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Suburbia game sorter6/16/2023 ![]() Max constantly frets about how her decisions might be interpreted by others, using her time-manipulation ability to backtrack and explore all possible outcomes of her actions before settling on a particular course. ![]() The game is deeply anxious about the importance of communication and the impact it has on people's lives. These interactions are a vital part of Life is Strange's depiction of suburbia. Meanwhile, its two main characters, Max and Chloe, frequently share warm, intimate experiences, like watching the sunset on a bench beside a lighthouse, dancing in Chloe's attic bedroom as sunlight filters through the widow, or chatting over Max's time-reversal ability in a bustling diner. Each episode includes long shots of travelling through Arcadia bay, showing off the sleepy town at different times of day. Its seaside town of Arcadia Bay conceals numerous dark secrets and supernatural goings on, and the game's story tackles some very dark subject matter, littered with difficult choices the player is forced to make.īut Life is Strange is equally filled with quiet moments of joy and peace. Life Is Strange resonates of Lynch's work particularly strongly. Like Twin Peaks, both Life is Strange and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture draw you in with a mystery, and then make you want to stay through their brilliant realisations of suburban (or should that be village, in the case of Rapture?) life. Living on a low wage in a country where austerity politics still bite the ankles of the economy like an angry Rottweiler, the idea of being able to jump into a game and just buy all of the nice stuff is intensely attractive. I can see the appeal of this, especially so lately. The Sims’ portrayal of suburbia is brazenly consumerist, embracing the exact same values that Fallout satirises. Everyday locations like schools and nurseries are almost exclusively reserved for horror games such as Condemned or ZombiU, while the grotesque post-apocalyptic world of Fallout is rooted in the middle-class, aspirational values of 1950s America.įor a long time, the only dedicated depiction of suburbia in gaming was The Sims, offering a more plausible and attainable fantasy of enjoying everyday activities, pursuing traditional life goals and, of course, buying lots of objects to fill your house with. Alternatively, they're given a twisted context. ![]() They're usually part of a larger cityscape like GTA5's Los Santos a side-dish to the main event of criminal car-chases and vigilante shootouts. Unfortunately, such locations are not easy to find in games. What I crave is the joy of virtual suburbia, the pleasure of quaint villages and sleepy, elm-lined streets, the buzzing of lawnmowers in front lawns, the twittering of birds in well-pruned hedges.
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