Why Life Is Strange: Double Exposure is the worst of the series

Life Is Strange: Double Exposure screenshot — Life Is Strange: Double Exposure – the worst one (Square Enix)

I find the Life Is Strange series fascinating. I’ve enjoyed the series ever since the first episode of the original Life Is Strange dropped a decade ago, but as much as I appreciate the cosiness and light-heartedness the games can provide in terms of settings and social situations, it can be painfully obnoxious, hard to care about, full of try-hard dialogue, and characters who attention seek and over-exaggerate to facepalming extremities.

Can we admit that the dialogue in the Life Is Strange is horrible? Upon recent completion of the latest release, Double Exposure, I’ve reminded myself of how many dreadful temper-tampering quips Safi spurts out of her gob throughout the game.

I understand there’s a comic book-like flare to the dialogue, and these light-hearted remarks offset darker subject matter as you progress, but Life Is Strange isn’t Marvel, even though Double Exposure tries ultra hard to make you believe that it’s donning a superhero mask.

In addition, just because Double Exposure is quippy and quirky, that doesn’t mean it exudes humour, it means the game is coming across as trying too hard, forcing you to evoke eye-rolling reactions time and again because it’s really hard to invest in these characters when they don’t act naturally.

Another nagging realisation I’ve happened upon in Double Exposure, is that I feel like Max behaves as nosey and self-righteous; a young woman who interferes in business she isn’t involved with and at one point decides to humiliate another character because of certain issues within the story that could’ve been handled privately and sensibly. Yet she airs others’ dirty laundry for crowds to despise at will, and I find her actions in this regard rather disgusting.

I’m not sure anybody is more obsessed with Life Is Strange’s world than developers Deck Nine, because every game is stuffed with drawings, notes, letters, posters, leaflets, figures, comics, and various other objects to read from.

The main problem I have is a lot of it is so bland and lacking meaningful substance that it’s a shame that such hard work fills me with apathy. I struggle to connect, maybe because the Americanisms and accents get to me, or that there’s a priority to tell rather than show, which is what games shouldn’t be doing because, much like films, we should see what’s happening with our eyes rather than reading through reams of text.

Perhaps the worst thing I can say about Double Exposure is that it isn’t fun. True Colors was vibrant and composed of many of Life Is Strange’s qualities, and a few drawbacks, but it was expressive and what happened in Haven Springs felt impactful. Double Exposure, meanwhile, puts you in a gumshoe-like private investigator role, where Max pieces together happenings by finding evidence and linking together the events pertaining to what occurs in the story.

There are pleasures to be had here, but walking around interacting with objects and speaking to characters and making A or B decisions is all old hat, even though there’s always space for relaxed storytelling experiences. Life is Strange is 10 years old now and still acts the same way it did in 2014, when the first episode of the first game was released.

To be brutally honest, Double Exposure double-exposes Life Is Strange’s greatest weaknesses as a franchise. If you’ve had enough of all the quipped-up dialogue and overacting from the previous games then Double Exposure will double down on what you don’t like and you’ll have to either endure it or play something else.

I imagine if you also played through Tell Me Why and Twin Mirror, and didn’t enjoy the character interactions in those games, then Double Exposure will still feel like too much cringe.

By reader James Davie