Life is Strange Remastered: An Unnecessary and Broken Update
A graphical update for the first two parts of the Life is Strange series was announced at E3 2021. You can find out whether Square Enix has succeeded with the update in our test.
It’s the big shooter hope of the year: XDefiant . The closed beta in April attracted a lot of attention. Players were enthusiastic about the gameplay of the Ubisoft title and since then terms like “CoD Killer” have been making the rounds. Let’s face it, the Call of Duty brand has been faltering for years, but sales figures for the latest game in the series – Modern Warfare 2 – aren’t showing any major consequences. The lack of competition is certainly one of the factors behind this fact.
xDefiant is being developed by former CoD employees, among others, and is scheduled to celebrate its release this year: with the Free2Play model . A map selection, good menu navigation, manageable loadouts, exciting gameplay and, above all, no skill-based matchmaking : What sounds like quite simple features in the Ubisoft shooter will probably please many players who are currently being hit hard by Call of Duty. But in some corners it still gets stuck. Some weaknesses were revealed in the recently playable open beta.
The Life is Strange series has enjoyed great popularity for many years. So of course there was great joy when a new edition of Life is Strange and Life is Strange: Before the Storm was announced during E3 2021. A graphic update of the somewhat outdated games from 2015 and 2017, that sounded very promising. So now the Life is Strange: Remastered Collection is here, and looking at the test version, one can only say: Square Enix could have saved itself this update. Not only are the improvements marginal, but suddenly there are bugs and errors that didn’t exist before.
Nothing has changed in the story. Life is Strange puts you in the role of Max Caulfield, an 18-year-old photography student. After having to move away with her parents five years before the start of the game, she returns to her hometown to study and is immediately confronted with a number of problems. Among other things, she is worried about the broken friendship with her former best friend Chloe, with whom she would like to rebuild contact.
Chloe herself dropped out of school and got herself into a lot of trouble. Last but not least, this includes the disappearance of her best friend Rachel Amber. Max tries everything to help Chloe and her friends. Her newly discovered power, which lets her turn back time, helps her.
In this way, she can hold conversations again and again, influence events and thus steer them in a certain direction. In addition to her new powers, she also has frequent visions of a storm threatening the city. Of course, we won’t reveal what this storm is all about and whether she can help her friends.
The prequel Life is Strange: Before the Storm is about Max’s best friend Chloe, who loses her footing after Max’s move and gets into all sorts of troubles. Unlike Max, she doesn’t have any special powers and once you’ve given an answer, you can’t undo it. In the prequel one learns more about Chloe, her character and the friendship with Rachel Amber. Again, the story convinces with a great atmosphere and depth of character.
What changes have been announced?
On the gameplay side, a few puzzles have been changed to improve the flow of the game. The really relevant changes can be found in terms of graphics – at least that’s the promise in advance. In practice, however, these “improvements” are hardly significant. Some character models and environment graphics have been slightly beautified, but without a direct comparison, the differences would hardly be noticeable to anyone.
Improved motion capture technology for lip-synched dialogue and nicer facial animations were also promised, and again the difference is hardly noticeable. The only visible change is in the lighting system. This is mainly due to more natural-looking eyes, as they are illuminated differently. A really relevant update is not found here either. And: Some of the cut scenes even look worse graphically than in the original, mainly due to a misplaced blurring effect.
If you want more impressions of the graphic differences, you are welcome to take a look at our graphic comparison , in which the technical differences are shown.
Mistakes, mistakes and more mistakes!
So far, so unsatisfactory. Now it gets even more annoying. It’s incomprehensible how Square Enix managed to pack so many technical errors into a game that previously worked without any bugs.
Already in the first part you are surprised with a never-ending list of errors: Flickering doors, overlapping texts, jerky images, longer loading times than in the original, the character spontaneously changed its position in the level, the screen froze, it fell more than once play completely.
It doesn’t get much worse than that, one might think. The bugs don’t get any better in the second part, on the contrary, there are even more.
How is that possible? We would also like to know. The good new lighting in Life is Strange sometimes causes huge white spots on the monitor in Before the Storm, subtitles are completely missing in places and only the file names are there instead, dialogues are repeatedly cut off.
The many other smaller and larger annoyances that we ran into, such as spontaneous control failures, would go beyond the scope here. Apparently, remasters are currently the biggest challenge in the video game world. We can’t explain this technical disaster any other way, just shortly after the GTA Trilogy debacle. Really disappointing.
How can you mess up a remaster like that?
The story in the remaster is of course still as great as in the originals.
No wonder it hasn’t changed.
In addition, the question does not arise as to whether the remaster would have been needed, but how one could screw up such a simple task as a minimal graphical beef-up.
The marginal improvements don’t even begin to make up for the countless bugs.
I’d rather stick with the original.
I’m at a loss right now, wondering how the developers managed to make the game so much better – or, to be more precise, worse.
PROS & CONS of Life is Strange Remastered
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| Better lip movement | Incredibly many bugs |
| Some nice light effects | Multiplayer with community maps |
| Story still very successful | Cutscenes look worse than before |
| Control dropouts | |
| No new content |
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
| MINIMUM | RECOMMENDED |
|---|---|
| Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system | Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system |
| OS: Windows 8.1 64-Bit or later | OS: Windows 8.1 64-Bit or later |
| Processor: Intel Core i5-2500K / AMD FX-6350 | Processor: Intel Core i7-5820K / AMD Ryzen 5 2600 |
| Memory: 8 GB RAM | Memory: 16 GB RAM |
| Graphics: GeForce GTX 960 / GeForce GTX 1050 | Graphics: GeForce GTX 1060 / Radeon RX 580 |
| DirectX: Version 11 | DirectX: Version 11 |
| Sound Card: DirectX compatible | Sound Card: DirectX compatible |
Version & rating Life is Strange Remastered
| Versions | Rating |
|---|---|
| Life is Strange Remastered Collection (PC) | 5/10 _ |
| Life is Strange Remastered Collection (PS4) | 5/10 _ |
| Life is Strange Remastered Collection (PS5) | 5/10 _ |
| Life is Strange Remastered Collection (XBO) | 5/10 _ |
| Life is Strange Remastered Collection (XSX) | 5/10 _ |
CONCLUSION
An insanely disappointing Life-is-Strange experience
