Sweet, Short, Small and Significant
One game that I never played for ages and then randomly started playing one night was Life is Strange. Life is Strange is one of my favourite games of all time. The game plays out like a film and it is the first time in my gaming experience that I had a proper emotional reaction to the story being told. It was the first time where I had to make decisions that I didn’t want to make because they were too hard to handle. Life is Strange is easily a fantastic feat in fantastic storytelling in games. Now that same team is back with The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit.
The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit follows a similar path to Life is Strange in that it is based around a character who appears to be quite lonely, yet strong, and has some form of powers. In Life is Strange you played as Max a girl who could rewind time in order to alter her decisions for better or for worse. In Captain Spirit, you play as Christopher, a young boy whose powers aren’t completely explained but they’re a bit more than Max’s from Life is Strange. Christopher lives at home with his father who is a former sports star and a current alcoholic and we learn early on that Chris’ mother has recently died.
There isn’t too much to Captain Spirit, playing through everything the whole game is a prequel to Life is Strange 2 and you can finish it in an hour and explore everything else in probably around two hours. What is interesting from the game is a few advances in gameplay and design that you might get to see in Life is Strange 2. The first is the graphics in Captain Spirit are a lot better than the graphics in Life is Strange, especially one character who looks a hell of a lot better than the rest of the characters, which I just can’t explain to you why that is. The next advancement is a better layout of how you actually play the game. In Life is Strange it was a lot of walking around and looking at things and pressing one button at a time. Yes, that is still here, but now Captain Spirit seems to go a bit deeper with letting you choose to do more things with each individual item and you also have an inventory and on the go speech choices when required.
With the two hours of play that Captian Spirit gives you, for free I might add! You actually get quite a lot of small emotional parts out of it. Life is Strange was one huge hand through your chest ripping your heart out story and Captain Spirit is simply taking small stabs at you to prepare you for what is to come next. You learn about Chris’ life and small things like his run-down home, the scary bruises on his arms, his need to create another role model because his father can’t get that job done for him and you get to meet Chris this young kid who you just want to play pretend superheroes with.
The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit might be a short two-hour experience but it really lays down a solid foundation for Life is Strange 2. They are clearly using the game to help advance and perfect Life is Strange 2. For a free game that is essentially a place where Don’t Nod will test their audience and make changes to their next game from the reaction that fans have to Captain Spirit, I have to say it is one of the best short games I’ve played. I would’ve loved for it to be a short free mini-series-esque experience but the story continues into Life is Strange 2 and Captain Spirit has made me extremely excited for the sequel to one of the best story games ever.