When reviewing a remaster, the question is always whether we should focus more on the game itself or what has changed from the original version. Ideally, both will be excellent and the two can be merged into one. That is not the case with the Life is Strange remastered collection.
The good news is that these are still mostly excellent games. As someone going through the full games for the first time, both life is strange titles here offer excellent stories, great characters, and a fully realized world to explore. They are well worth your time, and despite some issues, they remain so for these particular versions of the games. The bad news is that there is very little to distinguish these from the original releases and some of the changes are actually negative.
life is strange
life is strange tells the story of Max Caulfield. She recently returned to her hometown of Arcadia Bay after living in Seattle for five years. Her return is due to her admission to Blackwell Academy, one of the top art schools in the country where she studies photography. Despite the support of the school staff, Max struggles to trust her photography. She visits the toilet and encounters a student who is being blackmailed. Things get worse when the student being blackmailed responds by pulling out a gun and killing his blackmailer.
That’s when Max discovers she can turn back time and reveals the key mechanic of life is strange. By turning time around, Max can stop this murder and save the blackmailer, who turns out to be her childhood best friend Chloe. Soon, the two are inseparable, working to rebuild their friendship and trying to find Chloe’s newer best friend Rachel Amber, a young woman who went missing under strange circumstances months ago. Their investigation will take them to dark and seedy elements within Blackwell that have been pushed into the dark but are making their way into the light. All the while, Max continues to have visions of a giant tornado that wipes out the entire city in just a few days.
Originally released episodic, I must imagine it feels different to play life is strange today than in 2015. Instead of waiting for the next episode, you can jump straight to the next part, change the pace a bit, but relieve some of the extreme stress I certainly would have felt from some of the cliffhangers that the developers brought up. It also helped me stay with the game after the first chapter started off hard. There are good things, but the dialogue in that opening episode feels ridiculous, and despite strong voice acting, some of the things they have to say are just a bit much. The developers were apparently able to correct a bit in episode two, one of the perks of an episodic release. You will still see stats of what other players have chosen to do in their playthrough.
A game about choice
The reason for that is because life is strangeIt’s all about choice. The choice to save Chloe’s life starts these two on their path, but you’ll be making all sorts of decisions, both big and small. Some won’t change more than a few lines of dialogue, while others will change the entire course of the story. The game follows all these choices through five episodes, giving you real ownership of how things end in a deeply emotional ending. Puzzles are rarely overly difficult, although a few are a bit stupid. For example, finding bottles in a junkyard isn’t difficult, but they do get lost in and it may take some work to find them. A few puzzles have minor updates, but these are essentially the same games they were originally.
As for the remastering itself, it’s a real mixed experience, as you’d expect from a game already released on the same generation of platforms these remasters are released on. A PS5 or Xbox Series X|S release might have justified this more, but it’s very odd that the games are only available in the same generation they’ve already been released in. I wonder who needs these releases, especially when the original versions are often available cheaply. It’s not that there aren’t improvements. The new motion-captured animations are excellent and solve a real problem of the original games. The details of the characters, especially in their faces, have also been significantly improved, although the new, smoother visuals have less style and some details, such as facial expressions, have been lost. It makes the whole experience a bit artificial at times. There’s also the problem that these updates aren’t universally applied, with some scenes looking drastically better than others.
Despite this, the first life is strange still holds. After a slow start, the mysteries of Blackwell Academy become an irresistible draw, and the great characters will get you emotionally involved. Despite having an idea of what was to come, thanks to my time with the sequel Life is strange true colorsI wasn’t ready, I didn’t want to choose either option.
Before the storm
Life is strange before the storm is a prequel and tells the story of how Chloe met Rachel Amber and digs into a mystery involving her parents and background. It takes place years earlier, during the time Max was in Seattle, and she was dealing with the consequences of losing her father and her mother that went on.
While Before the storm is a much smaller story, certainly with key moments but also without the world-ending stakes of the original, in some ways the intimacy with these characters makes it a more interesting story. Unfortunately, it’s also a much less consistent title. With only three main episodes, and a bonus DLC this time included from the beginning, there was room for a tight experience, but we don’t really get that. Episode two is one of the strongest in any of these games, but the first episode is again quite slow and unlike the first gameBefore the storm struggles to hold onto the landing. A lot of it just feels overdone or like it requires characters to make decisions that are kind of strange.
something is missing
The time rewind powers of the first game are also sadly lacking as Chloe isn’t magic. Instead, her mechanic is the ability to argue very well. At various points, you can engage characters in a war of words, trying to manipulate them. These sequences are boring and don’t do much to advance the story. They don’t even seem useful in too many places.
The updated visuals here also look noticeably worse than the first game. They are still improved, but some characters are rough. However, despite some problems, Before the storm still tells an overall interesting story that adds extra depth to the first one life is strange also. If you like the first game, it’s worth playing.
Conclusion
The Life is Strange remastered collection offers you an excellent game and another, which is a lot of fun if you are invested in the characters. They are more than worth playing. The question is more whether this collection is the way you want to do it. Despite the improved visuals and animations that don’t make this the final version by any means, things are solid enough that if I could get a way, I’d probably go for these versions. Nevertheless, this is a great example of titles that simply didn’t need to be remastered. For fans of the series, it offers nothing that makes them worth revisiting, or even upgrading from the versions that are already out there. If you have another way to view Max and Chloe’s stories, just play it.
Final verdict: 3/5
Available on: Xbox One (reviewed), PS4, PC; Publisher: Square Enix; Developer: Deck Nine Games, Dontnod Entertainment; Players: 1; Released: February 1, 2022; ESRB: M for adult; MSRP: $39.99
Full disclosure: This review is based on a retail copy of Life is Strange Remastered Collection.
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