Life is Strange Remastered Review
A mystery about a missing girl becomes something much bigger—and then completely breaks your brain
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Genre: Narrative Adventure / Mystery / Supernatural
Developer: Dontnod Entertainment
Publisher: Square Enix
Players: 1
Case Type: Bradley & Amanda
Category: 🏆 ESSENTIAL PLAY
Mannequin Warning: None
🗂 The Mystery Cartridge Verdict
🏆 ESSENTIAL PLAY — HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
There are games you play.
There are games you finish.
And then there are games that stay with you.
Life is Strange is one of those games.
We went into it because, at its most basic level, it sounded like exactly the sort of thing we would enjoy: a mystery involving the disappearance of a teenage girl, a small town full of secrets, a cast of characters with complicated relationships, and a protagonist who can rewind time (okay, that last one isn't required, but makes this story a bit unique, and makes us rethink what superpower we'd really like to have).
That alone would have been enough.
What we got was considerably more.
The mystery of what happened to Rachel Amber is the thread that pulls you through Arcadia Bay. But as you follow that thread, the game keeps adding more questions.
What happened to Rachel?
What is Nathan Prescott involved in?
Who can Max trust?
Where did Max's power come from?
Why is the storm coming?
Can Max actually change the future, or is she merely making things worse?
And perhaps the most important question:
How much are we willing to sacrifice to change the outcome?
By the time Life is Strange reaches its final chapter, the game has stopped gently asking you those questions and started throwing them directly at your head.
It's an emotional, narrative, and occasionally downright psychological mindfuck.
And we loved it.
📷 Welcome to Arcadia Bay
You play Max Caulfield, a photography student who has returned to her hometown of Arcadia Bay after being away for several years.
Very quickly, Max discovers that she has an unusual ability:
She can rewind time.
At first, this seems almost like a superpower.
You can go back and change something you said.
You can undo a mistake.
You can try a different conversation.
You can use information you learned in one version of events to change what happens in another.
And then the game introduces you to Chloe Price.
And suddenly, the story gets personal.
Chloe was Max's best friend before Max left Arcadia Bay. But while Max was gone, Chloe's life changed dramatically.
And the person who eventually became Chloe's closest friend was Rachel Amber.
Rachel has now disappeared.
So begins the mystery that initially drives the game.
🔎 The Rachel Amber Mystery
This is probably the aspect of Life is Strange that most immediately appealed to us as The Mystery Cartridge.
Rachel isn't simply a plot device.
Her disappearance affects everyone in Arcadia Bay.
Chloe is obsessed with finding her.
She put posters about Rachel all over town.
People remember Rachel differently.
Some adored her.
Some distrusted her.
Some clearly know more than they're saying.
And as Max and Chloe investigate, Rachel becomes increasingly real to us despite having never actually known the character. There are no flashbacks to show us what she's like.
That's a difficult trick for a game to pull off.
The missing person isn't simply:
"Person X is missing. Find Person X."
Rachel becomes a person whose absence has consequences.
And the more you learn about her, and her disappearance, the more complicated the mystery becomes.
🕵️ Detective Work
This is where Life is Strange really fits our coverage.
You're not simply walking from one cutscene to another.
You're investigating.
You search rooms.
You examine photographs.
You look through people's belongings.
You talk to people.
You remember conversations.
You discover information.
And then you rewind time and use what you've learned to approach a situation differently.
That last part is particularly clever.
Max can learn something in a conversation and then rewind to before the conversation happened, giving her information she didn't technically possess the first time around.
That creates some wonderful little detective moments.
You aren't necessarily solving a puzzle because the game has hidden a key under a vase.
You're solving it because you know something now that you didn't know five minutes ago.
That's the sort of detective work we love.
⏪ The Rewind
The rewind mechanic could easily have been a gimmick.
It isn't.
It's the entire foundation of the game.
At first, it's fun.
You say something stupid?
Rewind.
