Life is Strange: Episode 5 - Polarized Reviews

But overall, Life Is Strange is a fantastic series – one of the best examples of episodic gaming. It’s just a dying shame that choice don’t affect the outcome of the series as much as it was implied in the earlier episodes. Regardless, it’ll be interesting to see what DONTNOD do next. They’re a fantastic team with a small yet diverse pedigree, and Life Is Strange is a great indicator of their talents.

Megan: "Polarized" feels a lot like a dog chasing its tail. We're used to Life is Strange taking back its most extreme consequences, because up until now that's been the entire point of the game: to fix things. But this episode is so focused on that idea — fixing it — that we sort of lose everything in between here. And all those little details are what made me love the series to begin with.

Life Is Strange — Episode 5: Polarized is a fascinating exploration of a teenager deeply affected by loss, trauma, suffering, and failure. This is not the coming-of-age story Life Is Strange pretended to be early on, though. Polarized is destructive, unquestionably the bleak climax of the murder mystery that’s been dormant during most episodes, and it only somewhat works by the time Max Caulfield arrives to her ending. It’s disappointing to see Life Is Strange lean into its angrier story threads to complete its otherwise-touching human story, but its emotional closure and character resolutions make this a more memorable ending than its unnecessarily dark plot twists.

Perhaps it comes down to the fact I was forced to live out decisions that I didn’t want to make. Perhaps, after having built bonds with these characters over the last nine months, I didn’t like the fact that the game made me experience consequences that I didn’t want to experience. Maybe I’m just bitter that I couldn’t rewind time for a final time, go back to the beginning and actually successfully change all of Max’s decisions so everybody could live happily ever after. Whatever the reason, the crux is: I’ll still want to experience it again. If 80% of the game has had me clutching on for dear life, I can live with the final 20% being a little bit disappointing.

Life Is Strange: Episode 5 – Polarized is an amazing final entry to the game as a whole making the entire game more than worth the price of admission. The story has evolved far past a typical story about high school hipsters and their magic time powers; it's now become an entity in on itself, raising the bar for all future games of this type, actually challenging its audience to think outside of the box when it comes to characters, storylines and games itself.