Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

@Yousef- Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed reading it. It's a hard game to talk about without any spoilers considering how much of the game is anchored around one major event early on in the game, so I'm happy to hear you felt like I didn't give anything away.

@Tjuz Excellent review! I enjoyed reading your thoughts, even though it sounds like I enjoyed the game more than you did. I do agree with a lot of your criticisms though. In fact, I like how you’ve explained some of the issues because it has helped me understand why I did feel that Alex as a little emptier and less relatable than many of the other LiS characters. I finished True Colors a month ago so it’s fresh in my mind.

As for the issues with pacing and holding Alex’s backstory hostage until the late game, I think maybe the writers were hoping that the climax would hit harder when it’s revealed that Alex’s dad was one of the miners who died. I do agree with you that they could have carefully done the tragic backstory at the beginning and saved the piece about the father going to be a miner and it still could have had the same (if not better) emotional impact. That’s a fair observation and didn’t occur to me until you mentioned it.

I also felt the romance was a little forced, but it ended up okay for me. I did go with Steph as she seemed the more interesting character than Ryan, but seeing how the narrative goes with Jed I would have liked to see how being Ryan’s romantic interest changed how the climatic reveal plays out. As it was, I was able to keep in Ryan’s good graces and he defended my version of Alex at that reveal moment, but there’s an interesting narrative opportunity to be had if Alex and been dating the son of her dad’s killer.

As for the music, I thought it was pretty good, on par with the series. But it’s a genre of music that I don’t usually listen to and so I’m probably not a good judge of the indie music scene.

Overall, I was closer to a 7/10 for the game, or even 8/10. I think Before the Storm is probably my favorite, although they are all fairly close and parts of each entry resonate uniquely with me. Like you, I’m looking forward to Double Exposure and getting back into Max’s storyline.

@Th3solution I can't agree. I saw the 5/10 score from @Tjuz and didn't even read it then.

Seriously though, we can't all agree. True Colors is right up there with the original for me, with Life is Strange 2 being easily the weakest imo. I did enjoy Before the Storm more than most as well, which is at least partially because I actually like the Chloe character.

I guess one thing that helped is I had no issues with the romance portion of the game, but I also went with Steph. Oddly enough she was probably my favorite character in the game, so it seemed like a logical choice to me.

@Th3solution Glad you enjoyed reading it! I do think the miner reveal was a good one, but was pre-empted by the long sequences of backstory just destroying the pacing of that whole section. Like you said, I think it would've been better if they sprinkled those scenes throughout the game. Since I believe it was anyway about four scenes total, why not put one in each chapter which would then culminate in the big reveal at the end? I think it would've helped the pacing of it all immensely and given us more time to get invested in their backstory, hopefully having the reveal hit harder in the end because of it.

@KilloWertz Haha, fair enough. It seems we have just about the opposite opinion regarding the franchise, and that's all good! I think all these games (which, yes @Th3solution, much like The Dark Pictures 😉) are so reliant on connecting with the protagonist in a meaningful way, which with my personal experiences in life Life is Strange 2 managed better than any of the other entries. But that's why True Colors in particular also falls so short for me, because the character I feel like is the least fleshed out or interesting of any of the entries. I did actually really enjoy Before the Storm as well, so it seems like us three are in good company here regarding that one! Did you end up playing the Steph DLC as well? I decided to forgo it after my experience with the main game, but if she's your favourite character I would imagine that DLC to be a fun time for you.

@Tjuz I think I agree about the pacing and the overall character development. I think in LiS and LiS2 there was a better buildout of the main characters and specifically with the relationships. The interactions of the two brothers of LiS2 and the two friends of LiS are more fleshed out and feel more genuine. Although I liked Alex’s interactions with all the side characters, ultimately none of those relationships are very significant, like you say, and Alex is more of a stranger observing them with her powers. Her core relationship they kept trying to cultivate was with Gabe and their interaction did feel a little hollow for most of the game, mostly on account of the fact he dies so early in the game that they can’t really interact much, and then the significant interactions from flashbacks are held until late

As for the question, I wasn’t able to get Charlotte to stick up for me, but everyone else did at that meeting. I’m not sure what I did to Charlotte, but obviously I made some poor choices with her. Which is fine, because she was probably my least favorite character in the game. I never warmed up to her and I never really cared about her or her relationship with Gabe. She just always seemed strangely aloof and not very genuine.

I was tempted by Steph’s DLC since I did like her as well, but since I’m not a very big fan of DLC in general, I didn’t bite. I am curious how it is, so if @KilloWertz knows, do tell!

