Life is Strange: Double Exposure Review

Life is Strange: Double Exposure review: I always remember Life is Strange as a series that attracted great attention with its first game, but whose subsequent games did not have the expected impact. Like every young person who watched the Butterfly Effect movie at one time, I played the first game with great enthusiasm and loved it very much. I also liked the second game, but I thought it did not have enough impact. I didn’t even look at True Colors because it didn’t interest me at all. I didn’t even know Double Exposure existed until I was told this game was available for review. Let’s see what kind of game Life is Strange: Double Exposure is.

Life is Strange: Double Exposure Review – Again After Many Years

Life is Strange: Double Exposure, unlike later games, continues the story of the first game and puts us in control of Max Caulfield again. In the first game developed by Don’t Nod, we had two options: to give up our love Chloe to save Arcadia Bay from a great disaster, or, on the contrary, to continue our journey by sacrificing the whole town. Instead of deciding which is the real ending for players, Double Exposure has written a sequel that makes both options possible.

My choice was to save Chloe, which presented the scenario in which Max, who continued with Chloe for a few more years, started a new life as a lecturer at Caledon University after Chloe left him. Max, who is in his late twenties, continues his life as a lecturer giving seminars at the university, having lost his powers, with his close friend Safi and the new people he meets on the university campus. Of course, if daily life continued, there would be no story for us to play.

The story takes place at Caledon University and in the first episode, we see Max’s new life at the university, we learn about how he spends his days with his friends and what he did in his past. Later, we spend a nice evening with your friends under the stars, and suddenly your whole life turns upside down when our close friend is murdered. Meanwhile, our new powers gradually begin to emerge and we realize that we can move to an alternative dimension.

Thanks to Max’s new power, we move to an alternative Caledon where Safi’s death did not occur and we try to uncover the mystery behind the murder committed on our side. In the meantime, we learn about aspects of the students, teachers and other staff at the school that we do not know, and we have the chance to establish new relationships depending on our preference.

I had some doubts in my mind about how the choices we made in the first game would be carried over to the new game, but Nine Deck found a nice way. Chapter 1, the first part of the story, is based on briefly reminding us of Max’s new life, his friends and the events he experienced in the past. With the choices you make in this part, you determine what happens in the first game and affect the flow of the story. For example, in the first game, you determine that you saved Chloe by briefly telling your friend about your past, and social media accounts and interactions in the game are shaped accordingly. Of course, the impact of these events on the present day may not please everyone, but I liked the way they set up the story.

Lastly, on the story side, I would like to touch upon the characters. The fact that the story takes place many years after the first game means that our character has grown up and is now an adult, and I loved that. Considering that the players who played the first game when it was released are now adults, it is a very nice detail that Max grows up with them. The story and side characters also have a “more mature” feel. Some of the side characters are more obscure than they should be, but when I look at the whole, the characters are pretty good.

I have some complaints about the story itself, there was a point where I felt like they kept the excitement at its peak for a long time and couldn’t decide what to write at the end, but I can’t ignore the possibility that this was because of my choices. No matter what, it doesn’t have the striking impact of the first game, it feels like it can’t use a much greater potential, but I don’t think they offer a bad story.

I Can’t Take My Words Back

In Life is Strange: Double Exposure, various changes in the gameplay along with Max’s powers await us. First of all, there is no Rewind anymore, so we don’t have the chance to go back in time and change what they did. Thanks to our new ability, we can see two different realities and travel between the two at appropriate points. While we tour the campus, which has a pessimistic atmosphere due to the murder committed on one side, a colorful campus and energetic people prepared for New Year’s events are waiting for us on the other side.

Of course, both sides have their own problems, and we witness these situations while trying to solve the puzzles with Max. The puzzles, as you might have guessed, have solutions such as going to a different dimension to get into a room you cannot enter, or talking to a character in the other dimension to get information about a subject you do not understand. In fact, the game shows us different ways of using dual reality mechanics, but it generally focuses on two of them, causing the gameplay to repeat itself. Although, considering that there is an option to “Watch it like a movie” in the game, I can guess that it gives priority to the story side.

