I finished "Life is Strange: True Colors" in 11 hours!

Joy to the world!

What an amazing game! Without a doubt my favorite of all Life is Strange games. Then again, I've probably say that of every LiS game I've played ;)

So, after last time, Alex discovered that not all emotions she can read are bad. Joy has the power to change the world around her. This led to some great scenes. I really enjoyed the LARPing in chapter four, with everybody in town helping young boy Ethan have the time of his life. This was such a fun with all the battles and finding scrolls, but also touching sequence. It's something I would love to do in real life.

FIGHT!

Other than that I tried very much to woo Steph during the Spring Festival. I know the game lets you choose between Steph and Ryan as the main romantic interest, and for some reason Steph made more sense to me. Ryan's a good guy, but he just didn't have the spark for me.

Bewitching...

Chapter five was both awesome but also a bit underwhelming. There wasn't really much gameplay there, simply going through some flashback scenes and then the final showdown, where all the little sidequests with the other characters paid off (still missed getting one right, it seemed...) And then the final decision on what the future would bring for Alex.
 

No guitar playing mini-game? Aw shucks...

I decided to stay in Haven, and Steph decided to stay with me. I hope that the vision of the future Alex received will become true. This was a great pay-off of a great game with amazing visuals, endearing characters, awesome music (even some licensed songs like Kings of Leon and Dido) and of course the fun gameplay the Life is Strange games are known for. Great to play a narrative game like this after a game filled with inventory puzzles.

Life is Strange: Double Feature is next in this series, but for my following playthrough I will be going back to the classics with Heart of China!

I'm 5 hours into "Life is Strange: True Colors" and things are getting very emotional

Can I just go live here?

What a stunning game is Life is Strange: True Colors. I love everything about it. I'm five hours into it and I just reached Chapter 3. I discovered there's a run button, but who wants to hurry through this beautiful world? I'm totally enjoying walking through the fictional Colorado town of Haven Springs.

These aren't the flowers you're looking for...

And going from Chapter 2 to Chapter 3 I also noticed there were lots of optional quests I could have done. But I didn't know they existed. Which means I didn't even explore enough! Now, I do blame the game for that, because there's ANOTHER button that lets Alex use her powers on people, but this was never tutorialized. Because most of the time, the game automatically shows when it's possible to use your power, except not for these optional quests (like finding a man's lost dog, or helping out a birdwatcher in the park).

I can't even make decisions in real life, so why do I play games like this?

As far as the story goes, something unexpectedly tragic happened, so now it's a month later and I'm trying to uncover a conspiracy behind that accident. Meanwhile I'm going around helping people out, even in little things like playing a student's favorite song on the jukebox while she's studying in the bar. It's very hard hitting the brake like that on the main story. I'm not really a completionist like that, I just don't think it's fair that the chapter summaries are almost "blaming" me like "you didn't help so and so" when I didn't even realize those options were there to begin with!

Let's kick some foosball butt!

I really like all these characters, even taking pity on some of the more "disturbed" ones, once you use your power on them and figure out what's really going on. Of course now I'm starting to wonder whether it's possible for someone to totally fool Alex regarding their emotions, or if her powers are foolproof. Perhaps I'm thinking too much about it. Thankfully sometimes there are some mini-games to take your mind off it all, like playing foosball, the jukebox game (a version of Twenty Questions) or simply picking out another outfit to wear (I quite enjoyed that option in Crown and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit as well...

You can even choose Alex's outfit for the day!

I've played through some very tense scenes, several funny ones, but also quite scary ones. The one that struck me most is helping out someone suffering from dementia. When Alex sees the world through that person's eyes when she connects with them, that's an amazing piece of cinematography. But I also quite enjoyed figuring out how to help them remember everything. Still, many decisions you have to make feel like the game is twisting a knife in your heart. So, I'm just trying to play the game being as honest as I can.

Really wondering what the second half of the game has in store!

You can find Life is Strange: True Colors on Steam!

New game: "Life is Strange: True Colors"

New game!

I started playing Life is Strange: True Colors and I'm one hour into it! You play as Alex, a young woman who grew up in foster homes and is suddenly contacted by her long lost brother. She goes to meet him in the town of Haven Springs. But of course, Life wouldn't be Strange if there wasn't something peculiar with Alex, which first shows itself when she sees what appears to be a blue aura surrounding her brother Gabe when she meets him.

Meet Alex. "Hi, Alex!" "Hi, gamer..."

I'm not far into this game yet, but immediately Haven Springs is a place I want to travel to myself and spend some time there. When it comes to graphics, I can't think of any other games that have such a high quality and level of realism. A perfect game for me would be this style of graphics coupled with a point 'n click interface, since that genre of adventure games still has my preference (but of course that's a bit hard to combine with a 3D open world).

Welcome to Haven Springs!

True Colors is best played with a controller. As you walk around the scenes, hotspots will highlight automatically and you can interact with them with a click of a button. Which leads me to the story and worldbuilding. These games are so detailed, it's like you're actually transported into a novel or a movie. There's lots to explore, lots of little things to see. Not everything is linked to the main story, and most of the exploration is optional.

Cool music in this game, and not-so cool cats...

The first hour of gameplay ended with a bang: my brother was suddenly assaulted by a jealous boyfriend of someone he'd been helping out. A red aura flared up and Alex seemed to take over his aggression and went She-Hulk on him, like an extreme case of mirror-touch synesthesia (I've learned that from the TV-show Brilliant Minds!)

Usually the "good" choice comes back to bite you...

After that episode, I now find myself on my own in my brother's apartment, and I can finally unpack. No idea what this all will lead to, but I do expect some backlash from a choice I made a bit earlier, about keeping a little boy's secret or not...

You can find Life is Strange: True Colors on Steam!