@Tjuz That's fair. I think I remember reading about how personal playing Life is Strange 2 ended up being for you. It's not that I thought it was bad. I haven't thought that about any game in the series, but it was definitely my least favorite. It didn't help that I thought the little brother's outbursts were annoying at times, at least for me.

I would've played the Steph DLC, but I bought it physically and I've never noticed the Deluxe Edition DLC to ever go on sale unfortunately. I would've otherwise of course, but not for however much the Deluxe Upgrade costs. So, sorry @Th3solution, I can't tell.

Showgunners
Rating: 8/10

***

It’s not hard to give Showgunners an engaging elevator pitch. Imagine X-Com meets The Hunger Games and you’re already well on your way to imagining the highly entertaining setting for this stylish, murderous rampage. The setup is this: you play as Scarlett, who thanks to [insert tragic backstory here], has entered a deathly reality game show to take revenge on the person who caused [reprise tragic backstory here]. This perpetrator being a regular and beloved character on Homicidal All-Stars gives Scarlett the perfect opportunity to end his existence once and for all with maybe a little extra bloodshed on the way. Who cares? The people we’re up against are anyway just criminals trying to get out of their prison sentence. Along the way, the audience will follow your antics through live-streams and edited episodes where they’ll grow to love or hate you (depending on how you interact with them) and you might even be able to get a sponsorship or two along the way thanks to them! All in all, it’s a well thought-out and incredibly interesting setting to set your X-Com-style game in… and thankfully, it lives up to its promise.

Aside from all the shooting and violently knocking about criminals you’ll be doing, the game manages to not make it feel too repetitive thanks to a strong formula where it will switch between what is essentially overworld exploration and combat sequences. In these segments, you’ll walk around trying your best (and failing) to avoid hurtful traps, figure out simplistic puzzles, hunt for loot boxes which give you money and upgraded gear, sign autographs of adoring fans in the hopes of getting sponsored and eventually get ambushed. It does a great job at adding an extra element into the game to switch up the pacing of the gameplay and engage you with the world of the show. Thanks to the ever-present announcer and your squadmate dialogue, it constantly feels like you’re being watched and helps you immerse yourself into the premise of the narrative. These segments don’t outstay their welcome, and if you’re worried about being a completionist, helpfully let you know when it’s no-turning-back-time and if you’ve missed anything worth going back to look for.

In-between the levels, or rather the “episodes” that you’ll hopefully be surviving, you’ll get a chance to rest. In this time, you can hang out with your teammates and learn more about them or walk around the resting area and hear crew chatter about the goings-on of the show as a whole. It’s a great way of letting the other playable characters be more than just fodder in your quest for vengeance and genuinely start building a connection to them. By the end, I was quite happy to have gotten to know them and invested to make sure that they would stay alive! That said, unlike X-Com, this game (luckily) has no permadeath and will be graceful in bringing your corpse friends back to life. In this area, you also have the opportunity to record your own confessionals for the show and listen to ones recorded by other contestants who you might or might not know or ever meet. It really establishes the setting as something that is way bigger than you, your friend or your personal quest for revenge. All of these segments in the gameplay come together well to build an incredibly well constructed world to be your playground and adds so much flair and charm to the game that it’s hard not to fall in love with.

As for the combat, in typical X-Com style, it’s highly satisfying to play. I personally find this type of combat to be always so engaging. The percentages to hit, the carefully thought out moves, the ways in which you’ll screw it all up and try to recover from it, getting lucky (or not) and the cutscene animations for when you finally get that kill you’ve been aiming for are just repeating combat elements that never get old for me. The game does a great job at constantly introducing new enemy types and gameplay mechanics, so that every stage truly feels unique. The level design feels generally fair and never annoying for the sake of it with plenty of places to take cover and opportunities to take out your opponents. Of course, it’s a case of vice versa, so you won’t be able to steamroll them either. I found the AI of the so-called “defenders” to be largely smart, which just helped to make me feel like an absolute genius for outsmarting them. Maybe that’s just a case of me having an inflated ego, but that’s neither here nor there. The game also offers you optional combat arenas to play in the exploratory sections that you can skip if you prefer, but I wound up playing each and every one available in the game because I simply had such a good time with it.

The skill trees with which you can upgrade your characters are probably some of the most simple in gaming. You really don’t have to think in any way about the upgrade path you’re going to take. You might feel pressured at the beginning to think carefully, but you’ll quickly realise that you get showered in XP and will be able to get all the perks without a problem. I think I maxed out everyone’s level and skill tree by the time I was maybe 2/3rds through the game, but that is assuming you do quite literally everything the game has to offer you in each segment. Thanks to making it so easy to acquire the perks, it means you end up with a high amount of abilities for each character that just make the combat feel more open-ended and encourage you to play around. Even in the late stages of the game, I was still discovering new ways in which I could use my abilities to destroy my fellow competitors, such as forcibly making them self-immolate. The one downside there is to the amount of characters that will eventually join you on your mission is that a few of them get introduced rather late in the game. For me, that made it hard to ever really include them voluntarily in my gameplay as I knew the early character like the back of my hand and knew perfectly well how to win fights with them. Luckily, this issue gets somewhat resolved in the back-end of the game when the opportunity to go into battles with all six arises.

