The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit

Not really sure I should rate this because its hard to tell whether this is an actual stand alone thing, or if it will actually be the introduction to Life is Strange 2, for now I'm treating this like Walking Dead 400 Days and nothing indicates that this will be the first episode to Life is Strange 2. This game is odd because it was announced at E3 and said it would be free and hinted that it was linked to the Life is Strange universe. At the time I had other games I was playing and just didn't get around to it and finally decided why the hell not, after all its only a little over an hour long, it looked interesting enough.

Well Captain Spirit has a unique idea, not many games have you playing as kids going through daily chores or playing with toys. Spirit tries to emulate what its like being a kid, he dresses up like an imaginary hero, plays with his toys like they're real, treats his chores like he's doing super hero tasks, and he creates fantasy scenarios in his head while he's doing mundane activities. While this sounds dull, there is something somewhat endearing about it, we were all kids and we played with toys and pretended we were in imaginary situation. That's pretty much all the game is, doing chores because your deadbeat dad is too drunk and wants to watch basketball, so the whole game is you going around the house doing chores and creating imaginary scenarios while you are dressed up as a superhero. Along the way you find notes that reveal the backstory, but there really isn't too much backstory and most of what you find out in these notes can already be inferred from just doing the chores and interacting with your dad.

The story doesn't really go anywhere until the end, I felt most of the game was just meandering and doing kid things, and the game trying to be cute and making you feel bad for the kid. It was interesting, but I felt like it didn't add much and some of the chores in this game felt more tedious than fun, like who wants to take out trash or shovel snow in a game. The story really just feels like it makes you wonder more than it answers and the cliffhanger ending feels a bit odd. Also the voice acting is kind of bad, the kid's dad just sounds awkward and the lines feel forced, plus he falls into the deadbeat dad stereotype that we just see way too often. The music is okay, its mostly the same acoustic Indie music that was similar to Life is Strange, and hey there's a Sufjan Stevens song in this that will make all the Indie fan's heads explode.

I thought overall this wasn't terrible, it was unique and playing as a kid going through imaginary scenarios had some charm to it, but it did get a little old after 1 hour of it and the game really had no variety and you hardly got interaction with your father, and since these games pride themselves on making choices that impact the future decisions, this game really didn't have an decisions you could make that would impact the future and that's mostly due to the short length and lack of interaction between characters. Plus I feel there isn't a whole lot of this that really stands out. Hopefully this will tie in more to Life is Strange 2, otherwise I feel this will have just been pointless.

Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit is a modern adventure game, a sort of prequel to the upcoming Life is Strange 2. I feel a bit of burnout of Telltale-like games, and the slow start of the game doesnt help. But afterwards i think they did a good job of portraying what its like being a child who is forced to grow to fast, and how empathetic they managed to portray an abusive father figure (without metaphours ala Papo y Yo).

The gameplay and puzzles are rather shallow, but its satisfying to explore all its got to offer, and they managed to write a compelling main character. I hope he takes a big role in Life is Strange 2.

"4th of July" automatically gives this an extra half star.