Life is Strange: Double Exposure
When Max Caulfield finds her friend Safi dead in the snow, she tears open the way to a parallel timeline. Here, Safi is still alive - and still in danger! With her new power to Shift between two timelines – can Max solve and prevent the same murder?
Life is Strange: Double Exposure is a choices matter, lgbtq+ and female protagonist game
developed by Deck Nine Games
and published by Square Enix.
Released on October 29th 2024 is available only on Windows
in 12 languages: English, French, German, Spanish - Spain, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish - Latin America, Traditional Chinese and Italian.
It has received 5,713 reviews of which 4,021 were positive and 1,692 were negative resulting in a rating of 6.9 out of 10. 😐
The game is currently priced at 34.99€ on Steam and has a 30% discount.
The Steam community has classified Life is Strange: Double Exposure into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows® 10 / 11 64-bit
- Processor: Intel Core i5-2400 / AMD FX-6300
- Memory: 12 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960, 4 GB / AMD Radeon RX 470, 4GB
- DirectX: Version 12
- Storage: 25 GB available space
- Additional Notes: 1080p @ 30fps. SSD Recommended.
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
This is a 'get it, but wait for a sale' game. I mean a HUGE sale. This game is insanely expensive for what you get, even at the base price. And I've been a big Max fan since the very beginning. I feel for those who paid 80 dollars for the Ultimate Edition when you can finish this entire game in a day. Shaq would call that 'robberation' . There isn't much re-play value, so I can't even go with that excuse. If you read enough reviews you will see a pattern. It is easy to assume that these are die hards and they wouldn't be happy with anything because 'wah wah wah, Max and Chloe' but that's not true. We all wanted to really really enjoy this game. Many aspects felt very AAA - very well thought out, great execution -truly captivating. Some of the writing and voice acting is the best of the best. But then that moment would be ruined with a straight up dumb action or line that felt weirdly improvised or extremely rushed. The longer it went on the more I realized I had no idea what any character would say or think next whatsoever given any situation, including Max. That makes you feel less involved....you are just there for the ride. The ending? Well, I feel like a certain part was tacked on at the end after some internal discussions: 'maybe this ending does feel rushed, we have to respond to that' and that was a bit off putting and outright ODD. The second half is so rushed with many things so poorly explained I became quite confused on what I was even deciding to do (not that choices seemed to matter much). Kinda wish they re-wrote most of the story, starting with the middle of Episode 3. I'm not just talking about the main mystery, but certain inconsistencies with characters, not feeling connected to any of the characters - or even liking most of them. It's missing a lot of character development that you saw even with the minor characters in the first LiS. The whole thing seems to go from 0 to 100 then fades to black - all the while missing the heart, soul, and charm we came for.
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Double Exposure left me conflicted. On the one hand, it is graphically beautiful and makes good use of a great soundtrack. The dialog is well written and the voice acting generally superb. After my twin initial disappointments at the absence of Chloe from the game, aside from social media posts, and the revision of Max's powers into universe hopping rather than time travel, I wanted to engage with the entirely new cast of characters (including Max's two choices of love interest) and see how jumping between two universes could affect the narrative and the outcome of the game. On the other hand, despite some really great, oftentimes funny, and occasionally poignant dialog, I found the actual story to be irritatingly opaque for the majority of the game. Though the dialog is well written, almost all of that is not only Max's dialog, it is her internal monologue, her inner thoughts that no one but the player hears. This creates an isolating experience. Those new powers that seemed so promising, felt quite limited and like they existed solely to include a series of fetch-it quests. And those new characters felt painfully shallow, becoming even more so over the course of the game because all that universe hopping meant that I was really only spending half the time (at best) with any one version of them. They had no memory of any of the very few meaningful interactions I'd had with them once I switched universes making the creation of real feeling relationships impossible. Ultimately, it didn't feel like Max's powers had any real impact on the outcome of the story, nor did they leave me with the impression that I'd really shaped that journey. I didn't feel like I'd made my version of Max that reached the digital yes/no endings that all