Life is Strange: Double Exposure review

Our VerdictIt’s great to have Max Caulfield back, but I’m not sure she ever needed to be in the first place. A somewhat unnecessary-feeling sequel that still manages to tell a compelling story, if not a little messy and underbaked.

Our Verdict

It’s great to have Max Caulfield back, but I’m not sure she ever needed to be in the first place. A somewhat unnecessary-feeling sequel that still manages to tell a compelling story, if not a little messy and underbaked.

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There’s a point in Life is Strange: Double Exposure where detective Vince Alderman asks Max: “Are you the one who’s unlucky or is it just everyone who ever meets you?” It might be a little harsh, sure, but he’s not wrong to say it. Double Exposure does a lot of retreading old narrative ground of its predecessor: dead besties, sus teachers, secret societies, a third girl whose mystery permeates the overarching story… you get it.

Need to KnowWhat is it?The sequel to Don’t Nod’s 2015 time-bending adventure romp.Release dateOctober 29, 2024Expect to pay$50/£50DeveloperDeck Nine GamesPublisherSquare EnixReviewed onNvidia GeForce RTX3070, AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, 32GB RAMSteam DeckTBALinkOfficial site$49.99View at Amazon$49.99View at Best Buy$59.99View at WalmartSee all prices (16 found)

Need to Know

What is it?The sequel to Don’t Nod’s 2015 time-bending adventure romp.Release dateOctober 29, 2024Expect to pay$50/£50DeveloperDeck Nine GamesPublisherSquare EnixReviewed onNvidia GeForce RTX3070, AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, 32GB RAMSteam DeckTBALinkOfficial site$49.99View at Amazon$49.99View at Best Buy$59.99View at WalmartSee all prices (16 found)

$49.99View at Amazon$49.99View at Best Buy$59.99View at WalmartSee all prices (16 found)

$49.99View at Amazon

$49.99View at Best Buy

$59.99View at Walmart

See all prices (16 found)

She’s largely left Arcadia Bay and its people behind—she regularly ignores texts from her parents, with only one Blackwell Academy alum (or two, if Chloe is alive) making an appearance on her social media timeline. Instead, Safiya and Moses make up Max’s new friend group, the former being the university president’s daughter, the latter an astrophysicist graduate.

(Image credit: Square Enix)

Life is Strange: Double Exposure

Her time warping has been put to rest as a result of the damage and subsequent trauma Max endured throughout the first game. That is, until Safi is found shot dead. Cue power reawakenings—this time in the form of timeline hopping rather than rewinding—and desperately trying to avoid the same fate that befell Chloe or Arcadia Bay.

Point-and-shoot

For the most part, I really enjoyed playing around with Max’s new powers. She can swap between a world where Safi is alive and well, the world in warm tones and twinkly Christmas lights, and another, colder reality where Caledon University is mourning her loss. A few puzzles sprinkled throughout Double Exposure have Max using her powers to break into places that are inaccessible in one timeline, or squeezing information out of a character in one dimension before zipping over to the other one to use it as leverage.

My main gripe with the whole thing is that, towards the end of the game, it largely becomes “head to this timeline to talk to this person.” Which is fine, but there’s a particular segment in Chapter 2 where Max has to grab items and bring them between timelines and make use of positioning to avoid detection. It’s easily one of the best showcases of the mechanic, but the game never really gets close to using it to that extent again. There’s another neat segment in one of the later chapters using Max’s ability to see into one timeline from the other, but it’s brief and a little clunky to navigate.

(Image credit: Square Enix)

Life is Strange: Double Exposure

I also have an issue with the sound Double Exposure uses to audibly mark the set locations where you can tear through dimensions. It’s an awful high-pitched tinnitus-adjacent ringing sound that gets more intense the closer you are—it fits well narratively with all of Max’s pounding headaches, but I’m not sure I wanted such an intense level of immersion that it was also givingmepounding headaches a few hours into hearing it. Considering there’s also visual clues for the shift spots, I wish Deck Nine had toned it down a touch.

It’s not the only audio issue in the game, either. I don’t think my volume buttons have ever seen so much use from a single videogame. The sound mixing is wildly inconsistent—cutscene conversations ramped up in volume until my speakers were vibrating, while trying to eavesdrop on another timeline’s conversation or even a discussion between characters in my current timeline was quiet as a mouse.

It was all the more annoying because these random NPC conversations went a long way in doing some much-needed worldbuilding. A group of staff rallying for a four-day workweek offers insight into a more unpopular side of university president Yasmin, while whispers among students forming alliances for a campus-wide game of Assassin is a nice unrelated glimpse at college life.

(Image credit: Square Enix)

Life is Strange: Double Exposure

If not for the subtitles, I would have regularly missed these conversations happening. Even then, I found myself impatiently tapping my foot during frustrating gaps of silence between each NPC’s line of dialogue, making me think the conversation had abruptly concluded before they jumped back in, acting like they hadn’t just spent the last five seconds staring into the void.

Hot shot

I say that it’s much-needed worldbuilding, because Double Exposure is filled with interesting concepts and a story that, at times, had me on the edge of my seat. The ending of the second chapter had me particularly excited, and did ultimately conclude in a way that I felt satisfied with. But it also often fails to act on its more interesting setups. A character I had expected to stick around for the duration is abruptly wiped from existence, never to be mentioned again.

