Life is Strange: Double Exposure Review

It’s been a bit of a wait, but Max Caulfield is finally back in Life is Strange: Double Exposure. We last saw her in 2015’s inaugural title, having discovered her ability to rewind time after a close friend gets killed. The path this led her and eventual love interest Chloe down was incredibly compelling (if occasionally hella corny) stuff and while there have been a few other titles since (True Colors is a must play), we’ve all been waiting to see just how Max is doing and whether we’d see the pay off for the tough choice at the end of the original game. Well, we kind of do and don’t, with Double Exposure proving a mixed bag in terms of payoff and overall cohesion with its own new story.

Max is now working at Caledon University, and has a new bunch of friends for us to get to know. The highlight of the new group is Moses, a kind hearted soul who gets lost in his physics experiments, while we also get to meet the energetic Safi, snide Vinh, defensive Gwen and more. The biggest highlight of Double Exposure is this cast, with the performance and character work among the best in the series. Max in particular is brought to life by new actor Hannah Telle with some really excellent and emotional moments, and even in the more mundane chats we get a sense of her unease over the events of Arcadia Bay and how it’s affected her. Over the game’s five chapters I rarely found a conversation that didn’t engage me thanks to the performances, even if the threads of what was going on didn’t always make sense.

Conversations are well handled throughout with excellent performances and a great cast of characters

Max hasn’t used her powers since Arcadia Bay, and so has lost the finer control she exhibited by the end of the first game. When Safi gets inexplicably killed early on in the game, Max discovers that rather than rewinding time, she can instead switch to an alternate timeline at will – one where Safi is alive. We navigate her through this mind-bending scenario as she attempts to find a way to save Safi in her own timeline, and unravel a mystery in this new one that may be key to this solution.

Moving between the timelines is as easy as finding a portal, and she can transport items between each if need be. She can also manipulate one timeline’s version of a person to find information to use on the other. In one scene, she needs to convince Vinh to open up about something; this involves getting the alternate timeline Vinh to accidentally spill the beans and then using this new information to convince him to talk. It’s a lot simpler than it seems – maybe too simple at times – but is an interesting concept.

In series tradition, there are plenty of choices to make along the way, from minor ones such as refusing to answer the campus’ reporters questions to ones that will affect the overall plot and relationships we have by the end. 

Double Exposure is a very photogenic game, featuring great use of colour and effects the blend the painterly aesthetic with realistic characters

Sadly, this is where some of the drawbacks of Double Exposure begin to show their heads. Looking at the chapter round ups there are plenty of choices that we can see and how players voted, but there are a large chunk of them that either don’t matter in the grand scheme, or are simply not interesting, such as whether Max chose to sit and reflect at certain places, or others that are entirely missable for one reason or another. I’ve always enjoyed the choice making aspect, but this is the first in the series where I found myself not being overly bothered more often than not in what I chose. There are still some that had me pausing, but these were more intimate character moments like choosing to set up a date with Amanda from the Snapping Turtle, or whether to reveal one character’s betrayal of another. Other moments that were clearly supposed to be more serious choices just had me feeling like I was picking one for the ‘canon’ rather than what I wanted to do.

One for the Xpod Tavern fans here

This sentiment extends to the story overall. Early on, the game was full of intrigue and mystery, and I was keen to get the next piece of the puzzle. Unfortunately by the time Chapter 5 comes around we’re left to pick the pieces out of a completely confusing web of threads that dart all over the place, and conclude with a choice that I felt entirely unprepared for – and one that was presented so poorly I had no idea what I was actually agreeing or disagreeing with. I’m also not entirely sure that the main thread of the narrative – what happened to Safi – was ever fully explained. I won’t spoil anything here, but there’s a late game revelation that could have been very cool to explore more deeply. Instead, it almost gets brushed aside in favour of a substory that feels entirely less important that the one we’re already on.

I also found myself at the mercy of several bugs throughout, with one in particular convincing me the game had broken; the mission prompts were telling me to speak to Vinh, and the find evidence on (redacted) at the same time, neither of which seemed to be possible as the latter involved speaking to another character who I had already spoken and was now just idling in the room and Vinh was also not showing as an option. I ended up finding out I’d missed a small item in one room (and it seems so did many others from my post game googling). Other times audio would cut out halfway through sentences, or items would refuse to interact unless I stood perfectly still in front of them for several seconds after pressing the button. And the final run of scenes calls for some quick location changes which, on Xbox Series X at least, meant characters would be abruptly cut off by a black screen and a loading icon for a few seconds before we get the continuation. Every time it happened I wasn’t sure if the game had crashed and it always disturbed the flow of the story.

It’s a shame as on the technical side Double Exposure is clearly the best looking game in the series. Max and co have the series’ painterly aesthetic still, but are almost photo real in some scenarios, with top tier facial animation. The scenery is gorgeous too, with excellent lighting and effects and the few times I did sit Max down to reflect I would leave them running long after she stopped talking just to see the visuals. Another excellent soundtrack also helped here, with the series’s staple soft and melancholic tunes provisioning a perfect backdrop to the sleepy lakeside University setting.

Conclusion

A strong opening set of chapters set up an intriguing mystery with the return of Max Caulfield, new powers and friends, and a fantastic setting with some excellent audio/visual work. Unfortunately, it all falls apart by the end, with a confusing mess of threads that sweep the interesting stuff aside in favour of a side story that feels rushed, and a final choice that is set up poorly, leaving us underwhelmed and not entirely sure what fate we assigned ourselves too.

This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.

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Good
  • Fantastic new cast joining the returning Max
  • Genuinely intriguing opening few chapters
  • Excellent audio/visual work
Bad
  • A tangled web of threads ruin the final chapter, with a confusing layout and final choice
  • A few too many immersion breaking bugs and technical flaws
6.5
Okay
Written by
I've been gaming since Spy vs Spy on the Master System, growing up as a Sega kid before realising the joy of multi-platform gaming. These days I can mostly be found on smaller indie titles, the occasional big RPG and doing poorly at Rainbow Six: Siege. Gamertag: Enaksan

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