Finally I am in a position to put the Life is Strange franchise behind me as I have managed to get a hold of the second game in a new condition.
So before I get into how I felt about this game I feel I must start by talking about why I had to buy this new and couldn’t utilize the pre-owned games system. Square Enix made the decision to either release the game in an incomplete/early state without the 5th chapter of the game but in order to counter this they did include in the box a code for the final part of the game, whilst this is great for those who bought the game new, anyone who decides to get the game pre-owned will find themselves with 80% of the game and will have to spend £8 to get the last chapter.
Part of me wants to believe that this was just a case of the final part wasn’t ready or was buggy at the time the game was due to go to print but I would have thought in that scenario they could, and probably should, have either included the code for it on the disc and patched the fixes in as they were ready like most games do today or simply waited for it to be ready and delayed the release. What I actually think is that this was a proving ground to them to see if they could beat the “pre-owned problem” and sell more new copies/gain a residual income from the sale of the 5th chapter from those who bought the game pre-owned.
OK moaning out of the way, this installment of the game is the first, and only, to have a male lead and follows the story of two brothers who are on the run from the law having been involved in an incident at the start of the game. It becomes apparent towards the beginning of the game that one of the brothers has access to special powers which give him telekinetic abilities.
The story follows them as they try to make it to Mexico and has them meet a number of interesting characters along the way and follows the same decision/consequence interactions that the other games in the franchise follow albeit without Max’s time powers you can’t undo or change these so you have to be a little more careful with what you choose.
There are a couple of heart rending moments in the game, especially around the death of people in the game and mushroom which was devastating but this serves to grow attachments to the characters and become much more involved with their story and motivations. There is also a free piece of content, which is included on the disc, called captain spirit which is a 15 minute diversion from the main stories content ahead of chapter 2 where you can learn the back story to one of the characters you will interact with in the second chapter of the game.
All in all this was a worthy installment to the franchise and well worth playing. just a shame about the fact it isn’t all included on the disc really.