Make the wrong choice?
Rewind.
Miss something?
Rewind.
Then you start realizing that knowledge itself becomes a tool.
You can have one conversation simply to learn information, rewind, and then use that information in another conversation.
That is an incredibly satisfying mechanic.
And then the game starts asking a much more uncomfortable question:
What if you can't fix everything?
Because Max's power doesn't mean she can simply rewind until everyone is happy.
Some things have consequences.
Some choices follow you.
Some things you change create entirely new problems. Or even, new realities.
And eventually, the player starts to realize that the little butterfly icon isn't simply telling you:
"You made a choice."
It's warning you.
This action has consequences.
Just like every choice we make every day.
🦋 Your Choices Have Consequences
The game's entire philosophy revolves around choice and consequence.
And we mean actual consequences.
Some choices are relatively minor.
Others have enormous ramifications.
And sometimes you don't even know how important a decision is when you're making it.
That's what makes the game work.
You can't simply approach every decision as though you're completing a checklist.
You have to decide what you think Max should do.
And once you've made enough decisions, the game starts reflecting them back at you.
That's when Life is Strange gets really interesting.
Because the game isn't just asking:
"What would produce the best ending?"
It's asking:
"What do you believe is the right thing to do?"
Those aren't always the same question.
👩❤️👩 Max and Chloe
The relationship between Max and Chloe is probably the emotional center of the entire game.
And it's beautifully complicated.
They were childhood friends.
Max left.
Chloe changed.
Rachel entered Chloe's life.
And now Max is back.
There is affection between them, but there is also hurt, resentment, guilt and all of the awkwardness that comes from trying to reconnect with someone you once knew intimately.
As the story progresses, that relationship develops naturally.
Sometimes it's funny.
Sometimes it's heartbreaking.
Sometimes it's frustrating.
And sometimes you desperately want to yell at both of them to stop and think for five seconds.
Which is probably a sign that the characters are doing their jobs.
🌪 The Storm
And then there's the storm.
From the very beginning, Max sees it coming.
A gigantic tornado is bearing down on Arcadia Bay.
At first, it feels like one more mystery.
What is it?
Why did Max see it?
What does it have to do with everything else?
And then the game gradually starts connecting the dots.
The missing girl.
Max's powers.
The choices she's made.
The changes she's caused.
The strange events happening around Arcadia Bay.
The storm.
Suddenly, the mystery isn't simply:
What happened to Rachel Amber?
It's:
What the hell is happening to Arcadia Bay?
And then we start asking the really uncomfortable question:
Did Max cause this?
🧠 "I Must Break You"
There comes a point in Life is Strange where you realize that the game isn't merely trying to entertain you anymore.
It's trying to mess with your head.
And this is where I couldn't help but think of Dolph Lundgren's immortal Rocky IV line:
"I must break you."
Except instead of Ivan Drago standing in a boxing ring, it's the developers sitting behind a computer screen thinking:
"How emotionally uncomfortable can we make Bradley and Amanda?"
The answer, apparently, is:
Very.
The final chapter takes everything you've learned, everything you've chosen, and everything you thought you understood and starts pulling it apart.
Reality becomes increasingly unstable.
The game becomes surreal.
Max's fears and memories begin bleeding together.
And the story starts forcing you to reconsider things you thought were settled.
It's one hell of a final act.
🧩 And Then There's the Ending
We are deliberately not going to spoil the final choice here.
Because if you've never played Life is Strange, you need to experience it yourself.
But there is something beautifully appropriate about the fact that the game ultimately leaves you with a choice that cannot simply be solved by finding the objectively correct answer.
The game has spent its entire runtime telling you:
Your choices matter.
And then it asks you to make one final choice.
And you have to live with it.
There's a quote from Rush vocalist Geddy Lee that came to mind:
"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."
That is Life is Strange in a nutshell.
There is no escape from choosing.
We left that screen for five minutes while we decided what our final choice would be.
