Netflix has a funny way of handling content sometimes. They'll make a hard push to promote things like Orange is the New Black, Daredevil, or House of Cards. Then they sneak in something like Lady Dynamite or, in this particular case, Stranger Things. For a show that got next to no real hype prior to dropping, the '80s nostalgia trip and Stephen King's Greatest Hits compilation almost immediately struck a chord with audiences, becoming one of the most talked about shows of the year.
In many respects, it's easy to compare Stranger Things to something like the original Star Wars. The creators were clearly influenced and inspired by many things that came before. Using that, they've essentially remixed many of those elements into something fresh. Though it maybe doesn't add too much new stuff to the table, Stranger Things largely succeeds by adequately bringing old things back. So many elements are either lifted from other works or are amalgamations of them, but they feel very fresh in modern times. It doesn't hurt that the Duffer brothers happen to have excellent tastes, subsequently taking from a wide array of films, television, and video games.
There's a lot one can talk about when breaking it down. Following a group of young, nerdy boys as they search for their missing friend, they stumble upon something incredible and terrifying. What makes Stranger Things feel even more refreshing is that they have practically abandoned the "mystery box" formula popularized by J.J. Abrams. There is a mystery in Hawkins, Indiana, and while not everything is spelled out for the viewers, we are not wholly ignorant to the goings-on. We watch D&D group Mike, Dustin, and Lucas search for Will. They don't know what happened to him. We the viewers, however, saw him get attacked by a monster, and get clues from another plot thread that tell us he is alive. Similarly, police chief Jim Hopper investigates unusual circumstances that we know the government is involved in.
It strikes a happy medium between unknown mystery and allowing us to watch how the characters deal with it. The trouble with shows like Lost is that the "what comes next?" and "what's going on?" questions often supersede the characters. It would have been easy for the show runners to hook people by revealing very little, ending each episode with enigmatic cliffhangers. Instead, they make sure to give viewers just enough that the driving factor for coming back to the show is concern or love for the characters.
(As an aside, a friend of mine pointed out that keeping the viewers more informed than the characters actually functions to relate those watching to the character of Will. Trapped in the parallel dimension known as the Upside Down, Will knows what is going on with this horrifying creature, but he is almost powerless to do anything about it. Occasionally, he can flick some lights, but other than that, he can't do much. It's an interesting take, and one that I find worth bringing up.)
Though references and influences of The Goonies and E.T. are pretty obvious (Episode 1 starts and finishes with nearly identical shots from E.T., for example), the show isn't just one of those kids-on-their-own adventure films. You've also got Chief Hopper trying to solve this unique mystery. It's sort of an X-Files, Twin Peaks, Jaws type of story. Plus, you've got Will's mother Joyce (the very enjoyable Winona Ryder) in this "Is she right or insane?" type of tale, fulfilling a Richard Dreyfus/Close Encounters of the Third Kind role. Then there's Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve who are essentially in an '80s rom-com at the start.
So much of the show excels when all these differing stories and genres start to converge onto a single point. At just eight episodes, it moves quickly. There isn't much time to dillydally, and these plots all begin to meet at almost exactly the middle. Being well paced dramatically impacts the effectiveness of the mystery, rewarding viewers in such a timely fashion so as to never feel like we're being reeled in by creators who would reveal that they used a lure instead of real bait.
Not everything is perfect, of course. While the internet appears to have a love affair with Barb, she's ultimately not much of a character worth noting in terms of the narrative. Her brief arc is tiny, slightly disappointing, and even highlights that sometimes the writing is a tad distracted - occasionally unsure of how much time to dedicate to each area of the story. The conclusion also has some anti-climactic moments that felt like they could have either used more of a build up or more clarity. The series starts off with the boys playing a Dungeons & Dragons campaign that spells out what is going to happen in the series (a structural tactic I always enjoy - see every Edgar Wright movie). The finale sees them finishing the campaign, with each friend objecting to its end with a series of questions related to the show's plot. Their questions about the campaign, and its lack of satisfying answers, all connect to the viewer's questions about the conclusion of the season. This is one of my favorite techniques in media. However, I'm not quite sure the fantasy aspect of the Dungeons & Dragons game ultimately connects that well with the sci-fi/horror elements that dominated the show. It's a neat way to spell everything out, but it doesn't quite connect as well as other aspects of the show, and feels a tad bit like a way to build their "nerd cred" by showing that they know something about D&D.
