izigame.me

Life is Strange was my first experience in what I call “interactive movies”. There is some puzzles; a very bit of stealth; and a lot of walking around; but the biggest part of the game is the dialogue choices you make that effect the story. I enjoyed it when it first came out and after replaying it I can say it holds up really well. The graphics are a tad dated for the sunnier daytime scenes but they’re still above average in my books and have a good colour palette. The storm scenes are still very good, especially the wet clothing and rain effects. The voice acting and music were spot on and across the board I liked them. The dialogue was overall good but could get a bit cringy at times. That being said most of the characters are teens so maybe I should give points for realism. The story itself is fantastic which is good as it is the main draw in the game. I did find the shoehorning of some political issues handled poorly and not subtle at all but it was minor and bearable. The characters made up for it. Whether it was Max; Chloe; Alyssa; Samuel; Warren; Joyce; David; and many more I can’t say I disliked any of them. That is to say they were all well layered, even if some were meant to be detestable. There were a couple times where I didn’t like the choices or how they panned out but they were largely very enjoyable. My issues were that some of them gave me little option but to be a bad person or be mean to others in order to stay on good terms with Chloe but to be fair the game addresses this at times in the story. I also didn’t like a single puzzle where I have to gather materials in the school. I needed to try to reach something that Max wasn’t tall enough for. I knew she couldn’t reach it so I tried to grab a chair but the game wouldn’t let me use the chair until I went through the motions and tried to reach the object anyway. Another time when trying to sort through pictures to tie together evidence they referred to, what was clearly a truck, as an SUV.
I played Life Strange on Linux. It never crashed on me. I did notice that one time Max lacked lip movements while talking but the whole issue lasted about ten seconds so it wasn’t a big deal. The game has a v-sync toggle; two AA settings; a resolution option; and four other graphics settings. Alt-Tab didn’t work. The performance was overall very good but I will say that it was jarring whenever the game went from cut scenes to normal game play because the game used my 144Hz refresh rate but the cut scenes were capped at 30 FPS and it looked weird for the first second or so before and after. The game dropped to 24 FPS for 1-2 seconds and also dropped to 65 FPS for 1-2 seconds but spent the most of the time at 100 FPS or higher. The game uses an auto save system. Overall it worked alright but at least once I noticed that I quit after seeing the save point mid scene and when I went back in it started me at the beginning of the scene not when the save point was. I would have preferred a manual save system.
Game Engine: Unreal Engine 3
Graphics API: OpenGL
Game Version Played: Launcher says 1.03, in game says 1.0.0.397609
Disk Space Used: 10.69 GB
Graphics Settings Used: 1920x1080; Highest; v-sync on
GPU Usage: 0-100 %
VRAM Usage: 1077-1525 MB
CPU Usage: 26-51 %
RAM Usage: 3.2-4.7 GB
Frame Rate: 24-144 FPS
Overall I highly recommend Life is Strange. It has great production values; a good story with great characters; and does a good job allowing you some freedom to make choices. If some of my criticisms seem petty it’s because they are, I really don’t have any serious flaws to gripe about. I finished my first play through in 13.5 hours and my second in 14.5 hrs. I spent $21.74 CAD on all five episodes and would have happily paid $45 so I think the current price of $21.99 CAD is a steal.
My score: 9/10
My System:
Intel i7-6700 | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | XFX RX 590 8GB Fat Boy | Mesa 22.2.3 | Samsung 870 QVO 1TB | Garuda | Mate 1.26.0 | Kernel 6.0.8-zen1-zen | AOC G2460P 1920*1080 @ 144hz