouldn't do it. You go up 230ft, they hang you at a 90 degree angle, then drop you. I was very lucky - I stood in the single rider line and got the middle seat in the front row. It was amazing to dangle there and then drop 90 degrees into the ground tunnel... but the rest was relatively mid. I'd still class it as a favorite for that hang and drop, but the rest was just okay.
Alpen Fury? Different story. I looooove a launch coaster, and that fucker launches hard and doesn't stop. I remember almost every curve and twist because it was so fast and so unique. Literally unlike anything else I've been on. I've never gone so fast, nor upside-down so many times in less than 2 minutes.
I would've stood in line for 45m again for Yukon but couldn't do another 2h for Alpen, but if I had Fast Lane, I might literally just go to CW and do Alpen 10x in one day and nothing else.
As someone who's been to CW 17 times in 30y, yesterday was probably the best time I've ever had. Yukon and Alpen really put CW on the map in terms of best parks in the world - that's not even me speaking but people who actually travel for coasters. I'm lucky to live an hour away.
Just lost a few braincells reading an nyt article about gen z "treat culture" and I can't even fathom that this is a thing. We're living in a dystopian hellscape where someone spending $5 a week on a cookie is considered a wasteful brat because they should have just gone for a nice free walk instead and saved the $250 a year that roughly equals four days' rent. That's why these ungrateful kids can't buy a house, naturally.
I am ALL for free treats, like hiking or reading in the park. But at some point you can't budget your way out of poverty, and you will literally go mad if you deny yourself basic pleasures that are literally all around you. They even lamented that little treats could snowball into doing something absolutely unforgivable like learning how to play the guitar or buying concert tickets.
At what point do we just start saying out loud that living an enjoyable and fulfilling life is now only acceptable at a 100k+ salary, and if you're one of the millions of people unlucky enough not to be in that category you should just eat dirt and be grateful?
Happy heavenly 80th birthday to the icon, the legend, the activist, Marsha P. Johnson. 🕊️🏳️🌈
Marsha was a fierce advocate for LGBTQ+ youth, unhoused Americans, and those affected by H.I.V. and AIDS. She was also on the front lines of the Stonewall uprising.
On July 6th, 1992, Ms. Johnson’s body was found in the Hudson River off the West Village Piers in New York. She was only 46 years old. 1992 was the worst year on record for anti-LGBTQ+ violence at the time, according to @antiviolence.
May Marsha’s legacy inspire us to stand with and protect the most underserved among us.
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