A particularly damning implication of messing around with timelines had me hoping it would become a major plot point, only for it to never resurface. More interesting questions around powers and using them responsibly begin to emerge towards the end of the game, but it’s clearly done to set up a sequel rather than to immediately provide any answers. Choices also ultimately do very little to impact any of the larger narrative moments, with major decisions mostly being relegated to changing tiny, non-intrusive sub-sub-subplots.

(Image credit: Square Enix)

Life is Strange: Double Exposure

Double Exposure also has the events of the first game lingering in the background. Personally, I think it was handled well. For the record, I’m coming at this as someone who exists in a “sacrifice Chloe” headcanon, and I didn’t have enough time to run through the whole thing again with Chloe still kicking about in the world. But watching Max navigate her trauma, often in very unhealthy ways, was refreshingly realistic.

Small throwbacks like the storm and voice snippets of Chloe’s unfortunate bathroom encounter with Nathan Prescott are dropped in occasionally, in a way I never feel overstays its welcome. Later segments where Max explores her trauma more deeply were impactful moments, just the right amount of punch where I felt like Deck Nine wasn’t leaning too heavily on Don’t Nod’s work.

Ultimately, as someone who’s been around Max’s age for both of these games, I couldn’t help but feel a certain kinship through Double Exposure. I saw parts of myself reflected in her, now all grown up—her heightened confidence and self-assuredness, while still carrying the vulnerabilities of her past and the subsequent emotional wall she holds around her.

It’s nice to see a game with some pretty firm bisexual representation, too. While it was kind of there in the original, it’s far easier to play Max as overtly bi in Double Exposure. She has the opportunity to romance both a male and female character—while I still perceived the game as leaning more towards the female romance, it still felt considerably more balanced than the first game—and an entire scene is dedicated to which faculty she’d happily get down and dirty with.

(Image credit: Square Enix)

Life is Strange: Double Exposure

Ultimately, though, I feel like a lot of these characters didn’t have time to fully develop. I wonder if having two timelines—and subsequently two branching character developments—hampered the story more than helping it. Coupled with Double Exposure’s parallel narrative arc being a little too similar and on the nose for my liking at times, and I have to wonder if we needed a sequel at all.

The answer is probably no, but I couldn’t help but find myself invested nonetheless. Part of that may have been nostalgia-driven, but I still found myself exploring every nook and cranny and eavesdropping on every side conversation for just a little more of that worldbuilding.

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The Verdict72Read our review policyLife is Strange: Double ExposureIt’s great to have Max Caulfield back, but I’m not sure she ever needed to be in the first place. A somewhat unnecessary-feeling sequel that still manages to tell a compelling story, if not a little messy and underbaked.

The Verdict

72Read our review policyLife is Strange: Double ExposureIt’s great to have Max Caulfield back, but I’m not sure she ever needed to be in the first place. A somewhat unnecessary-feeling sequel that still manages to tell a compelling story, if not a little messy and underbaked.

72Read our review policy

Life is Strange: Double ExposureIt’s great to have Max Caulfield back, but I’m not sure she ever needed to be in the first place. A somewhat unnecessary-feeling sequel that still manages to tell a compelling story, if not a little messy and underbaked.

Life is Strange: Double Exposure

TOPICSSquare Enix

TOPICS

More about life is strange double exposureLife is Strange: Double Exposure developer Deck Nine lays off staff for the second time this yearLife is Strange co-creator says ‘nothing justifies’ the vitriol the series' current devs are getting while allowing that ‘we would not have written things the same way’LatestEpic CEO Tim Sweeney says tech leaders are ‘pretending to be Republicans’ to gain favor with Trump, skirt antitrust laws, and ultimately ‘rip off consumers and crush competitors’See more latest►

More about life is strange double exposureLife is Strange: Double Exposure developer Deck Nine lays off staff for the second time this yearLife is Strange co-creator says ‘nothing justifies’ the vitriol the series’ current devs are getting while allowing that ‘we would not have written things the same way’LatestEpic CEO Tim Sweeney says tech leaders are ‘pretending to be Republicans’ to gain favor with Trump, skirt antitrust laws, and ultimately ‘rip off consumers and crush competitors’See more latest►

More about life is strange double exposure

Life is Strange: Double Exposure developer Deck Nine lays off staff for the second time this yearLife is Strange co-creator says ‘nothing justifies’ the vitriol the series’ current devs are getting while allowing that ‘we would not have written things the same way’

Life is Strange: Double Exposure

Life is Strange: Double Exposure developer Deck Nine lays off staff for the second time this year

Max, protagonist of Life is Strange and Life is Strange: Double Exposure, stares with trepidation at something off-screen with her friend.

Life is Strange co-creator says ‘nothing justifies’ the vitriol the series’ current devs are getting while allowing that ‘we would not have written things the same way’

Life is Strange co-creator says ‘nothing justifies’ the vitriol the series' current devs are getting while allowing that ‘we would not have written things the same way’

LatestEpic CEO Tim Sweeney says tech leaders are ‘pretending to be Republicans’ to gain favor with Trump, skirt antitrust laws, and ultimately ‘rip off consumers and crush competitors’See more latest►

Latest

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney says tech leaders are ‘pretending to be Republicans’ to gain favor with Trump, skirt antitrust laws, and ultimately ‘rip off consumers and crush competitors’

Tim Sweeney

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney says tech leaders are ‘pretending to be Republicans’ to gain favor with Trump, skirt antitrust laws, and ultimately ‘rip off consumers and crush competitors’

See more latest►

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