these games tend to have, unlike, say, in LiS: True Colors, where I felt like I'd grown my own version of Alex. I found this older version of Max much more sympathetic and immediately likable than the original pretentious, sullen, hipster version of the original LiS game. This Max is haunted by her past and has matured enough to understand that there are some things you just have to accept in life. She feels like she's been through a war, which is certainly appropriate, especially if you chose to save Chloe in the first game and let Arcadia Bay be literally blown away. However, this Max is still an introvert. She's still a loner, despite both her and the story telling us that she has friends at Caledon College. Where Chloe acted as a contrast to Max, breathing life and fun and pathos into that first story, there isn't a character to do that for Max here. Sure, there's Moses, but he's just as much of an introverted nerd as she is. Even worse, she's left juggling two versions of him. Even when she eventually confides her universe hopping abilities in him, it's not at all like when Max shares her time-travel abilities with Chloe which triggers a series of wonderful, bonding moments. A bigger deal in terms of Max's lack of impact character/true companion is Safi, whose death triggers the whole story. I felt like I barely got to know Safi, and I have to say that I didn't particularly like her. Her death was a shrug to me, with only Max's reaction to it making me feel much of anything about it. In the original LiS, Max never even meets Rachel Amber, who is the big McGuffin of that story, but through Chloe's passionate feelings about Rachel and Chloe being a more sympathetic and generally interesting character, I came to care about what had happened to Rachel. I never really cared all that much about what happened to Safi, which is a big problem since her death triggers the entire Double Exposure story. Even more problematic is that even though Max claims to be devastated by Safi's death, she spends almost no time with Safi once she discovers that she can switch between the timeline in which Safi was killed and a second timeline where Safi is still alive. For a chapter and a half I grew increasingly annoyed that Max didn't seek out Safi and spend every possible second with her because Max should already have learned that everything is temporary and comes with a price, especially in regard to her powers. In fact, she even states that there's always a price at least once, but seems to ignore her own advice. I do have several criticisms of Double Exposure, and it certainly isn't my favorite game in the series (that would be True Colors for the way the powers facilitated connection with the characters, as opposed to how the powers separate Max from everyone in Double Exposure by splitting them all into two shallow halves). I still enjoyed my time at Caledon College. For my tastes, Max is well-enough rendered and sympathetic enough that I ultimately did feel for her by the end of the story, even if none of the other characters mattered to me. I certainly understand people giving this game a Thumbs-Down, though, because whether the developers intended it or not, Double Exposure seemed singularly isolating, unlike the original LiS or True Colors, which were all about the protagonist connecting to another (or several others in True Colors) through the use of their powers and growing, as painful as it might have been, for the experience.
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LIFE IS STRANGE - DOUBLE EXPOSURE As a fan of the franchise, LiS-DE is a game you want to love, but unfortunately, it makes it difficult to do so. The basic game priciples of the series are present in this game - nice graphics and soft music, lots of characters with intertwined stories you uncover over time, a focus on emotions and connection, many choices that can lead to different outcomes and of course a big problem you face with your superpowers. One important factor to draw the player in, are characters . At its peak, LiS created likeable, memorable characters that many of us still hold dear. Unfortunately, Double Exposure missed the mark here. While there is a whole roster of characters, most of them don't feel quite right or aren't likeable. There's something uncanny in the way the characters look and behave, as they went with a more realistic art style (adding wrinkles etc), but simultaneously made the characters have strange proportions (heads too big for bodies) and have them be very stiff. The dialogues and behaviours often feel cringe, because there's this goofy, sarcastic undertone they added to everything. Some characters, like Safi, constantly pull grimaces and find themselves way more witty and funny than they are. It's painful to watch and makes it hard to care about Safi, which is pretty bad considering her significance in this story. Another issue where things felt forced is the overly heavy use of LGBT and "woke" themes . LiS has always been open-minded towards LGBT themes, it was a natural part of the series. You could always romance whoever you