And after everything Max has experienced, that's a hell of a place to leave the player.
🎵 The Soundtrack
The soundtrack deserves a mention, too.
Music is an enormous part of Life is Strange's identity.
The songs aren't simply playing in the background.
They contribute to the atmosphere and emotional tone of the scenes.
Arcadia Bay has a particular feeling, and the music is a huge part of creating it.
There are moments where the combination of music, visuals and story hits exactly the right emotional note.
And when it works, it really works.
🎮 The Switch Remaster
We played the Remastered version on Nintendo Switch.
The remaster brings updated visuals and character animation to the original game, while retaining the core experience that made Life is Strange so memorable. Square-Enix describes the collection as featuring remastered visuals and animation, with the Switch version optimized for Nintendo's system.
For us, the important thing is that the underlying game works.
The mystery works.
The relationships work.
The rewind mechanic works.
The choices work.
And most importantly, the story lands.
The Switch also makes this a particularly nice game to play in shorter sessions, or, if you're anything like us, to accidentally play for considerably longer than you intended.
🚨 Mannequin Warning
There are no mannequins.
Amanda can investigate Arcadia Bay without fear of accidentally turning a corner and discovering that an inanimate human-shaped object has decided to move.
This is appreciated.
🔎 What We Loved
The Rachel Amber Mystery
It gives the entire game a compelling investigative spine.
Max and Chloe
Their relationship is complicated, emotional, and believable.
The Rewind Mechanic
One of the best uses of a supernatural gameplay mechanic we've encountered.
The Detective Work
Talking to people, examining environments and using information to change later conversations makes investigation feel like actual gameplay.
The Choices
The game genuinely makes you consider what you want to happen rather than simply choosing the option you think the game wants.
The Final Chapter
An absolute psychological assault.
In the best possible way.
The Final Choice
One of those endings that stays with you because there isn't a magic "correct" answer.
🤔 What Could Be Better?
There are certainly moments where Life is Strange shows its age.
Some of the character animation and facial expressions can occasionally be distracting, particularly when compared with modern games.
And some dialogue can be... very much a product of its time.
But those things didn't diminish our overall experience.
The bigger issue is simply that the game's structure can occasionally feel slow.
You're spending a lot of time talking, walking around, examining things, and listening to conversations.
For us, that's largely a feature rather than a bug.
But players looking for constant action may find the pacing frustrating.
That's not what Life is Strange is trying to be.
It's a story first.
🕵️ Who Should Play Life is Strange?
We would recommend this to anyone who enjoys:
Mystery
Detective stories
Supernatural fiction
Character-driven narratives
Choice-based games
Psychological stories
Coming-of-age stories
Games where your decisions have consequences
Stories that leave you thinking about them after the credits
And if you've ever looked at one of our other reviews and thought:
"Okay, but I want something that is really about the characters..."
Play this.
🏆 Final Verdict
Life is Strange begins with a simple mystery:
Where is Rachel Amber?
And by the time you're finished, you're asking questions about friendship, grief, fate, responsibility, the consequences of changing the past, and whether saving one person can justify what happens to everyone else.
That's a hell of an escalation.
The Rachel Amber investigation pulled us in.
The relationships kept us invested.
The detective work gave us something to do.
The rewind mechanic made those investigations unique.
The storm kept us wondering what the hell was actually happening.
And the final chapter took everything we thought we knew and threw it into a blender.
I must break you.
It succeeded.
Then, just when we thought we had recovered, the game gave us its final choice.
And there was no rewind.
No second chance.
No way to make everybody happy.
Just a decision.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
That's Life is Strange.
And that's why we're giving it our highest recommendation.
🏆 ESSENTIAL PLAY — HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
A deeply engaging mystery wrapped around an unforgettable story about friendship, consequence, fate and the terrifying responsibility of being able to change the past. If you haven't investigated Arcadia Bay yet, open this case file.
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