![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.delirium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Steam_banner_616-300x72.png\")
I\u2019m in a weird position here, in that I\u2019ve never played an episodic\u00a0game before. The chapters are not terribly long, but they\u2019re long enough that the full game seems like it will turn out to be incredibly long, plus also I\u2019m so bad at reviewing partial games anyway. Not to say I expect to stop playing Life Is Strange! But things happen sometimes, and the part where I opted to take a break between chapters is, if not telling, at least cautionary.<\/p>\n
So, anyway, this is one of the new wave of exploratory, talky, thoughtful games that are mostly devoid of shooting wave after wave of nameless enemies who are (if not alien invaders or zombies) nevertheless human, thereby raising questions of morality. You may recall that I played Gone Home<\/a>, about an older sister arriving unexpectedly from college to find that her entire family had been upturned in the meantime, via exploration of the empty house. Life Is Strange\u2019s first chapter, Chrysalis<\/a>, is certainly more \u201cinteractive character\u201d \/ less \u201cdetached observer\u201d than that was, which is a good thing. It was a lot easier to get immersed in Max\u2019s problems, because she actually had a personality and a physical form, instead of being a set of silent eyeballs floating through a silent house. (Irony: I did<\/em>\u00a0like Gone Home, but its flaws are apparent now that I\u2019ve played literally any other game in the same new genre of play.)<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the deal as gleaned in the first five minutes of play. Max Caulfield is a new transfer student to a prestigious high school academy on the Oregon coast, returning to her hometown from Seattle after 3 years away because it is the best place to pursue her love of photography. She\u2019s an out of place loner who has not reached out to her former best friend because of a fear of rejection, she\u2019s learning to navigate the many cliques (especially the Vortex Club, for hyper-popular people) in her new environment, she\u2019s barely aware of the geek who is desperately hitting on her at every turn, she keeps avoiding a submission to a photography contest that the teacher she idolizes is pressuring her to enter (also fear of rejection), her earbuds are full of the latest alternative music you\u2019ve never heard of, she finds herself thinking a lot about the preponderance of flyers about a girl who went missing last spring\u2026 it\u2019s a high school story. Cool. Been here, done this.<\/p>\n Then, by way of a massive spoiler in the 5-10 minute range, it takes a sharp turn into inexplicable sci-fi territory, and the game is off to the races. I\u2019ll probably talk more about how in future chapters when it would be less of a spoiler than it is in this one, but I am both impressed and a little dismayed by what is a paradigm-shift to RPG elements of games (if not to strategy elements; I\u2019d link what game I\u2019m thinking of, but the same spoiler problem applies) combined with a healthy middle finger raised straight at me. But[1] in a good way!<\/p>\n Long story short: The Steam Machine was a good purchase, if the new genre are all as good as the two I\u2019ve played so far.<\/p>\n [1] Apparently, since I loved it and want to play more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m in a weird position here, in that I\u2019ve never played an episodic\u00a0game before. The chapters are not terribly long, but they\u2019re long enough that the full game seems like it will turn out to be incredibly long, plus also I\u2019m so bad at reviewing partial games anyway. Not to say I expect to stop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1275,430,1305],"class_list":["post-5812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-software","tag-interactive-fiction","tag-science-fiction","tag-steam-machine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5812"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5815,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5812\/revisions\/5815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}