Life is Strange: Double Exposure Review – Drawn Out Murder Mystery

Seeing a sequel come out for the original Life is Strange games this late on felt like a bit of a shock. I wasn't sure what to expect from diving into Max Caulfield's story again, especially since the previous games were so chaotic and messy. At least in this one, Chloe didn't feature as heavily, and it was more focused on Max as a grown-up and how she navigated the world after the loss of both her powers and Chloe. As a result, you get to see Max as a more mature character who didn't make as many reckless decisions (at the start) before things began to hit the fan. However, as the game progresses, Max is just like her younger self and continues to make as many reckless decisions as she did in Arcadia Bay. I wasn't sure what to expect from Life is Strange: Double Exposure, but overall, it was an enjoyable experience, albeit a bit frustrating at times.

Life is Strange: Double Exposure allows you to decide what happened to Chloe in Arcadia Bay, choosing between saying she died or saying you lost touch. Overall, Chloe is somewhat glossed over in this game, with small references to her, as it's very obvious that Max still isn't over her. Despite that, I'm glad that Chloe didn't make too much of a grand appearance in this title, as she was insufferable from the outset and was a bit of a deterrent for me in the previous games. Getting to see Max as an adult and seeing her try to live a normal life was great, especially with characters like Safi and Moses being supportive characters with great personalities.

With this game, you have to decide whether you are going to try and get Max into a relationship with Amanda, the local bartender, or whether you are going to see her flirt with characters like Vinh, who is conniving and full of himself. Despite the options laid out in front of you, Max was her punny, dad-jokey self throughout the entire thing. She never truly lost her mildly cringeworthy roots from the start, and I liked that a lot. From the background characters with minimal conversations to other characters you build up relationships with throughout your time with Max Caulfield, every character's personality shines through and adds to the Life is Strange: Double Exposure experience. Although I enjoyed the conversations with characters, I felt that there were too many pauses in conversations, to the point that conversations felt unnatural and drawn out. It often broke my immersion, as it felt like characters should be reacting faster.

When it comes to picking games I play, I have always loved a 'choices matter' game, especially when I see other players' statistics. Surprisingly, I found myself in the minority for many of the choices. Some of my choices felt more obvious than others as I tried to think through my choices logically. However, it seemed that my choices weren't the obvious pick for the vast majority. For example, when Alderman asked me to co-operate, I said yes. However, I thought it'd be obvious that I wouldn't actually cooperate with him and his case. Moses immediately thought otherwise and thought I was doing it to cover my own back.

While many choices matter, style games have you make decisions that you don't quite know what you're getting into. Some of the decisions here felt like they were really obvious, and they only backfired on you. Another was choosing to save Gwen's USB drive. This felt like an obvious choice, as I wanted to help her build a case against Dr Fayyad, but again, it led to Gwen being furious with me. Despite being told that my actions would have consequences, ultimately, it didn't feel like any of the consequences had real staying power. Compared to the previous games, where you could literally choose to save one person over an entire city and see the story progress into the next game as a result of those actions, none of my bigger choices seemed to have that much of an effect on the rest of the game.

Although I really liked the new art style of Life is Strange: Double Exposure, I felt it was blurry and over-softened. It was almost as if you had smudged your glasses and were trying to look through them. While it wasn't too bad in the main story, every time you would be taken to the 'wardrobe' and had the option to change your outfit, it felt really pixelated and blurry despite having my graphics settings on Ultra. One of the visual details I liked was that the color palette between the Dead world and the Living world was so obviously contrasting. The Living world was warm and vivid, while the Dead world had a blue and dark hue.

When it comes to accessibility in games, the team behind Life is Strange: Double Exposure did it right. While some people may think it's being 'sensitive' to want a trigger warning before certain topics come up in a game, it can be beneficial. Sure, it's listed as a mature game, but giving vague content warnings isn't overall that helpful. There are a lot of great accessibility settings that make it a smoother experience for me to play, including longer decision times. While I didn't personally need the trigger warnings throughout the game, it's helpful for those who may need it, and I appreciate seeing an extensive accessibility menu in games, as everyone should be allowed to play games.

Overall, I had a great time with Life is Strange: Double Exposure. At times, it felt like it was unnecessarily dragging, but then it sped up quite quickly towards the end. I was getting to be a detective in a murder mystery where you get to see other people's choices, which made it a ton of fun. My biggest gripe was the lack of manual saves, which made it quite challenging to pick up the game and put it back down again, as you never know when the next save is going to be. Then, if I had to quit out of the game and lose progress, there's no option to skip any of the conversations, making it drag out even longer.

Reviewed on PC (code provided by the publisher).

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7.7

WCCFTECH RATING

Life is Strange: Double Exposure

While Life is Strange: Double Exposure was a lot of fun and had a lot of great moments between using her powers to swap between timelines to be a murder-mystery detective, conversations dragged on and significant choices being made didn't feel consequential at all. It's a great experience, with a lot of twists, but some of it feels a bit too drawn out at times.

Pros

• Great personalities from all characters, even background characters.
• Beautiful world with lots of vibrancy
• Fantastic soundtrack

Cons

• Slightly blurry filter gave it a weird feeling
• Conversations were too drawn out
• Big decisions didn't feel consequential
• Easy to forget about Max's Pulse power

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