What this does bring with it is one of my major complaints about the game. With the advent of the full character roster going to battle, the combat arenas become incredibly long and drawn-out. To compensate for there now being six fighters present, the game has no issue to just throw an endless horde of enemies at you for many turns. This issue exists earlier in the game where occasionally it will make levels go on for much longer than you think by unexpectedly adding new areas and objectives, but it gets taken to a maximum in this final stretch. It doesn’t help that after you finish the penultimate fight of the entire game, it asks you if you want to play DLC levels. Obviously, I opted into them hoping for a fun time where it utilises mechanics in unique ways and maybe adds an extra layer of story, but instead it gives you two mandatory combat arenas along with three optional ones. Each one took me 30-40 minutes a piece to complete, which you can imagine absolutely destroys the pacing of the main game putting this minutes before the final stage. The in-game excuse the game uses to justify this detour is to help one of your squadmates find an important medicine for their partner, but outside of one objective in the final combat arena which is easily completed just by interacting with the tile, this motivation is not further explored in any way. Unless you’re really aching for more gameplay after the 15 or so hours the game has already provided you, I would advise against delaying the end with this free DLC.

A few short talking points:

• I liked the way it handled the weapon progression in-between areas. You get the opportunity to buy new weapons at practically any point in the overworld and also collect them from lootboxes, and they are almost without fail better than whatever the previous weapon you collected was. It doesn’t complicate anything with weapon modding or endless bonuses/debuffs. You simply know when you pick up or buy a new weapon that it’s likely better than your old one, which I much prefer over having a full inventory of weapons that are either slightly better at this or this or this.
• Even though I enjoyed the part where you sign autographs for the fans you meet in the overworld, I did feel like it was a missed opportunity that you were somewhat railroaded into responding in a certain manner. Each dialogue choice will give you “personality points”, which are then used as a requirement to sign with a specific sponsor. Each sponsor will give you unique bonuses to either your entire team or Scarlett herself. However, because you know exactly what requirements there are in terms of personality for each sponsor and reward, you end up just picking whatever response will give you the points needed for the next sponsor you’re working towards. I would’ve preferred for the autographs to feel a bit more organic in how you want to respond to each fan by possibly hiding the rewards so that it doesn’t feel like it’s only a means to an end.
• I thought the inconsistency in terms of the way the cutscenes were handled was somewhat off-putting. The game has about three entirely different styles of cutscenes. Either fully animated ones like you would expect from your regular cinematic video game, more visual novel-style ones with talking heads on each side and a dialogue choice in the middle or entirely illustrated slideshows with a voice-over. Ultimately, the inconsistency between these is a very minor complaint, but I would’ve liked it if it was all a bit more in tandem with one another. I can imagine it was only handled this way due to budget constraints.

***

Verdict: Showgunners is an incredibly fun game that sets out to do one very specific thing and wildly succeeds in it. It brings to life its setting and ideas with verve and executes it all mostly well. While there’s some complaints I have, they don’t distract from me seeing the entire experience as a worthwhile one. I believe it does play it safe with its combat compared to other games in the genre, but when it’s so highly satisfying it’s hard to complain about the results. It’s an absolute shame that I’ve since read online that the studio has had to lay off a large portion of its staff, because this game is clearly developed by a team of spirited and talented developers who I would love to see get their chance to improve on their work with time. The studio did recently release an unrelated follow-up called Sumerian Six, which looks to be more in the style of the tactical stealth games the now-defunct Mimimi Games were known for brilliantly bringing to life. I hope it’s as much of a successful homage to that genre as this one was to the one X-Com popularised, and I’m excited to play it and see what else this studio has in store.

Banged through Double Exposure this weekend. I feel like for a while last year my entire brand on here was to write flowery Life is Strange reviews through tears in my eyes as every one of them left me as a big pile of emotional jelly at the end.

This one though, kind of left me cold.

The first two chapters almost feel like a repeat of Max’s mistakes, going back to the past and trying to redo things over and over again. Every attempt to zig or zag here so we don't literally just lift entire pages of past experiences into this one usually result in what feels like a lesser experience over what has come before.

