From the creators of Life Is Strange, rewind back to the 90s and relive the defining summer of four high school girls in Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. Film the summer of 1995 as they forge bonds through their growing friendship, their punk band, and an unexplained event that will forever change their lives.
Developed by: DON’T NOD
Played on: PlayStation 5
Length: 8 hours
When DON’T NOD released Life Is Strange back in 2015, they probably weren’t expecting to redefine an entire genre of games. Today, the narrative heavy, choice-based format has been replicated to the moon and back, each to varying degrees of success and not least of all by the studio themselves. From their lesser popular Life Is Strange 2, to the forgettable Twin Mirror, nothing seemed to fill the void left behind by Chloe’s neon blue hair and blatant disregard for authority.
Enter Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. If Life Is Strange was nostalgia in a bottle, Lost Records feels like nostalgia injected through a steroid-laced syringe with indie electro-pop on blast. Our main character, Swann, is a film dork and social outcast who brings a video camera everywhere she goes. One fateful summer, she meets a group of girls who change her life through the bonds of friendship, rebellion, and a supernatural phenomena none of them can explain. Sound familiar yet?
While there are parts of Lost Records that seem vaguely similar to its predecessor, the two games couldn’t be more different. For one, Lost Records is much older. The game takes place in the sleepy town of Velvet Cove where nothing ever happens and the internet still operates on dial-up. For those who grew up in the 90s, you’ll find plenty to reminisce over from PEZ candy dispensers to VCR players. The game is well aware of this, even throwing in a classic “I forgot to rewind the tape” moment to add to that sweet manufactured nostalgia.
But this story isn’t confined to the 90s. In fact, the game begins in the year 2022, where our main leads are in their forties, then jumps back into the year 1995, as they try to recall the summer that changed their lives. Time and memories are fluid in Lost Records, and the game visualises this time skip in interesting ways. One moment you’re sitting in a bar in first-person perspective, catching up with an old friend you haven’t seen in twenty-seven years. Then there’s a moment of static, and suddenly you’re both teenagers again in third-person perspective, filming videos on your old camera by the riverbed.
Lost Records seems to enjoy playing with this blurry relationship we have with our pasts, both visually and mechanically. While the game is generally easy on the eyes, our memories of the past are unrealistically stunning, as if reflecting the rose-tinted way we look back on fond memories. However, it’s clear that these memories aren’t reliable. Our main leads are constantly struggling to remember the finer details, and occasionally, we get to choose the way we remember the past. It’s an intriguing execution of the choice-based mechanic, although it mostly applies to inconsequential choices like the colour of your childhood cat or whether Nora ended up getting that nose ring.
Most of Lost Records falls into that category for me, where intriguing and sometimes even ingenious mechanics get paired with lacklustre execution. Unlike the puzzle gameplay that defined Life Is Strange and its subsequent titles, Lost Records makes you feel like a bystander in your own story. Most of its crucial gameplay involves pointing a camera at something, usually something stationary, until it’s recorded enough footage. There are only three or four scenarios where your camera and flashlight are crucial to plot progression, but that’s a handful of times in an eight-hour run.
I understand there’s a cultural divide that’s preventing me from feeling everything this game wants me to feel. I’m a Southeast Asian girl who was born around the time this game took place. I don’t think I could relate any less to this setting and its characters. But as much as I can appreciate the beauty and nostalgia on display, the game takes far too long to reach where it intends to go, and the gameplay in-between does nothing to whet my appetite.
The only thing keeping me going is DON’T NOD’s ability to write unconventional main characters, and it’s wonderful to see them continuing to raise this flag high and proud. The teenagers are dorky and cringey and make choices I wouldn’t make, but that’s part of the charm of their youth. Even in their adult forms, it’s refreshing to see a game spotlight women in their forties (with children!) as main character material. It’s giving me Stephen King’s IT vibes and I am all here for it.
With Tape 2 dropping as a free expansion to the base game, that might just be enough reason for me to hit play on the next tape. Especially since Tape 1 ended on a compelling cliff-hanger, I find myself reluctantly intrigued to find out where this story ends. Here’s hoping that there’s more horror, more gameplay, and more reasons to hit rewind instead of fast-forward.
Verdict: Play It For The Vibes
DON’T NOD’s latest attempt at recapturing the Life Is Strange magic comes pretty close to the benchmark. Through a narrative that swaps between the past and present, the game introduces a compelling cast of unconventional main characters, stunning visuals, and an intriguing horror mystery. However, where its story and characters show promise, the game unfortunately falls prey to poor pacing and lacklustre mechanics that make its eight-hour runtime feel like a slow crawl. Here’s hoping the rest of the story in Tape 2 comes at us with a brisker pace.
Get Lost Records: Bloom & Rage on PlayStation, and top up PlayStation credit on Codashop to earn bonus rewards.
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