Tides of Tomorrow was provided by THQ Nordic for review. Thank you!
After playing a couple of preview builds for Tides of Tomorrow, I was curious to see how the full game took advantage of its unique narrative storytelling, whereby players follow in the footsteps of those before them, and in turn, get a chance to influence the events of other players who decide to follow their footsteps. I wasn't convinced it was used to full effect in the preview builds, but I couldn't wait to try the full game.
Tides of Tomorrow leans heavily on its narrative, unsurprising given that the developer's last game was Road 96, a very narrative-driven game. Fortunately, the story holds interest throughout and gradually gets you more emotionally involved as we progress. In a world infected with a disease called "Plastemia", where the entire population of the Earth is slowly dying, Ozen is the one medicine that staves off the symptoms and is prized by all the factions in the game. As a "Tidewalker", you are prophesied to find a cure for Plastemia and bring hope to mankind.
The game isn't too long, taking around 6 to 7 hours to finish. It partly depends on how many side missions you take and how many true characters (named ones that affect the story) there are, but keeping the game and characters relatively modest in scope, along with the solid voice acting, helps them really flesh out the story and the personalities of each.
While not political in nature, Tides of Tomorrow does feature an "ethics" system, whereby the choices that you make will push you towards certain ethical leanings, such as favoring nature over mankind or prioritizing yourself over others. The main characters you interact with tend to fall within these categories. For example, Eyla is very pro-nature, and she'll like you more for making choices to protect animals and the planet ahead of mankind. The choices you make affect your relationships, and ultimately, the fate of the world.
Which brings us to the main pull of Tides of Tomorrow, the "Online Story Link". It allows you to follow another player's footsteps, with their previous actions either helping or hindering you. It's a neat system, and it's used to varying effectiveness throughout the game. You get to choose a person to start your adventure with, either from a global list, your friends list, or a specific number/seed to follow. If you do reach an area they haven't played through, the game will switch you to another player to follow.
Sometimes, this system works really well. Before you follow a player, you do get a preview of their primary ethics, so you have an idea of whether they have been antagonistic or friendly with NPCs on their playthrough. You'll also get an idea of whether or not they play cooperatively or play for their own survival, which can give you an indication of whether or not they have left resources behind for you.
Don't expect to see the entire game in one playthrough. Tides of Tomorrow is designed to be replayed, with different choices and following different players each time, which can affect the world around you. If you follow a player who annoyed certain NPCs, for example, they will be more confrontational and less helpful in your playthrough, and the opposite if the player you are following was kind and helpful.
Ozen is in limited supply, and it becomes rarer as the game progresses. You will gradually lose health as you progress, so managing your Ozen becomes very important. You can give it away to future Tidewalkers who follow you, you can use it to replenish your health, or you can give it to NPCs for rewards. Following a player who is stingy with their resources can be a tough challenge, whereas following a more "cooperative" player makes your life a lot easier, as they are likely to have left Ozen behind for you, or at least Scrap with which you can buy Ozen.
There are also "visions" left behind by the player's actions. This is where I feel the game under-utilizes a bit. It feels like there are periods of the story that heavily use this feature, and other periods where it's hardly part of the game at all. I definitely had around an hour of playtime (about 15% of the game) when I never used it, and then at a point when I had to use it 5 times in 5 minutes. Sometimes I even forgot it was a part of the game.
The "gameplay" itself is fairly mundane. Most of the time, you are walking around the game's floating outposts, occasionally doing some platforming and interacting with NPCs. There are some stealth sections, which I wasn't a fan of; the AI has a very limited line of sight, and sometimes movement doesn't respond as you wish. You'll likely get through most of them without being caught once. The only combat in the game is ship-to-ship combat, and that mostly consists of driving around behind a ship while it fires cannons at you that you must avoid, while periodically firing your own cannon back. It's simple, it's easy, and fortunately, it represents a tiny portion of the game.
Tides of Tomorrow is a narrative-first game, and it has a great narrative. The gameplay is on the weaker side; there's not much excitement here. The Online Story Link spices things up and adds some variety, and it does weave into the plot a little, which enhances it, but it takes a little while to find its stride.
Tides of Tomorrow has great controller support and supports 1280x800 as a resolution, so there are no issues with the basics.
As far as graphical settings are concerned, the game doesn't have many settings to choose from, with the only option available being Resolution Scaling. By default, this is set to 56%, but I lowered it to 50% in my playthrough because it gains a couple of extra FPS, which helps. Lock the framerate to 30 in SteamOS as well.
When it comes to performance on Steam Deck, unfortunately, Tides of Tomorrow is highly variable. Certain areas, crucially the areas that contain the small amount of action that the game has, tend to run at 30 FPS, or at least close to. Crowded areas, such as bars and the market, frequently drop to around 20 FPS, but these tend to be free-roam moments with little action or reaction time required.
