With Telltale taking on one too many games with their increasingly busted game engine, it was only a matter of time before someone took the branching narrative design of their games, and did it better. Enter Life is Strange, the third title from DONTNOD Entertanment, developers of the criminally underrated mind-boggler Remember Me. They always proved themselves as masters of spinning a good alternate reality tale, and through LiS you enter the mind of Max Caulfield, a girl who realises she can travel back in time whilst keeping the experiences of the future, changing everything from answers on an exam, to even saving someone's life. The best part isn't necessarily the story either (although it will take you on one hell of a ride, despite a shaky ending). No, it's in how it grants you the ability to say or do the option that first pops into your head, every time, before flicking back to before things went sour and trying something else. How often have you wanted to really tell that smarmy so-and-so in The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones what you really think, but know there'll be consequences? Now you can, and it allows the genre to flex and bend in ways that Telltale's games never did; a quality that definitely smooths over any of Life is Strange's occasional cracks.