The acting is top notch for a show reliant on young child actors. Each one really stood out, right at home with all of your favorite kid-centric movies. The teens are also surprisingly believable characters for an '80s era set. There's been some strange criticism of Ryder, but frankly, she nails the understandably distraught and disheveled mother with the Dreyfus-esque "might be losing her mind" trope. Even David Harbour excels at the nuance of Chief Hopper, a character who starts off seeming like he's going to be unlikable, but winds up the most interesting part of the show.
Of course, no discussion of Stranger Things can be considered complete without mentioning the original score as well. Composers Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein nail the '80s nostalgia, John Carpenter-inspired soundtrack. It's arguably more perfectly recreated than Disasterpeace's amazing soundtrack for It Follows, itself a throwback to Carpenter films.
Even if you're not a big fan of the '80s, or don't care about all of the references, Easter eggs, and nods to all those things thirty-somethings cling to out of an often misguided sense of unwarranted nostalgia, Stranger Things is still great. It's incredibly well structured, intelligently written, excellently paced, and one of the more visually intriguing shows to grace the Netflix platform.
Although, can we please agree to stop talking about its title fonts? Really, it's not that interesting...
Xenogears is an old school JRPG from the PS1 days that often makes its way onto people's lists of best or most underrated RGPs of all-time. On some level, it makes sense. It's got a unique, interesting combat system split into different types, has beautiful sprites for a generation of games in which graphics haven't exactly aged well, dabbled in 3D landscapes for every area besides the world map, and has a pretty awesome score. Its story also is one of the more intricate, complicated, and confusing in any game you can find from the period.
Yet it is also a game that could be used as a shining example of what not to do in a game today. (Full disclosure: I did not complete the replay. I beat it once about a decade ago, but I remember so very little from it. I've been playing for months and have recently had to give up for various reasons. I made it 50+ hours in and got about half way through the second disc before quitting. Personally, I don't see how finishing the game could possibly alter my review, but if you're someone who feels an entire review is completely invalid if the author doesn't complete the game, then you might as well not bother reading on.)
Originally slated to be a Final Fantasy installment, Xenogears incorporates some of the classic Squaresoft elements that made its flagship franchise so popular. An epic - if completely confounding story - with distinct characters, a new combat system, and a sprawling world map filled with history and lore, the game does a lot of things well.
Most notably is the combat. It scraps the ATB system found in most JRPGs of the time, opting for a strictly turn-based system. Menus are a little strange to navigate through at first - depicted in a sort of wheel-like manner in the upper corner - but instead of your traditional options of "fight, item, magic, et cetera," players pummel enemies through series of combos. Each character has X amount of points to expend for a turn, and the player may choose to distribute them however they'd like. If the character has 5 points, it could be divvied up into three attacks (2 weak attacks at 1 point apiece, and 1 strong attack at 3 points), or two attacks (1 medium attack at 2 points, 1 strong attack at 3 points). Or, if desired, five attacks (all 5 attacks being weak attacks worth 1 point).
It's an interesting and fun system. Basically, think of the entire character-driven fighting system as Sabin specialty moves from Final Fantasy VI. As you progress, the party members learn "Deathblows" as well - combinations of attack sets that unleash special moves. Players might also choose to pocket some spare AP each turn, saving up to unleash huge "Combo" chains, though this tactic does take some time to make worthwhile.
Additionally, the game created a second style of combat with Gears. Large mech suits that each character rides and fights in, Gear battles function somewhat similarly, yet also have different dynamics entirely. Each Gear requires fuel to perform any action at all. Fuel plays a bit like a mixture of AP and EP from character battles, only it's much easier to find yourself out of in the middle of a fight. Indeed, relying on fuel is a big reason why Gear battles are often the toughest in the entire game. There's more to be conscientious of. Plus, for about a third of the game, you cannot heal gears. Doing so requires a special item sold later in the game. As a result, when you take damage, your Gear can't get that health back during the fight. This is especially problematic in areas where you have to marathon bosses.