liked best, and that's still possible in LiS Double Exposure. But this time they leaned so heavily into this theme, that almost nothing else is left and it just felt forced. Every character is lesbian, gay, bi or trans, checks a few diversity boxes or struggles with mental health/substances. I'm part of the LGBT, and It's nice to have representation, but when your game is pretty much nothing else anymore, then it doesn't feel natural or believable anymore. They really did too much. Another somewhat connected issue is the way relationships are handled in this new game. Typically, we got to know characters and our relationships with them evolved organically, which made them feel believable. Not so much here. This time, we mostly just get told by the game that we DO like certain characters. The game has already decided for us, that we like Safi and care super much about her. Why? We don't know. We just do. Another example: The game has barely started, and we supposedly like Amanda, the lesbian barowner really much despite not knowing her, and our objective is now to to ask her for a date and do pickup lines on her. We didn't even have any interactions with her, yet, but she's supposed to be our main love interest in this game? The only excuse for this is that this is exactly one of Amanda's personal struggles (liking people too much too soon). But let's be real, it's mostly lazy writing. Same with Diamond or Gwen - the game heavily nudges us towards liking them and caring about them, but ... why? Diamond is annoying and hitting on a person who's not single all game and tries to snatch another character's position. Why would we like her...? One of the few friendships in the game that felt natural was the friendship to Moses, as it grew over time as we got to know him more. This friendship made sense. Amanda did have one or two moments later on that began to form a real reason we might like her, too, although they jump-started it too hard in the beginning. But in a way, it felt like all connections in this game were either assumed by the devs despite of those characters being unlikable or stayed shallow. Sad was, that the game teases chloe and arcadia bay multiploe times in the game, but we never get to see her in person, which considering the abilities characters in the game have could easily have been put into the game (maybe something they plan to do in the next part? Hopefully?) Another problem was how little impact our choices seem to have this time around. Sure, we make our choices. But the outcome feels more linear due to them forcing certain parts to set up a sequel. This dulled down the significance of our choices. In the first LiS, our decisions were hard and meaningful. We had to choose between saving our best friend/lover or a whole town of people, and we couldn't have it both ways. In the LiS about the two Brothers, our choices determined what kind of person our gifted little brother would grow into, and which of us would even survive. But this time around, both final choices are leading to pretty much the same result with only minor differences. The story feels okay, but the stakes just don't feel high and decisions don't make enough of a difference. LiS 1's [B]ending[/B] was intense, and Double Exposure failed to follow in its footsteps. Something went really wrong in the storytelling of the final chapter. We're in the middle of the final escalation, it's building up, we're trying a few small things and suddenly.....! Well, suddenly our character claims something along the lines of "Daaaamn, I'm so glad we fixed it all" and everything is fine. I was legit puzzled and thought this must be a hallucination of our main character before we get to the actual resolution of the conflict. But..no. There just is no cathartic, dramatic end at all. It's just over without us doing anything challenging or making a tough choice. Everything is suddenly okay, everyone lives and all that build-up is for nothing and to set up a sequel..and at that, once that gives weight to two unlikable people from this part. That was so underwhelming. Visuals: 8/10 Sound: 7/10 Gameplay: 6/10 Characters: 5/10 Story telling: 6/10 _________________ Overall Rating: 6,4 /10 As a whole, this game is the equivalent of getting edged and being told: "That must've been the best O you ever had!" But you didn't even come. Sure, the game experience overall was still alright and sometimes fun, but there's a lot to dislike about it too and ultimately you're getting robbed of a proper catharsis. For fans of the series, I think it's still worth playing, but it doesn't hold a candle to the first few games. Still better than True Colors though. I hope the sequel does better than Double Exposure. P.S.: If you buy it, the base version is likely the best option. Maybe you can get the upgrades on sale later on. I bought the ultimate version, and while extras like the cat outfits etc are cute, they really don't justify the massive price increase
