Life is Strange: Double Exposure Review
Summary: A superb second chapter to Max's story that hints at big things for the wider Life is Strange universe.
4.1
Pictures of You
Life is Strange: Double Exposure is a solid sequel to one of the best adventure games of recent years. It’s a poignant story packed with likable characters wrapped in an intriguing mystery.
Set several years after the events of Life is Strange, Double Exposure opens with Max working as the artist in residence and photography lecturer at Caledonian University, a prestigious arts college in Lakeport Vermont.
Enjoying life in the small college town, along with her best friends Moses and Safi, Max, though slightly more self-assured than the nervous teen from the original, she’s also less trusting, more guarded, and is still coming to terms with the catastrophic events that happened in Arcadia Bay.
Not that Max can do anything about it, anyway: she hasn’t been able to use her powers for years, and she doesn’t want to either. That is until a series of tragic events, starting with the death of her friend Safi, reawakens Max’s latent abilities and pulls her into a new time-bending adventure.
That’s all I’m going to say. I went into the story almost completely blind, and I highly recommend you do the same. It’s full of the usual twists, turns, and big reveals that made the original so compelling, and ruining any of that feels like a huge disservice to the superb, impactful narrative that Deck Nine has created.
Lakeport also has a different kind of charm to Arcadia Bay, a less small town you can’t wait to leave, than the idyllic metropolitan community you dreamed about until you finally start living there.
It’s a bustling college community with a cozy collegiate bar called the Snapping Turtle, a busy campus adorned with art, and thick layers of powdery snow covering everything. However, under the pleasant exterior, all is not well, and it’s up to Max to uncover the secrets of this seemingly pleasant campus town.
It’s not all doom and gloom though as Double Exposure is also a story full of heart, humor, and humanity. Its cast of diverse characters is worth getting to know and you’ll want to because they’re genuinely likeable. It also helps that the dialogue has greatly improved from the original as well, it feels like two 20-somethings having a conversation, rather than the weird “hello fellow kids” vibes that many of Max and Chloe’s interactions had.
The presentation has also had a considerable glow-up, Lakeview feels lived in and vibrant, while character animations, and particularly facial expressions show an incredible amount of detail and emote in an incredibly naturalistic and nuanced way that helps you connect emotionally to the characters with something as simple as a half smile and a look at the ground.
The voice acting is also once again top tier and everyone in the cast pulls their weight and then some. The soundtrack also slaps. But you already knew that. This is a Life is Strange game after all.
Character interactions may feel more nuanced, and the cast easier to empathise with, but the main crux of the gameplay is exactly what you would expect from the series.
Every interaction will affect how others react to you, while major decisions see time slow and two options are presented that will have a significant effect on the plot, It is worth thinking about them before you go blurting out an answer. (Although that’s also a valid way to play the game if you like to live dangerously).
Though Max may no longer be able to rewind time she has a new time-bending trick; the ability to jump between two separate timelines; the one where Safi died, and another where she is still alive.
This new dimension-hopping trick is put to fantastic use to create some legitimately clever puzzles that see Max grab an item in one timeline to use in the other or get some vital information from one version of a character to use on another.
It all works fairly seamlessly too, you simply need to follow the hum of your Dual-Sense controller to a gateway and Max will tear her way into a parallel reality. Some of the better sequences in the game see you hopping from one to another to overcome obstacles and avoid characters that might otherwise catch Max snooping.
Alternatively, she can pulse an area, that overlays what’s going on in the other timeline in a ghostly form over the current one and is used to great effect to eavesdrop for information and help sabotage a projector in one of Double Exposure’s more satisfying sequences.
Overall Ma’s powers feel far more vital this time around. Whereas, rewinding time in the original felt more like a narrative contrivance first, and a gameplay mechanic second. Max’s dimension-hopping skills in Double Exposure feel more gameplay-driven and make for a more satisfying gameplay experience.
Final Thoughts
Life is Strange: Double Exposure is a great second chapter to Max’s story that hints at big things for the wider Life is Strange universe. It’s a well-written adventure packed with likable characters and a fairly satisfying payoff.
What’s most impressive though is how it successfully weaves its supernatural mechanics through the story in clever ways that drag you deeper into its overarching mysteries and make you want to dig a little deeper every time you play.
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