While an interesting idea, that fact makes the Gear battles feel slightly unfair. It doesn't help either that many boss fights are at the end of long, drawn out story scenes that cannot be skipped. This puts a lot of pressure on each fight, and it's extraordinarily frustrating to find yourself losing to such bosses. The argument that putting save points at a distance from bosses to make the game more difficult only holds water if there is a stretch of the level the player must complete again if they die. Here, it's annoying because the only thing you must repeat is an unskippable story sequence.
Late in the game, one of the more annoying elements is how the fuel cost of many attacks keeps increasing, but recharging does not. For example, some moves will scale up its fuel consumption cost as you level up and improve the Gears. Yet "Charge" - a move that lets you gain fuel - never yields more than 30 units. By the time you're on Disc 2, 30 fuel is nothing, and it's even easier to run out of fuel.
In fact, the hyper-focus on narrative is often detrimental to the game. Many will mention that the problem is especially noticeable on Disc 2. By that point, it is clear that the team developing the game ran out of time and resources, hastily slapping the final disc together. The narrative style changes drastically, often relying on a character in a chair straight up explaining the bits of story that they didn't have time to include in the game otherwise. Yet the slog of story problems begins well before the end of the first disc. If they had been able to include everything they wanted in disc 2 in a natural way, the game would have taken well over 100 hours to complete.
That in and of itself isn't a huge problem. However, the issue with Xenogears' story is that it isn't paced very well, and it's reliant on incredibly cryptic story elements that take forever to understand or get explained. The pay offs are almost never worth it, and many character elements are contrived in ways that extend beyond the norm for JRPGs of that era. It doesn't help that some sequences can last up to twenty minutes, followed by no save point, merge right into a boss fight, and oh yeah, you can't skip anything. (This was a problem it's spiritual successor, Xenosaga, fixed by allowing players to skip cutscenes.)
The end result is a game that often feels like a slog. It drags as you trudge through it. It's almost shades of Final Fantasy XIII too in the sense that there is surprisingly little for you to do at any point in the game, besides go wherever it wants you to go next. Exploration is substantially less of a role in Xenogears as it is in any Squaresoft Final Fantasy. The world map is nice and big, but doesn't offer any room for worthwhile sidequests or towns to look around in. This very linear design kind of conflicts with the idea of rendering all environments in 3D, which was obviously meant to make the game feel more open. It does not, in fact, feel remotely open.
The 3D maps, by the way, are interesting, but not executed super well. Certain dungeons will require a quasi-platforming element, with players needing to make jumps to a platform or landing based off of clunky and awkward camera angles. Plus, the running and jumping mechanics aren't tight enough for these elements to ever be anything other than frustrating.
Going into the replay, all I could really remember was that I thought I liked it when I played it a while ago. Perhaps it is truly good for the time it came out in, but I'm inclined to think that calling it underrated is inherently overrating it. It's not a terrible game without any merit, but it fails in a lot of ways.
(I'm inclined to rate it "Pretty Bad," since I spent months on the game and it felt like such a slog, and eventually some glitches made me finally give up. But I think it does have enough positive attributes in the gameplay department. I think fans of the genre might take something away.)
NOTE: SPOILERS - Seriously, do yourself a favor and play it first. Then come back and read this analysis.
A choice-driven, episodic game in the same vein as all of Telltale's properties, Life is Strange follows the freakish time-manipulating adventures of Max Caulfield at a prestigious art school in the Pacific Northwest. In essence, it is part Twin Peaks, part "Twilight Zone," and part The Catcher in the Rye. References to all works are scattered throughout (from the location to the last name of the main character). When the story starts getting especially strange and crazy, it might betray the grounded, relatable nature of the first episode, but is not unexpected as a result.
The story itself delves deep into issues that many people - especially younger folks - deal with. They deftly maneuver to include issues of bullying, suicide, and drug use while tackling themes of lost innocence, coming of age, and dealing with regret.
The long and short of the game is that it's one of the better choice-based games with the added twist of an interesting and well executed time rewind power. It's extremely touching, focused on two young women rekindling an old friendship in the aftermath of what could have been a horrible tragedy. It offers some cringe-worthy dialogue at times (sometimes comes off as "what older people think younger people sound like"), but it also features some of the most tense and difficult decisions ever asked of a player. Episode 4 is the pinnacle of the game, featuring arguably the most challenging choice I've ever had to confront personally, plus one of the better, more organic, and satisfying puzzles to solve. It does kind of fall apart at the end a bit, and its timeline of events could have used a little more ironing out, but it's still an incredible entry into the choice-based gaming.
