Life is Strange is a franchise I love, at least for the most part. Overall, the series has always been fairly hit or miss. But when its good, its really good. I was an enormous fan of True Colors, so when this new game got announced I was ready to hop into it.

Double Exposure sees the return of Max Caufield as she discovers new powers that allow her to jump between timelines, which she uses to try and figure out the mystery behind her friends murder. Along the way you’ll do the regular LIS fair, making decisions that influence you’re relationships and how the story progresses

This game is slightly different though, because for one of the first times it lets you decide which ending you consider canon to the first game, regardless of what has been stated to be by Square and Deck Nine in the past.

I want to start with the positives here. As is customary to this franchise, Double Exposure features really well written and deep characters. Every interaction you have throughout the game is interesting, and the amount of characteristics they gave to even the smallest of side characters made me want to stop and talk to every single NPC

The game also looks amazing. Despite some graphical issues and some serious texture pop-in, the overall characters and settings are polished and vibrant, and I personally love this new design for Max.

Unfortunately, that’s about where my praise for Double Exposure ends. Despite having amazing characters and locations at it’s base, this is one of the slowest moving and tedious storylines in one of these games. Some of the plot twists (which I wont get into) were unexpected, but not in a way that felt vindicating and more in a way that felt out of left field. Little is given in explanation as to where Max’s original powers went, and a lot of the “gameplay” in between the cutscenes simply consists of you running around aimlessly as the game gives you little hint as to what you’re supposed to be looking for (such as having to grab a spoon from the tea station a room over to pry open a library cabinet). These games never excelled in their gameplay per se, but this definitely felt like a step back from True Colors, both in gameplay and pace of story

I overall didn’t have the worst time with Double Exposure, but its for sure not this franchise’s strong suit. I would like to eventually do another personal speculation article on this game where I talk about the direction of the series as a whole after this one, but I’ll give the game some breathing time first as to be less spoiler heavy to the majority. My overall score for this game is a 7 out of 10. It’s worth playing if you’re a fan of LIS, but maybe wait for some good sales before picking it up