izigame.me

Possibly the most impressive and immersive 4.5 episodes in the history of choice-based adventure games, as well as a title that implemented the famous Telltale "they will remember that" formula much better than Telltale themselves ever did.
A near-perfect example of urban fantasy, the game stays true to its plain descriptive title by excelling both at "life" stuff and "strange" stuff. Just like the protagonist Max Caulfield, an aspiring photographer who strives to capture the special inside the mundane, it saturates the most low-key moments with style, art, music and camera angles until they ooze with atmosphere and meaning.
At the same time, the supernatural elements are always there to provide further engagement. Max’s ability to rewind time translates to a conversation-focused gameplay perfectly, allowing you to relax and not stress about minor bad choices, yet never saving you from bigger mistakes or unavoidable scripted gut punches. The overarching plot alternates between multiple intersecting plotlines competently and tackles different topics with confidence.
The writing may not be particularly subtle, and some interactions could be considered cringe-worthy, but they are appropriately cringe-worthy for a high school setting. It’s also quite long for an adventure game, especially if you take your time to further soak in the mood by sitting on the benches and stuff (I highly recommend sitting on the benches and stuff).
Oh, I guess there’s also the second half of the final episode, which drops the ball completely and messes up almost everything there was to mess up, including forgetting about half of the characters, ignoring basic logic (why is a hurricane deemed deadlier than a nuclear explosion here?) and flat-out contradicting its own themes (forcing an unavoidable fate-like event on you, even though the whole story before it was about the inherent randomness of the butterfly effect).
It’s okay, though; sticking the landing is hard, and everything before it still deserves the highest praise, so, in the spirit of timeline-altering shenanigans, we’ll simply pretend it never existed. Yep, just 4.5 beautiful episodes of an emotional, atmospheric, slightly unfinished story here and nothing else.