Instead of doing a breakdown of the game overall, it might make more sense to tackle some of the bigger themes, and in particular why I might be one of the few who actively liked the final choice presented at the end. I was struck upon replay with how much it seemed to encourage players to dig into the meaning of things that it would make for a more interesting post to break down some of that, rather than a straight-forward review of it as a game. So indulge me as I do a deeper dive into some of that stuff.
One of the complaints people had at the end was that there aren't any reasons given for why Max developed the powers. By the conclusion, we are left without answers to those questions. Certainly, it's easy to understand why some would not be thrilled by that prospect. However, the game was never so much about the power itself. It was always about the characters and what Max did with it. There never needed to be an explanation as to why she got the powers.
Yet one thing that could have used further explanation is why her powers created the tornado seen in her apocalyptic vision of Arcadia Bay's destruction. Throughout the game, they loosely connect Max's time manipulation powers to things like the Butterfly Effect or Chaos Theory. Essentially, we as players are meant to understand that Max manipulating time is also manipulating reality and causing all of these unusual events: an unscheduled eclipse, snow during the summer, and a bunch of beached whales and dead birds everywhere. Max's power is also clearly behind the impending tornado. While they do a relatively solid job connecting that idea for the players, they don't exactly produce any super compelling evidence for the characters to buy into within the game. Max and Chloe both seem sold on the idea that that is the truth, but there isn't really much evidence for them to believe it whole-heartedly. Confounding it more is that the sequence of events is not that Max uses her power, then has premonitions of the twister. In fact, she has the vision first. Then she learns she can manipulate time. If they had just sorted that out properly, more people likely would have bought into the idea that the characters know it's cause and effect.
Of course, the biggest controversy of the game is its conclusion. When all is said and done, players are left with one binary choice: sacrifice Arcadia Bay or sacrifice Chloe. First off, I'd like to point out the beauty of phrasing here. The final choice isn't who you want to save. It's who you feel you must sacrifice. The game is by no means presenting Max as a hero at this point, and it aims at the harsher side of decision-making. Sometimes, you have a choice to make that just sucks either way. By phrasing it as "sacrifice" instead of "save," it forces you to confront the fact that it is a choice, and even if you find it a rather easy decision to make, there is an alternative. You don't have to let Chloe die again.
Some have argued that such a choice renders the rest of the game irrelevant. This is essentially the Mass Effect 3 argument, but it's not quite accurate. See, Mass Effect 3's concluding choice feels crappy because it feels oversimplified and disregards the point of the game. With Life is Strange, the finale serves the primary theme of the game. It's a video game take on the philosophical "trolley problem." More to the point, it marks the conclusion of Max's development either way.
So much of the game is about loss of innocence and dealing with regret. Max is an aspiring photographer, in which she constantly wants to snap images that "capture a moment in time." She's constantly stuck looking at the past, often at the cost of the present and future. The trauma endured when witnessing her childhood friend Chloe getting shot and killed in the bathroom is compounded by the guilt she feels from having lost touch with her. This was her best friend as a kid, and they had grown apart. Everything after that moment is simply Max trying to get more time with Chloe, to avoid that feeling of guilt and regret. All of the time manipulation is designed to retain that innocence of the past. She doesn't want to grow up and deal with serious problems of the adult world. So, she treats her time rewind power like she does her camera - just a way to re-live a moment in time.
The phantom doe is a bit of a strange creative decision that gets no real explanation and has sparked much debate among fans. Many felt betrayed by it just disappearing without reasons, as some argued it was the connection between Max and the missing Rachel Amber. However, it could be argued that the spirit doe didn't represent Rachel, nor did it even represent Max herself. It represented the innocence of childhood - something fading rapidly, but still Max pursued. She's seen chasing the doe several times, but it only disappears completely once they find the truth about Rachel. Max's innocence is completely gone when she's forced to confront the horrible reality of a supremely serious situation. At the same time, it was her pursuit of that innocence - spending all that time with Chloe, trying to mend that friendship - that brought them to that point. Chasing the doe drove her to the point where she could no longer go back to those happier days.
