Life is Strange Double Exposure Review: Gameplay Impressions, Videos and Top Features

Life is Strange Double Exposure from developer Deck Nine is a long-anticipated, next-generation follow-up to a unique hit.

Technically the fourth game in the series but a direct sequel to Life is Strange from 2015, Double Exposure sees the return of some beloved characters, gameplay mixups, and a captivating presentation.

An adventure-investigation-supernatural hybrid that will remind some of the episodic Telltale Games classics of old, Double Exposure has a chance to dominate the niche while giving longtime fans a compelling experience.

Success hinges on whether Double Exposure continues not just the story and character threads well, but smartly modernizes across the board after a big hiatus.

Graphics and Gameplay

The first thing longtime Life is Strange players will notice are the stunning visuals, especially compared to the 2015 effort.

While the game retains that stylistic flair that isn't straight-up real-life visuals to characters, the expressiveness and sheer emotion on the faces is fantastic. So, too, are the little details like physics of hair.

Caledon University in Lakeport, Vermont, is stunningly packed with varied areas, detail, and environmental storytelling that flirts with having it classified as a character in its own right.

And as a whole, the presentation is darker, both in storytelling and visually. Ditto for the soundtrack, which does a fantastic job of matching the player's current environment.

Double Exposure is stellar in the way it positions the timelines against one another. The "living' timeline is bright, colorful, and loud with decorations. But the "dead" is somber, darker and, in place of celebrations and the like, there are notices of party cancellations and similar.

That mention of "timelines" is key. Rather than reusing the power to rewind time from past games, players now Shift and Pulse. The latter allows the player to discover the former, which are points that let them travel between timelines. What's interesting and used creatively is that players can use Pulse to find a Shift point, but not actually travel to the other timeline, instead simply investigating that other timeline from afar.

There's lots to discover, quickly letting players realize that exploring every bit of multiple timelines is worth the time investment. Even a seemingly smaller thing like photo opportunities are worthwhile because the pictures that players take can then populate the world and social media feeds.

Even without the fantastical elements, Double Exposure is fun in the way it puts players in all types of roles across multiple timelines. Serving as an investigator, really grilling into conversations with NPCs, going off to swipe or repair an item, etc. The game just really throws out a lot of variety that is compelling and feels organic to the story.

Good thing, too, that the presentation and depth of the world are so compelling, too, given the story Double Exposure attempts to weave.

Story and More

Max Caulfield returns in Double Exposure and for fans, it will be interesting to see how her life has changed and what she happens to do at Caledon University.

Unfortunately, things don't stay happy-cheer for long, as Max discovers her friend Safi dead, and the darker tone sets in fast. She immediately attempts to go back to the powers from her past that she swore off, only to stumble into the evolution of her timeline-hopping abilities.

The story is compelling because of the raw emotion behind the characters, but it's driven overboard in a good way with the environmental storytelling through the areas. And even smaller features like text messages, podcasts, and social media deliver noteworthy character and world-building.

Also, some cool functionality here is that players who have saved game data from prior games can import them here, making their choices in those previous games matter. Otherwise, players make early choices to fill out the pre-story setting.

Like the prior games, Double Exposure lets players review the choices they made after each chapter, comparing them to others and even global trackers to see how the greater playerbase approach certain things.

An Explore Scene mode lets players go back and play previous scenes to experiment and discover new things without impacting the current playthrough.

In this way, each scene feels like a little puzzle of a much bigger whole and it's a downright blast to go back through and change even small details to see the impact.

Double Exposure arrives with some solid performance and a big suite of options and accessibility features, also including trigger warnings and the like given the tale's subject matter.

Conclusion

Double Exposure is a fitting return to form for Life is Strange.

The game is super memorable not just for its locale, but for the heartfelt, raw emotion in nearly every scene. It's unafraid to explore some polarizing themes in the process, all while giving players the agency to direct the tale.

It helps that there is some serious replayability baked into the experience, so it becomes much more than a one-and-done romp like other games in the genre.

Life is indeed strange, but Double Exposure sitting near the top of the list of modern narrative-choice episodic games is no weird accident.