The absolute worst-performing moment was an ocean event I encountered during a storm, which caused RAM/VRAM usage to spike and pushed the FPS down to around 12-14. I was able to complete the event, but it was an unpleasant experience, and you may want to skip the "Storm" event if you're playing on a Steam Deck. I had to quit the game and reboot in order to get the RAM usage down again. Generally, though, events on the ocean run well on the Steam Deck, due to the limited characters.
Power draw is on the higher side, being around 17W-20W, with temperatures being around 65 °C. Expect a battery life of about 2.5 hours on a Steam Deck OLED, and around 1.5 hours on a Steam Deck LCD.
Tides of Tomorrow supports subtitles (with adjustable size), as all dialogue is voiced, and it also features color-blind filters. You can also disable camera shake/wobble effects.
Tides of Tomorrow has a strong, intriguing, and ultimately emotional narrative that makes it worth experiencing. The gameplay sections are merely a vehicle to keep the narrative moving, and while they aren't the most engaging, they do their job. And while the Online Story Link system does elevate the gameplay and impact how you approach the game, it can fade into the background. However, the story feels impactful and engaging enough to keep you going despite the setbacks.
Performance on the Steam Deck is, sadly, rather poor, and I would recommend playing the game on a more powerful device. The RAM/VRAM usage gets so high that it borders on crashing, and performance in parts of the game is simply unacceptable.
このレビューはPC版に基づいています。
このレビューをお楽しみいただけたなら、SteamDeckHQ の他のコンテンツもぜひご覧ください！あなたのゲーム体験に役立つゲームレビューやニュースを幅広く取り揃えています。ニュース、ヒントやチュートリアル、ゲーム設定やレビューをお探しの方も、最新のトレンドを知りたい方も、ぜひご利用ください。
Life is Strange: Double Exposure was provided by Square Enix for review. Thank you!
It's time for the long-awaited sequel to the original Life is Strange, released back in 2015, with Max Caulfield returning as the protagonist. However, we've jumped forward several years, with Max now teaching at Caledon University instead of being a student at Blackwood. If you enjoyed the previous installments of the series, I'll start by saying it's probably a given that you'll enjoy Life is Strange: Double Exposure. It follows a similar style to the previous games, allowing limited exploration of the area but largely focused on its narrative story-telling and dialogue choices.
The story of these games is what it's all about, and the story of Life is Strange: Double Exposure is a hit. The game revolves around Safi, Max's friend whom she found dead in the snow with a pistol shot to the chest. You'll encounter others trying to discover what happened and some who just want to get on with things after the traumatic event and leave the investigation to the police. However, you will use your unique power to travel between 2 timelines, one where Safi is alive and one where she's passed, to piece together what happened that night and find the killer.
While the main story concept of traveling between 2 timelines is revealed early on, there are plenty of twists and turns that you'll encounter that keep you on your toes. The story of Double Exposure gets pretty wild pretty fast and soon runs away with itself, beginning to prefer cutscenes and dialogue over gameplay, which is a good thing in this case.
As you continue your investigation, you'll meet a colorful cast of characters. From your nerdy friend Moses, who is always looking for an explanation and easily gets lost in his work, to the curious Detective Alderman, to Professor Gwen, who is on vastly different paths in the two timelines. You'll get to learn about these characters, their motivations for their actions, and something they all have in common, and it's a joy to do so.
The 2 timelines are portrayed heavily in both gameplay and story, so be prepared to get your brain a little confused regarding interactions with both. Max might have a good relationship with a certain character in one timeline and a not-so-good one in the other timeline, and this can also be affected by the choices you make in the game.
There are plenty of big choices you have to make in the game, which will have a significant impact on your relationships with other characters and, thus, how elements of the story will pan out. They aren't easy to make, with many not falling into a "right or wrong" category and sitting more in a grey area of morality. It'll be up to you to decide whether that's worth it. At the end of each chapter, you'll see what other players chose, and surprisingly, I seemed to be in the overwhelming minority for most choices, often selecting the choice that 10-20% of players picked (so far).
Life is Strange: Double Exposure chooses to render all of its cutscenes in real-time, which means there's often no or little transition between gameplay and the cutscenes that expound the story. This is good in the sense that it does an excellent job of keeping you immersed in the game world, with the characters and environments not suddenly changing how they look or sound and minimal loading screens in between, but it's bad if you are running lower graphical settings since cutscenes will lack any visual niceties you might get with pre-rendered ones.
Regardless, the technical aspects on display here are pretty on point. The characters' facial expressions and body language do a great job of capturing emotion and help make the scenes feel more natural. There's no need to fill every moment with a voice or needlessly explain how a character feels because you can see it displayed by their actions.
Backing all this up is the voice acting, which is also fantastic. I can't say I found a character where I thought their voice was off. The voice carried every emotion, and I could tell when the characters were angry or sad just by vocal cues. It's been a while since I've played a game with barely more than "acceptable" or "average" voice acting, so this was a treat.
Visually, Life is Strange: Double Exposure won't break any records, but it does present a pleasant picture. The standout for me is definitely the design and detail of the characters, allowing them to have facial expressions, including movement in their eyes and mouths, that tell us so much while saying nothing. The environments do their job, and we've seen better-looking worlds before, but they're picturesque and well-crafted.
