Life is Strange is falling into a bit of a frustrating habit of having episodes that are equal parts intolerably dull and astonishingly powerful. Dark Room shows once again that it’s all worth it by the end of the episode.

SPOILER WARNING: The following review contains spoilers for Episode 4: Chaos Theory. If you haven’t yet had the pleasure of playing the third episode, do not read on.

In my review of Chaos Theory, I poured an almost embarrassing amount of praise on the ending twist, whilst implying that as brilliant as it was, it appeared that the writers had written themselves into a corner.

Ten minutes in to Dark Room and I was proven absolutely right. It feels as if the writers realised that the series was slowing down a bit and threw in a glitzy distraction for us all to chew over until the next episode was released.

Needless to say, following an immensely poignant moment, the status quo is quickly resumed and the player gets to spend a significant part of the episode pottering about having awkward teenage conversations.

That’s not to say that the episode is entirely dull. The search for Rachel Amber goes from being completely cold to being completely climactic in a matter of minutes, and all of a sudden the series hits its stride and ends on another intoxicating high.

Max and Chloe finally figure out exactly what happened to the enigmatic Rachel Amber, and living up to the name of the episode, things get very dark, very quickly.

Life is Strange is not afraid of forcing the player to confront some really disturbing issues. Out of Time saw Max attempting to talk a friend out of jumping off a building, and Dark Room throws in a bit of euthanasia and sex crime in for good measure.

It all feels tastefully done though, and once again I was moved by what happened. It’s still hampered somewhat by the awful lip-syncing and poorly-written dialogue, but I ended the episode as gripped as ever.

The supernatural elements of the story took a definite back-seat, as there was little re-winding compared to previous episodes. The apocalyptic events that have dotted the series were only mentioned vaguely in conversation, and there was even a bit towards the end where the moon seemingly split into two in the sky and nobody seemed to care. The fifth episode is going to have to cough up some serious explanations.

It seems that Dontnod Entertainment have taken on some of the lessons they learned from previous episodes. There’s practically none of the pointless ‘search for X amount of items to proceed’ nonsense that ground other episodes to a halt, and instead there’s an attempt at having the players do some actual investigation.

Max and Chloe have to piece together all the clues they’ve been gathering through-out the series to finally crack the case, and with the interaction of allowing the player to solve it themselves, it’s actually satisfying when it all comes together.

Max Caulfield succeeds once again at being a difficult protagonist to love. On one hand, I like her for being something different in video games, i.e. an odd teenage girl out of her depth with the serious issues she is forced to deal with. On the other hand, the things she says makes me want to tunnel into my own torso with embarrassment.

In this episode, there was less ‘hellas’ and ‘wowsers’, but it seemed that she had to lavish every NPC she came across with cringe-worthy superlatives like ‘you’re an awesome person and soon everyone will know that’. Nobody is that nice, Max.

However, there were a few NPC interactions that felt genuinely tense, such as when Max and Chloe visit Frank, the drug-dealer with a heart of gold, in an attempt to get him to help with their investigation. With multiple outcomes that actually have an impact of the story, the player feels genuinely rewarded if they manage to find a peaceful outcome.

I said that the episode felt occasionally dull, because after the excitement of the previous episode is completely negated, it takes a while for things to kick up a notch. The first forty-five minutes felt completely anti-climatic and almost made me want to stop playing.

Fortunately it all worked out in the end, and oOnce again, I find myself buzzing with excitement over a twist. Just when the game fools the player into thinking that you’ve actually got a handle on what’s happening, it throws another curve ball to muddle things up.

Without spoiling, the ending was a complete shock to me, and I consider myself someone well-versed in spoiling movies for people by guessing the twist half-way through.

My feelings for Dark Room are almost identical to my feelings for Chaos Theory, except a little more positive. The episode was a bit of a slog to get through, but when it’s good, it’s unbeatable, and the final episode promises to blow us all away. If you can’t tell, I’m ‘hella’ excited.

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