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This new game has an amazing soundtrack, a cool new power, and an interesting story. I loved the first four chapters, but the last one… not so much, it was disappointing. There were so many plot holes and unanswered questions; important aspects of the story, as well as little details, aren’t explained well and feel inconsistent, which is pretty frustrating. A lot of people didn’t like what they did with Chloe, but I’m kind of in the middle. I LOVE her, and I’d definitely rather she was in the game, happy and with Max, but I also think the direction they took was realistic and made sense, even if it wasn’t what most of us wanted. Unlike the other Life is Strange games where I teared up or felt deeply moved, this one lacked the sadness and emotional weight. There were a few shocking moments, and several scenes made me laugh (oh how I love Max's dad jokes and awkwardness), but overall, it lacked the emotional punch they always have. The choices didn’t feel like they mattered much, but I need to replay it and make different choices to see for myself if there’s actually much difference. Even though it’s nowhere near perfect, and I’m not sure how I feel about the direction they’re taking, I’m really happy to see Max again and excited for the sequel, I choose to keep my hopes up <3
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Overall, I enjoyed the game and think most fans of the series will too. However, it does have a good number of flaws (no spoilers): • This was clearly made with a limited budget which explains the game’s shortcomings with limited choices, small cast, and small scenes/maps. • The skeleton of the story is good. I liked the story and how it can lead to other entries in the series. However, the meat (specific actions and dialog) of the story is weak. • Choices don’t really have any material impact on the story and instead mainly lead to some different dialog options instead of completely different scenes with the romance options leading to the most variation. • There’s no defining choice(s) likes in the first game which leads back to the limited budget. They don’t appear to have the funds to make branching storylines which explains how they handled the ramifications of Chole/Arcadia Bay decision in this installment. • Some scenes were handled poorly and don’t take into account some of your earlier dialog/choices. For example, you’ll learn an important piece of information and in a later scene when it comes up, Max acts completely surprised like it’s the first time she’s heard it. Or you’ll see a character step outside and eavesdrop on their conversation, walk a few feet and talk to another character who asks you where said person is and Max replies she doesn’t know. Like you can literally see that character outside the window. Come on, that’s just lazy. • It was lacking in the personal moments like the first game and True Colors. Double Exposure’s version of True Colors’ Halloween was a big step down. • The maps/levels are limited and very small (well, smaller than the previous games) with only a handful of NPCs and characters you can speak too. They seem smaller and less lively than the first game and True Colors. It reminds me of Starfield’s nightclub with a few NPCs standing around and even fewer dancing versus Cyberpunk 2077’s packed and lively clubs. It just feels so antiquated in 2024. Again, this likely stems from a limited budget. • Due in part to the small map sizes, the puzzles/gameplay is way too easy and doesn’t have the variation of the branching outcomes like the first game. • Audio is borked. The background music is too loud drowning out dialog, but at least you can easily lower that in the settings. The big problem is dialog audio which is often way too quiet even at max settings and cranking my headphones to full volume. In addition, when having a conversation Max would speak clearly at a certain level and often the other speaker(s) dialog would come in far too low in volume and with poorer sound quality. • The soundtrack is a big step down from the first game. It’s not bad, it’s just completely forgettable. • There are some points where if you walk to a certain place, it moves you to the next scene without warning and you’ll be unable to go back to complete anything you missed in the previous area unless you reload the last checkpoint. • No cutscene skipping which is really annoying if you want to replay the game or reload the last checkpoint if you missed something due to the above. • The final episode was the weakest. It seems like True Color where they clearly ran out of time and/or money and needed to wrap things up. However, it was a good setup for the next game and I like the direction the sequel appears to be going in. Despite its flaws, I did enjoy my time with the game, and I recommend it.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 23 November 2024 14:22 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 20 December 2024 08:00 |
| Steam price | 23 December 2024 12:52 |
| Steam reviews | 21 December 2024 13:56 |
Online players
475
Developer
Deck Nine Games
Publisher
Square Enix
Release
29 Oct 2024
Platforms
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