Ultimately, Life is Strange: Double Exposure feels like a time-traveling parallel universe-traversing murder mystery movie with gameplay elements breaking up the story. Are the gameplay elements the best things ever? No, they can be pretty mundane as far as gameplay goes, requiring you to go back and forth between timelines and interact with different objects in the small space you can walk around at that moment. But these are just a vehicle to transport you to the next cutscene, where the intriguing storyline can play out more, and you can learn more about these characters and their personalities, which really shines.
As the story progresses, the gameplay segments get shorter and shorter. Towards the end of the game, most of your time is spent in cutscenes, not walking around. Double Exposure might also be the shortest game in the series so far. I finished the game in about 10 hours, and that's with messing around optimizing settings and taking screenshots.
Life is Strange: Double Exposure hits the Steam Deck pretty hard, but we get full controller support and the ability to play the game at the Steam Deck's 1280x800 resolution, so you don't have to worry about black borders around the screen. I did notice that the loading screen does not cover the full 16:10 aspect ratio, though, as it is 16:9, meaning you can see the game behind it. Also, the end credits screen had the same issue.
As the game is pretty tough to run, I'm only offering 1 preset here.
You'll want a SteamOS Frame Rate Limit of 60 FPS, and no TDP Limit set.
I debated whether to have shadows on or off. Turning shadows off does result in a smoother framerate, but it makes interior scenes look truly awful, so I've decided to take the hit and recommend you keep shadows on here.
You'll be running the lowest settings, apart from keeping Shadows on Medium, not "None" here. Then, we'll tweak the resolution scales a little so we can maintain an "acceptable" framerate while keeping the shadows on. Check out the image below for a reference on how we're handling the settings, especially the resolution scale.
Note that we're also using the 30 FPS frame rate limit in-game. Introducing the SteamOS Frame Rate Limiter here causes input lag, and the in-game limit does a good enough job.
Running these settings, you can expect a fairly stable 30 FPS in most scenes of the game, however, some areas, such as the Fine Arts Building (FAB) on the campus do drop to around 23-25 FPS at certain angles. The most intensive area in the game is the Turtle Bar at night, which drops to 19 or 20 FPS. However, given the type of game Life is Strange: Double Exposure, I felt that these drops are an acceptable trade-off for adding shadows in the game world.
You'll also experience some slowdown if you use your ability in one world but see/hear the other world. Generally, the game drops a few FPS when using this ability, too, although you don't use this side of Max's powers too often.
The power draw stays high. Depending on the scene you're in, expect the game to use around 20W-25W. Temperatures also stay high, around 75C-85C, with the fan audible throughout play. You should expect around 1.5 hours of battery life from a Steam Deck LCD and about 2 - 2.5 hours on a Steam Deck OLED.
Life is Strange: Double Exposure's accessibility menu is the biggest in the game. You can enable whether or not you can "ping" the game world for objects that can be interacted with, whether you want a "crosshair" visible so you can see what you're looking at, the frequency of Max giving the player hints via her inner monologues and more. You can adjust the subtitle size, although the default was fine for me.
Content warnings can be toggled on and off, depending on whether you would prefer to be notified of certain topics that are about to appear in the game. For example, you can be notified before a scene containing violence, sex, drugs, suicide, mentions of transphobia, loud noises, and the like. This can take the form of a message appearing at the top of the screen, or you can make it pause the game and warn you, as shown below.
Life is Strange: Double Exposure starts off with a strange story, which quickly turns into a perplexing one and ends up being slightly bizarre and worrying. If you wanted to continue Max's story from the original Life is Strange, this should satisfy that desire. The original game is referenced quite heavily throughout, so if you haven't played the original Life is Strange, I recommend you do so before playing Double Exposure to get a full grasp of everything mentioned. If you don't fancy playing the first game, then Double Exposure does explain some of the events that take place so you can get by. You just might not fully appreciate everything mentioned.
The gameplay is pretty middling. There's nothing particularly interesting going on here, and Max's powers of going between timelines, while novel, are on the basic side, and you use them for the same thing over and over again. The story more than makes up for this, though, and as the game progresses, it takes over more and more from the gameplay.
As for Steam Deck performance, it isn't quite as performant as I'd like. You will have to accept some frame rate drops from 30 FPS to make the game look "OK," but I played the entire game through on my Steam Deck, so while I would recommend you use a more powerful device to play this if you have one available, don't hold off on buying Life is Strange: Double Exposure if all you have to it play on is a Steam Deck.
このレビューはPC版に基づいています。
このレビューをお楽しみいただけたなら、SteamDeckHQ の他のコンテンツもぜひご覧ください！あなたのゲーム体験に役立つゲームレビューやニュースを幅広く取り揃えています。ニュース、ヒントやチュートリアル、ゲーム設定やレビューをお探しの方も、最新のトレンドを知りたい方も、ぜひご利用ください。
