Test de Life is Strange : Double Exposure par jeuxvideo.com

The very discreet Maxine Caulfield has grown up. Charismatic and noted for her talent as a photographer, a passion she has nurtured since childhood, she now works as a photography assistant on the Caledon campus, a prestigious university in Lakeport in the United States. With her friends Safi and Moses, she tries to forget a very painful past and from the first minutes, we find ourselves in the presence of a peaceful, sparkling woman determined never to use her mysterious power again. This ability, which appeared during adolescence, allows him to go back in time to a certain point. Unfortunately, like Spider-Man and his ” great power that comes with great responsibilities », Max paid the price.

Before embarking on Life is Strange: Double Exposure, it is absolutely essential to know where you are going. The game is very narrative, very talkative and very cinematic. It often happens that the adventure frees itself from the gameplay to focus on the story and the characters. As the plot takes a long time to get going, you should expect to barely touch the controller. If the developers have relied on such an approach, it is to take the time to present the protagonists and their relationships. This choice is far from trivial in the sense that Max's friend, Safi, is at the heart of the plot and that Chloé had to be “forgotten” by early fans.

Max the investigator

The gameplay of Life is Strange Double Exposure echoes previous episodes of the saga. Interspersed with cutscenes setting out the scenario, it boils down to exploration in more or less vast environments with a system of interaction with objects. At the same time, the player is led to make narrative choices which have consequences on events and the relationships that Max maintains with the ten main protagonists that we meet. And the photo in all this? Max almost never leaves his Polaroid camera and the scenario is often a pretext for beautiful photos. For a good while, these phases are the only ones until a plot twist which forces the heroine to reconsider her initial intentions.

Without revealing anything about the plot, Life is Strange Double Exposure is based on a rather effective concept. Thanks to his supernatural powers, Max Caulfield is able to see events from the past, but above all to travel between alternative realities. These temporal movements are truly at the heart of the experience. To investigate a tragic fact, the photographer will continually evolve between reality (death of one of the characters) and an alternative spatiotemporal fault (life of the same character). The scenario is well executed. To unravel the mystery surrounding the Caledon campus, Max must juggle his abilities. She is thus led to move from one alternative reality to another by transferring objects, obtaining sensitive information and manipulating events to encourage potential culprits to speak.

To clarify the mysterious affair, the player must investigate, search through the messages on Max's smartphone and retrace the events that led to the tragedy using this famous temporal power. We're not going to lie, Life is Strange Double Exposure may seem very disjointed to anyone who has never watched the first episode. It is also regrettable that the game does not follow through on its intentions, particularly on certain important themes handled a little lightly. The characters, for their part, are not uninteresting, but many remain unresolved even though we would like to know more about them.

And yet, thanks to its atmosphere, its very successful French voices and its production, Deck Nine's work manages to engage the player. We really want to discover the truth behind the unsolved murder, even if we have to look past certain flaws. His punchy writing (including pop-culture references in text messages) and the character of Max work and we swallow the chapters one after the other. There is in particular a chapter which reminds a little of what the players experienced when discovering the fourth GD-ROM of Shenmue II on Dreamcast. Two people, face to face, reveal everything they know and these revelations immediately resonate with us.

A game for which audience?

It's a certainty, Life is Strange Double Exposure will not please everyone. It's a slow, calm and very talkative game. Despite convincing staging, the choices proposed do not always have a real impact on events. However, it is interesting to start the game several times to form different relationships with your partners, men or women. Over five chapters and a dozen hours of gameplay, Life is Strange Double Exposure erases certain flaws from the last episode, True Colors. Full of charm and displaying very pretty decorations, it ultimately only suffers from a slightly too interventionist side. We often have the feeling of moving in a corridor, of being blocked by invisible walls (don't hope to join the skater who is having fun near the campus) and several choices will undoubtedly be difficult for some. It probably doesn't have the aura of its big brother, but Life is Strange Double Exposure is an experience to live if you like this series. If you want to discover it, take the time to do the very first opus. It's a game that fully embraces its freedom and its messages.

Conclusion