I grew weary of the characters squabbling, the word “flark”, the constant slides and gaps, and the combat/cutscene/combat/cutscene nature of the closing chapters. I still loved it. It has such great emotional highs and a chaotic joyousness pumping through its veins that kept me smiling and wanting more. It proves in this day and age that a linear AAA game can still offer up imaginative, wondrous ideas and sights. As a result it feels like a refreshing rarity in the current “bigger is better” market. Thank goodness it’s a single player game too and one that takes the time to build a complex, heartfelt narrative around its protagonist.

True Colors is the first Life Is Strange to figure out how to gel its central gimmick with its more dramatic story beats. It’s also the first one to nail most of those moments; they feel natural instead of too saccharine or cringey. It only really stumbles in the smaller moments, but then you experience something like nearly the entirety of the third chapter, which is an ingenious portrayal of a LARP (and one of the best video game moments of the year). It also establishes a sense of a place that’s been missing since Arcadia Bay in the first game and features the most memorable cast of characters to date. I cared about the town of Haven, its inhabitants, and especially its latest arrival, Alex, a wonderful protagonist.

The scariest game I’ve played that isn’t titled P.T. but might as well be P.T. 2. All-encompassing dread that permeates nearly every moment from beginning to end. Four stories told with refreshing straightforwardness and horrifying ingenuity. It’s not an experience to be taken lightly. Unfortunately the somewhat cruder gameplay elements like the sluggish sledgehammer add to the already arduous task of getting through it. Yet the majority of that challenge lies in what it should: the game being so goddamn terrifying.

It’s almost redeemed by some cool puzzles. Too bad most of them are way too simplistic and the core mechanic of the game just doesn’t function properly. The ability to make objects bigger or smaller with a simple change of perspective is a cool concept. Yet it makes for poor gameplay when you have to cross your fingers and hope you’re standing at exactly the right angle for that wedge of cheese or block to actually get bigger. It all comes across like a watered down The Stanley Parable. That dollhouse part was pretty neat, though.