March Community Playthrough - Life is Strange

[singlebanana]

I plan to start tomorrow as well. I've been filling out all of this damn paperwork for the new job I start tomorrow.

[Izret101]

I haven't gotten to start yet. :-/
I want to try and get the 360 and One versions done though!

[Untrod Tripod]

So far I've gotten through the sort of "prologue" bit and am picking up on a lot of undropped shoes. Even though this is a Heavy Rain style narrative driven game, which I'm usually not a huge fan of, I really like this. I like that they are so far resisting the urge to punctuate the gameplay with reaction testing button mashing. Time travel mechanic is really cool and lets them show off their writing chops.

dialogue doesn't feel like lines written for teenage girls by middle aged men, which is great. the characters are a liiiiiiiiiiiittle overly intelligent for (I'm assuming?) 17/18 year olds. voice acting is superb so far. love the way the main character is written so far. I like that the sort of antagonist rich girl character is a bit of a caricature, assuming that she'll get fleshed out more later when she becomes friendly to the protagonist (just a guess).

tl;dr not my usual thing but I'm really digging it so far!

[GrayGhost81]

I'm enjoying the heck out of this game so far. It's better than a Telltale game (because it actually runs).

I agree with Tripod on the writing so far. There are times when I feel like I'm being "Juno'ed" with all the freaking references, but then I think about when I was a teenager and my friends and I would basically fall over each other on a minute to minute basis to make inside jokes with each other.

I'm conflicted between role-playing as Max and doing the click on/examine everything adventure game routine. I've been ultra nosy in some scenarios, because I don't want to miss anything, but in doing so I've done a few thing I don't think Max (or myself in Max's shoes) would have done.

One thing I'm a little on the fence on is how the game overtly tries to make you second guess your decisions. The mechanic of rewinding time to manipulate events is pretty great, but the player should be left with the feeling of "maybe I should have done it differently" naturally, which for me has usually been the case, but the fact that they have Max literally say that every time I think pushes too hard.

And her last name is Caulfield...come on!

Also, this lol:

[img width=700 height=262]http://img09.deviantart.net/5afe/i/2015/266/7/e/mad_max__life_is_strange_by_jazzmire-d9ali7x.png[/img]

[Untrod Tripod]

I'm conflicted between role-playing as Max and doing the click on/examine everything adventure game routine. I've been ultra nosy in some scenarios, because I don't want to miss anything, but in doing so I've done a few thing I don't think Max (or myself in Max's shoes) would have done.

yeah, I think it ends up breaking the roleplaying aspect of the game a bit to allow you to examine your choices (although it's really funny to me that Max criticizes my choices regardless of what I do) but I think that being able to alter your choices is a natural function of a save mechanic. it seems like they just embrace that and make it into part of the game. in a game where "your choices matter" and you can save and reload, players will do that, so the time travel function enables them to salvage some of the broken immersion.

[Untrod Tripod]

also, the musical montage at the end of the first episode was.... hilarious, weird, and somehow completely appropriate

[Shadow Kisuragi]

Life is Strange, $10 on XB1 this week:
https://store.xbox.com/Xb...d9-4237-a04e-03ecea13106d

[singlebanana]

I finished the first part last night. The story so far as many have mentioned is sort of so-so, not bad, but not to the point where it has been itching to get home and play it every afternoon. I don't really care for the point and click nature of the game, for me, it moves too slow and I just feel like I have to check everything out, which gets a little repetitive to me. I know for some that this sort of gameplay is relaxing, but it tends to relax me into boredom. I like the challenge of being able to fail at games, and this just isn't there. I know that this is a different type of game and I get that, but so far, it's not really for me. To each their own though, and I do plan to finish the game and give it a good try.

With that said, I really dig the music in this game and one of the scenes, in the bedroom, there is a song from a group I love called Sparklehorse. Sadly, the lead singer took his own life several years ago. Fitting that the music is rocking, but at the same time melancholy.

[Untrod Tripod]

Not a fan of Joyce's weird unexpectedly southern accent....

Also, the swearing in the dialogue sounds really wooden for some reason

[MaterialHandlerMike]

I finished the first part last night. The story so far as many have mentioned is sort of so-so, not bad, but not to the point where it has been itching to get home and play it every afternoon. I don't really care for the point and click nature of the game, for me, it moves too slow and I just feel like I have to check everything out, which gets a little repetitive to me. I know for some that this sort of gameplay is relaxing, but it tends to relax me into boredom. I like the challenge of being able to fail at games, and this just isn't there. I know that this is a different type of game and I get that, but so far, it's not really for me. To each their own though, and I do plan to finish the game and give it a good try.

With that said, I really dig the music in this game and one of the scenes, in the bedroom, there is a song from a group I love called Sparklehorse. Sadly, the lead singer took his own life several years ago. Fitting that the music is rocking, but at the same time melancholy.

I am with ya Singlebanana. Maybe we are too old, to enjoy living vicariously, as teenage girls with time travel powers.

I still haven't picked up this game since I finished episode 3 last month. This game was killing my vibe at the time, so I switched up to Diablo 3. This game has an interesting feature with the time travel, but beyond that? I find it very pretty, but not very captivating. Going to see it through to see how it all ends, but so far, I have preferred Until Dawn 10 to 1, over this one.

[Untrod Tripod]

Spoiler: 4th episode spoiler (hover to show)

Gotten into the 4th episode and now I'm seeing a Lovecraft reference

this better not be Indigo Prophecy all over again

[Fleach]

A couple little things interfered with my schedule and I have a deadline for the Folklore podcast right around the corner, but with all of that done now I can go full steam ahead in Life Is Strange.

I haven't heard any comments yet because I don't want to ruin anything for myself. Tonight I'll play episode one and jump in with my thoughts.

[Pam]

One thing I'm a little on the fence on is how the game overtly tries to make you second guess your decisions. The mechanic of rewinding time to manipulate events is pretty great, but the player should be left with the feeling of "maybe I should have done it differently" naturally, which for me has usually been the case, but the fact that they have Max literally say that every time I think pushes too hard.

I know the time travel/changing decisions part is one of the biggest features both mechanically and story-wise, but it doesn't appeal to me at all. In the first episode I used rewind a couple times to see what would happen but for the most part I'd rather just stick with my first choice. This brings back memories of playing RPGs or adventure games when I was a teenager and I'd save before any major decision, then reload in case I didn't like the option I picked. The desire to do that has almost completely disappeared now. In episode 2 I never used rewind unless I was forced to. Plus it seems that during the really important parts (like the end of chapter 2) you mysteriously lose your power to rewind.

I think the overt "this action will have consequences" notifications are obnoxious, as I do with the "so and so will remember this" messages in Telltale games.

[Shadow Kisuragi]

They're there to let you know that those decisions are lynchpins for the story, and they're also there for replay in case you want to see how the decision later impacted things.
I agree that it's a bit obnoxious, but a lot of the consumers for these products don't want to spend time figuring out which decisions impacted the story 5 episodes later.

[GrayGhost81]

I can see both sides re: "this action will have consequences" notifications.

A toggle for them would be divine.