Life Is Strange: Double Exposure review – supernatural drama gets caught up in its tangled timelines
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2024/oct/31/life-is-strange-double-exposure-review-supernatural-drama-gets-caught-up-in-its-tangled-timelines
PC, PS5, Xbox; Deck Nine/Square Enix There’s much to enjoy in this sequel to the trailblazing female-led narrative game, but inconsistent characterisation lets it down
In 2015, when I first played as Maxine Caulfield in the original Life Is Strange, it was only the second time I had ever played a game starring a teenaged girl. (The first time was The Last of Us: Left Behind, which came out the year before.) It was an awkward game in a few ways, particularly its cringeworthy (mis)use of teen slang, but the intense, life-changing and sometimes conflicted relationship between Max and her (more than) friend Chloe rung true. It carried the whole game, actually, more than Max’s time-rewinding powers or the murder mystery that powered the plot. I believed in Max and Chloe. The end of that game forces you into a horrible choice between, as Max would put it, two shitty futures, proving that even time travellers must live with the consequences of their actions. The reverberations of that choice run through this sequel, nine years later.