Lost Records: Bloom & Rage

[i]TL;DR: It's Life Is Strange from Temu.[/i] I've been a fan of Life Is Strange series, especially LIS and LIS:True colors due to their character depth, and story building. The characters are relatable exactly because you get to decide how the game proceeds, and there is something there for almost everyone. What's this, new game from DON'T NOD?! I went in excited. Ten hours later I was clicking through scenes just to reach the end, and the friend I played it with had fallen asleep. We replayed the finale the next day hoping it would land better. It didn't. She was just as disappointed the second time. The premise has good basis, and there are genuinely interesting threads buried in here. The problem is that the game never expands on them. Pacing is the first issue. It lurches between long dead stretches, characters standing around delivering filler, and sudden bursts of plot, with no sense of rhythm. The second issue is the camcorder. You film your friends and surroundings to unlock collectibles and trigger certain scenes, but the mechanic is clunky and joyless. It feels like busywork dressed up as self-expression. The deeper failure is the cast. Every character is shallow, with no real depth beyond the "summer of bonding" the whole story leans on. Their choices come from emotional overreaction to trivial setbacks rather than anything like reasoning, and they make baffling decisions as a result. The result is a group nobody can relate to, and dialogue options that feel hollow. [spoiler] Then there's the comparison the game keeps inviting. Where Life Is Strange built characters worth caring about, here you just trail a pack of friends with a camera because the alternative is having none. Those friends walk you through smoking, petty crime, eventually [b]arson and murder[/b]. Yet the game [u]frames almost none of it as seriously wrong and delusional.[/u] The protagonists commit serious crimes and are still treated as neutral, even sympathetic.[/spoiler] [spoiler] That's my real problem with it. For a game meant for a younger audience, presenting arson, theft, and worse as consequence-free coming-of-age is genuinely irresponsible.[/spoiler] Do better. Verdict: A handful of good ideas wrapped around shallow characters, clumsy mechanics, and a moral blind spot. Play Life Is Strange instead.

This game was absolutely breathtaking...never cried so much because of a game but it also filled me with pure joy. Truly a masterpiece

Took too long to get to the actual story. I couldn't sympathize with any of the main characters. Quite the opposite actually.

Lost Records é um dos melhores jogos de escolhas que já joguei. Aqui, qualquer mínima decisão de diálogo pode afetar toda uma cena, e isso é incrível. Tem toda a atmosfera de anos 90 que dá todo o charme pro jogo, todos os cenários, e trilha sonora principalmente. Apesar de eu não ter vivido nos anos 90, é muito legal poder ver como as coisas eram. Pode-se dizer que dá uma sensação de anemoia. Gosto muito das 4 personagens, todas com suas características que as definem e é incrível poder acompanhar essa amizade e como superam as coisas juntas e como estão sempre pensando uma nas outras. Considero que esse jogo é uma forma de exercitar a empatia também, porque cada diálogo que você escolhe pode resultar em algo bom ou ruim, dependendo do que você escolher, isso é muito bom. Como disse no início, todas as mínimas escolhas influenciam nas cenas seguintes e essa é, definitivamente, a melhor forma de conduzir um jogo de escolhas, onde as escolhas, de fato, têm consequências e peso na história. E o melhor disso é que como o diálogo faz diferença, se torna um jogo com altas chances de me fazer jogar de novo, só pra ver o que aconteceria se eu fizesse escolha X invés da escolha Z. Eu diria que é um ponto muito positivo para o game e eu com certeza irei jogar mais vezes. Eu não esperava que o final me pegasse tanto, mas eu chorei pra caramba. E a Don't Nod dá uma pista de que talvez tenhamos uma continuação? Veremos.

атмосферно, душевно, заставляет задуматься о том что ты просрал свои 16 лет, ведь у тебя никогда не было такой дружной девчачьей группы в этом возрасте

I genuinely wish I could recommend *Bloom & Rage*. I ended up 100%-ing the achievements, and honestly, hunting down some of the collectibles was more fun than parts of the story itself. The biggest issue for me was the voice acting. The main character and Autumn speak painfully slow, and it drags down entire scenes that should feel emotional or tense. Instead they just feel awkward and drawn out. A lot of the characters also didn’t land for me. Kat, Corey, Dylan, and even Swann never felt fully developed, so it was hard to care about them or their relationships. That said, the game does have some real strengths. The art style is great, the music fits the atmosphere really well, and I genuinely loved the camcorder mechanic for collectibles. It made exploration feel fun instead of just feeling like a checklist. The ending was easily the best part of the entire experience. I won’t spoil it, but it actually landed emotionally and I did tear up a little. Which honestly says a lot, because getting there was a bit of a slog. I’ve seen people say they cried throughout the whole game. That wasn’t my experience. The presentation is beautiful and there are some cool ideas here, but the pacing and underdeveloped characters made the journey pretty frustrating for me. I’m glad I stuck around for the ending, but getting there was rough.

LIfe is Strange is one of my favorite games and I got so excited about this release, because it's made by the same people. However, This game is so boring, I'm left feeling disappointed. It's hard to get immeresed when there are flashbacks and flashforwards happening every second. It also drags so much, you can tell that they're trying to make you play more so u would go over the 2 hours mark by adding all of this filler. None of the characters are likeable. Everything felt forced. also "un-housed people", really? just say homeless people. Don't know why this game is highly rated, probably the copium. I've played True colors before this one and It made me realize that they wont ever capture what made the first game good. If you're REALLY interested in buying this slop, I recommend watching some gameplay first and then getting it on sale. Otherwise, just stick to Life is Strange.