In Double Exposure, we have the ability to use our new ability to transition to the other side, as well as see other events in the environment. In fact, this feature is quite good, sometimes you can even hear some developments that fill the background of the events, but the dialogues between the characters may overlap or sometimes their conversations may be interrupted suddenly.

There are various polaroids to collect, photos to take and stories to listen to around. While chasing these, you also do small side tasks such as restoring the pictures. You also have the chance to take photos of people or places around campus. You can even take double-layered photos with the Double Exposure option, which gives the game its name, but I did not prefer these photos because I did not like them at all.

This time, they have introduced two characters with whom Max can take his relationship in a more romantic direction, and the choice is left entirely to us. In this way, they say “whoever wants can do whatever they want”, but it was inevitable for me to choose Amanda instead of the annoying Vihn. Although I expected both characters to have a bigger place in the story, they were a bit vague. They gave priority to characters like Safi and Moses, which is good considering that they are the people around whom the story revolves.

Ultimately, there is not much I can add about the gameplay of this game. We have an adventure game with small events that are affected by the choices to a certain extent and big options that seriously change the flow of the story. The impact of the choices we make on the game is quite remarkable, especially compared to recent Telltale games. However, if you are not happy with the choice you made at some point (in the so-called major choice), there is nothing you can do to undo it. You have to continue with the outcome of your choices until the end of the story.

Graphics and Performance

Life is Strange: Double Exposure, of which I played the PC version, looks very nice. Environmental designs, animations, parts where we see two realities at the same time, character models, all look quite good. Max’s adult version was exactly what I expected, and I loved his style. I liked all of her outfits, although the Final Fantasy outfit we got as an additional DLC was my favorite. In general, all characters are well designed and their clothes are chosen appropriately. It just bothered me a little that random people around the campus were standing around in a lifeless manner.

While the graphics of the game are so beautiful, I did not experience any problems on the performance side. Although the game, which I usually played with a stable frame rate, experienced significant FPS loss in a scene where the environment became crowded, it was not a problem that spread throughout the game.

The first game of Life is Strange chose the music very well and all of them were songs that fit the spirit of the game. Double Exposure continued on this path, the music selections are very good, the scenes in which it is used are very good, the game definitely won my heart in terms of music.

I’m a little confused about the sound. The character voices are very well done, the effects are good, the background sounds to provide the atmosphere are fine, but there is a problem with the sound adjustments. I’ve talked a little about the overlapping of dialogues, people talking in the background can suddenly get in the way of our character because their voices are louder than normal. Afterwards, a cutscene enters and the sound suddenly becomes hoarse. I turn up the volume so I can hear the cutscene easily, but when the scene ends, a bomb explodes in the room. Also, for people like me who are sensitive to high-pitched sounds, the loud noise made by the transition points between universes will be disturbing. While coming here, I preferred to play by removing the headphones.

Conclusion

Life is Strange: Double Exposure presents a completely new adventure with a more mature Max Caulfield who has grown up with the audience who played the first game. Its story lags behind the first game in terms of impressiveness, it does not present some characters and events as well as it should, but this does not mean that it is a bad game. Actually, the problem here is that the first game is too good and raises the expectation bar a little too high. For fans, I think some of the writing team’s choices regarding what happened after the first game might make old fans of the series unhappy. I’m not too surprised and find Max’s current situation to be pretty well thought out, but I don’t think everyone will agree with me.

Well, the most important question that comes to our mind is, the main story of which ends in 13 hours, the playing time can be increased to 20 – 25 hours with different options, and is available for sale on Steam with a price tag of 40 dollars (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1874000/Life_is_Strange_Double_Exposure/). Is Life is Strange: Double Exposure available to buy now? Considering that the story takes precedence over the gameplay and the gameplay time is not very long, I may recommend waiting for a discount if you are not a big fan of the series. Players who love adventure games, enjoy such stories, and have been wondering about the continuation of Max’s story for years will love this game like me.