Some of this is also displayed in Max's outfits. In the first three episodes, she is always wearing a shirt that depicts a deer or doe in some fashion. Does typically represent innocent creatures, baby deer that are cute and harmless. At that point, Max is still chasing the past. She is trying to fix her old friendship with Chloe while still a bit ignorant of the more sinister plot of Rachel Amber's disappearance.
After the events of Episode 3, Max cannot escape her feelings of guilt anymore. She no longer wears a shirt featuring a doe. Instead, she dawns a black shirt featuring a rugged looking butterfly that appears to include a skull. It's substantially darker, depicting the loss of innocence completely. She knows she can't ever go back to those more pure times, and she's now fully wrapped up in the dark and horrifying events of a serial kidnapper.
Max's chase for innocence lines up well with Mr. Jefferson's scheme as well. A famed photographer, Mark Jefferson has made a name for himself by obsessing over one thing: capturing the moment where innocence is lost. That is why he works at a school and pursues teenagers. They're just on the cusp of adulthood and having no choice but to abandon notions of returning to the happier times of childhood. He's surrounded by people losing innocence and gaining more cynicism and darkness. While Max tries to hunt down those fleeting moments of past pleasantries, Jefferson hunts her down to capture the moment where she loses it.
All of this creates a cohesion of specifics and themes. Max being into photography serves her main arc of learning to come of age and become more of an adult. Pictures are capturing moments in time. This hobby is not just some pretentious art for her to randomly be interested in. It fits her character's development and the primary theme of learning to get out of the past and live in the present, ideally in a way that prevents regret.
Similarly, Jefferson's obsession with photographing the moment when "light turns to dark" or innocence is lost fits the theme as well. He is trying to capture Max in the moment she is trying to avoid, pitting them as natural thematic enemies. In a sense, Jefferson is the darkness to Max's light. The two are opposite sides of the same coin. This is represented through their actual photography. Jefferson tries to capture dark, tortured images while Max has a tendency of snapping photos of more positive, cheerful things.
The idea that the final choice renders the entire game pointless is not entirely fair, nor accurate. It's worth keeping in mind that everything that happens prior to that moment - including all of the alternate timelines and rewound scenarios - all happened for Max. Whether you choose to go back to the beginning and let Chloe die or to move forward and screw over the town, Max will remember virtually everything that happened. She will have to live with further guilt either way, and live with the fact that she did possess the ability to change things. Letting Arcadia Bay get destroyed does not render everything you did meaningless, but it would indicate a level of selfishness that she wouldn't have otherwise developed into.
Indeed, the entire point of the game is really about Max dealing with the guilt of failing to keep in touch with a dear friend, and wishing she had more time. All of the interactions with other characters, whether it was Victoria or Warren or Kate, all serve to show character development. The whole thing is told from Max's perspective, complete with her inner dialogue, explaining her feelings and opinions. She is not a stand-in for you, the player, even though you get a choice in how she develops. It should be clear, then, that no matter what you choose at the end, Max will continue about her life knowing all of those things did happen. And she will have to carry additional burdens as well.
At times, I have been accused of making great stretches to create a pretentious justification for the flaws of the final choice. Certainly, binary decisions are rarely amazing, and indeed the timeline of events is flawed in a way detrimental to the specific plot. However, replaying the game in a week - start to finish with no breaks as we did when it was being released - I'm more convinced than ever that I am not making wide leaps in my explanations here. This is not to suggest that I believe my interpretations are "correct." There have been many theories and commentaries about what certain things mean, all of them every bit as valid as I believe mine to be. Great art is something that will impact people differently. Great stories will allow different consumers to take different things from them. Maybe the doe doesn't represent that sense of innocence to other people, but it absolutely seemed that way to me.
So, despite some noticeable flaws and missteps here and there, it's hard for me to call the game anything other than great. It's one of the better point-and-click style of choice-driven games. It handles choices in vastly better and more interesting ways than Telltale has in any of there games, to be frank. I love that the game had me reading into things, challenging me more. More importantly, I adored that it presented some decisions that actually made me reconsider my positions on real life issues. And, admittedly, it's one of the only games that ever made me tear up (which it did both times, even when I knew what was coming).
Life Is Strange is one of the more powerful entries in narrative gaming, and it's one of the better examples of just how much empathy and emotion interactive media can generate.
