Saturday, June 27, 2015

Choices-and-Consequences Game Review: Life Is Strange Episode 3

The third episode of Life Is Strange, Chaos Theory, lives up to its name with a chapter that really shakes the formula up.

The school is reeling from the events of the end of the last chapter. Max and Chloe are determined to get to the bottom of the corruption in the town, so they decide to conduct their own investigation. This leads to some revelations, some character building moments, and then chaos comes into play, spinning their entire world on its head.

There are some fetch quests and inventory puzzles here, which is to be expected in an investigation. Naturally, Max's powers to rewind time also come in play, allowing Max and Chloe to to be more devious in their investigations than they would without them.  The rewind power is also actually used as a puzzle itself in this chapter, where Max must use stealth and her powers in order to avoid being caught.  It's a fantastic twist on the usual mechanic of this game, and it is implemented quite well.

The story is simply fantastic in this chapter, and the awkward slang has been successfully lamp shaded.  It's attributed as a quirk of one of the more outlandish characters, and, in that light, strangely, in retrospect (awkward as it still is) it sort of works.  The voice acting continues be top notch, working well in tandem with the fantastic script, and the understated music once again complements the voice acting.  The new locations are all interesting, as are the new characters.

This ended up being a short review, but don't take that as a sign of a lack of quality.  It's actually far from it, as the review is brief as to spoil as little about the episode as possible.  This episode simply needs to be played, as everything about it, from the story, to the voice acting and music, and to the characters and locations are excellent.  The game's finale is the crowning achievement of the episode, and of the series so far.  It's worth playing just for that portion of the game alone.

Final verdict:
 
5 out of 5

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