As Max learned, there is no perfect, every choice has a price, and living with past mistakes and moving forwards is the only answer. By the end of Chapter 3 it does feel like they are starting to learn what Max learned a decade earlier as things start getting really good, taking us in enough of a new direction for the series for me to think they might be turning this one around. However, just as it feels like we hit the ground running for this to really start going places we hit a really unsatisfying cliffhanger ending. It hits so sharply, I googled afterwards to see if I’d just missed that all the episodes aren’t out yet. But apparently this is it. I guess they kinda knew you'd feel this way as there is even an achievement confirming you finished the game. Awkward.

It does seem to sort of try and address a lot of the criticisms of almost every game and maybe the idea was to create an ultimate Life is Strange package. I dunno really what the plan was here, honestly, but what I do know it didn’t really work for me.

In True Colors the powers were poorly integrated into the story and rather underdeveloped, choice became far more about flavour, than necessarily sending the game down entirely new paths like the original at least tried to pretend you were doing. Double Exposure tries to address both of these criticisms, as powers basically are the story again, like they were for large portions in the original game and the power now creates two separate timelines Max can shape through her choices.

This probably sounds great, however, what makes me love True Colors without reservation despite acknowledging its many flaws, is there is no piece of media more valuable to me than one that makes me feel something, and True Colors didn’t just make me feel something, it made me feel a lot and everything I felt while playing that game, even on repeated playthroughs where I knew the punches were coming, they were still strong enough to knock the wind right out of me.

There is no moment like that basically ever in Double Exposure. The power should create so many opportunities to make some of the most powerful emotional moments this series has ever seen, but the heart and soul in this franchise seems to have gotten lost somewhere. For some they may not mind, but to me a Life is Strange game that didn't make me cry even once? What are we doing here?!

This feeling kind of extends to everything else, as well. I liked the cast better than the original Life is Strange, mostly because most of that original cast were insufferable hipster douchebags and rarely ever well acted. However, because Double Exposure felt so emotionally lifeless to me, I never felt myself really forming attachments to any body new here. It was awesome to have Max back and have her original voice be retained. But I just missed how strongly I cared about everyone in True Colors. It is strange cause I thought the one big strength of Deck Nine over Don’t Nod was their character writing, but I just kinda feel… whatever about this cast, no strong emotions about them one way or another. And I feel like the absolute most damning thing you can say about a Life is Strange game is the most you feel is a slight shrug of the shoulders.

Visually, like all the Life is Strange games, it is kind of a mixed bag, too. Environments are gorgeous and detailed and the presentation is highly cinematic. The way they capture Max moving from one timeline to another is really nicely done. It is all just such a vibe, and it is always a pleasure when it lets you just exist in these spaces for pockets.

Beyond that, all the little details captured on peoples faces or with their body language when they talk is honestly kind of crazy, too. We are so far removed from the stiff bodied, emotionless faces, and lifeless performances from that original game. But I'd argue it even goes beyond that, like I’ve seen plenty of great mocap in my time, but I feel like there are so many additional little micro expressions or micro tells with body language they didn’t have to include here, but the fact they did just gives everything so much more texture.

However, we’re still clinging onto stylisations of the past, that I kind of wish we’d just let go of at this point. The weird lego hair everyone has especially, needs to go in the bin. I kept marvelling at how gorgeous Max looks in Double Exposure, all the detail they put into her skin, her eyes, her expressions. And then my eyes would drift to the plastic barnet clinging to her head and I was ripped right out of it.

It is also weird how jank some of this still is, years later, like they are still recycling animations from the first game. Max feels absolutely horrible to control, and her rigging and animation for moving around outside of cutscenes feels utterly ancient and pulls you out of so many moments. I also had a surprising amount of bugs that pulled me out too. People’s eyes going crazy. Facial animations going haywire. Props ending up in weird places. A huge amount of weird clipping. Low textures layered onto higher ones to create a weird flatness to things. Like they would be minor things in other games, but in a game where so much care has been put into making characters feel so real in their interactions, having a beer bottle orbiting them like a UFO clipping through their body as they speak is really distracting.

So. Yeah. I kinda feel like this maybe reads like I absolutely hated this, but I didn't. I just think for all the things it does well, it doesn't do anything to make it any better than the games which came before it and if this doesn’t do well enough to get a sequel, or DLC, or something this is going to flap in the wind as an unsatisfying, incomplete, piece of a story that has no reason to be replayed over the others in this franchise. And I just think that is kind of a problem.

If you are dying to spend another 12 hours with Max, who looks better than she has ever done before, then I think Double Exposure will be worth your time. Unless you are really strongly attached to the Max and Chloe relationship... then maybe not. But otherwise, if you were just going to pick one, play True Colors instead and get ready to do a lot of crying.