There seems to be something of a curse that’s befallen developers of strictly narrative-driven games over time. Telltale Games has yet to reach the lofty heights they found with the first seasons of The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, and Supermassive Games have fallen very far from the tightly-paced, blood-soaked shenanigans of Until Dawn. In both cases, each developer’s successive releases often toed the line between competent but forgettable and cringe-inducingly awful, at least in my opinion. I’d argue Don’t Nod Entertainment has fared significantly better than that since the release of Life is Strange in 2015, as I’ve yet to play a game from them that I haven’t at least mostly liked. But it I have no qualms in saying that so far, this is the closest that Don’t Nod has come to matching their former glory.probably wouldn’t be controversial to say they’ve yet to match the magic of Max Caulfield’s original time-rewinding adventure.
A decade on, while I’ve continued to enjoy Don’t Nod’s knack for telling original, emotionally nuanced stories from unique, underserved perspectives, I’ve also tended to wonder whether Life is Strange could be meaningfully topped. And while only the first half, or “Tape 1,” of Lost Records: Bloom and Rage’s story is currently available, with Tape 2 slated to finish it out on April 15th, I have no qualms in saying that so far, this is the closest that Don’t Nod has come to matching their former glory.
Lost Records: Bloom and Rage opens in 2022 from the perspective of Swann Holloway as she returns to her hometown of Velvet Cove, Michigan, a place of innumerable secrets that Swann has come back to confront after 27 years of trying to move on. Despite its opening setting, a majority of the game takes place back in that summer of 1995 as you get to know Swann and her newfound friends, and what exactly happened back then to tear apart their bond. Though the story shifts back and forth between timelines frequently and seamlessly, with future Swann often commenting on the antics of her past self in real time, this is a huge asset to Lost Records’ storytelling.
Modern Swann’s framing of her memories from that distant summer adds a constant air of mystery to even the most innocuous slice-of-life moments, like wandering through the woods to record a music video with her friends or band practice in her friend Nora’s punked-out garage. The game’s namesake, Bloom and Rage, is a punk band the four girls aspire to form as they use their music to broadcast the pain and awkwardness of being confused, self-inhibited, hormone-riddled teenagers. And while I don’t want to spoil anything beyond that, I will say that Don’t Nod’s knack for infusing slice-of-life authenticity with an air of supernatural mystery is on full display here.
I never knew where exactly Lost Record’s story was headed, and to some degree, I still don’t. Tape 1, for a vast majority of its runtime, is more concerned with believably building up Swann’s world and relationship with her newfound friends before introducing elements of magical realism and even cosmic horror. Accordingly, I wouldn’t fault some for thinking the pacing is a little slow – in the six hours it took me to see the credits of Lost Records Tape 1, it was only the last hour or so that truly began unveiling the deeper mystery behind Swann’s return to Velvet Cove, and even then stopped short of dishing out any real answers – clearly that’s what Tape 2 is for.
I don’t think anybody who gravitates toward coming-of-age tales will find it to be slow, though. Rather, it’s very deliberate and feels incredibly organic as we watch Swann emerge from the shell of a shy, lonely teenager into a more confident person whose friends build her up rather than bring her down. It echoes other small-town coming-of-age elements of Stand by Me or Stranger Things while building up to be very much its own thing. And while minor hiccups like some awkward lip-syncing or characters talking unnaturally slowly can unravel the pacing a bit, overall this is a tightly constructed narrative that felt consistently compelling right from its opening moments. Even with six hours of mostly exposition and world-building, Don’t Nod’s focus on immersion never let me get the slightest bit bored.
From a gameplay perspective, you probably know what to expect here if you’ve ever played Life is Strange or anything like it, though there are a couple of interesting wrinkles worth mentioning. Many dialogues will come complete with choices to make, and whatever choice you pick may fade off the screen with a heart if it builds up your relationship with the person you’re talking to, a broken heart if it hurts your relationship, or the animated outline of a sprouting plant if your choice is meant to manifest in a consequence down the line. It’s a more subtle way of communicating narrative forks in the road than The Walking Dead’s “Clementine will remember that”-style prompts, and I appreciated its subtlety for keeping me in the story without constantly broadcasting “This is a choice-based game and your choices matter.” I respect that. However, I don’t feel well-equipped to comment on how much your choices will actually matter down the line, because nothing in Tape 1 obviously signaled itself as a consequence of my decisions. So, while I appreciated the number of choices that made me feel in control of Swann’s destiny to a minor degree, I’ll be awaiting Tape 2 to see how much this narrative tree actually branches.
When you’re not in dialogue with your friends or any number of minor side characters, you’ll have a chance to explore the environment and record a number of short-form memoirs with Swann’s camcorder. Swann is something of a film buff and loves making home movies, whether of her cat, herself, or various goings-on around Velvet Cove. While none of Swann’s recordings involve any more than pointing at a specific subject and hitting the record button, taping different events acts as an in-game set of collectibles like the number of unique birds or small critters you may see in the woods. Most of the game’s objectives revolve around recording the details of a particular scene, and then playing them back for yourself to see them in all their 90s video-filtered glory while Swann narrates them to life. It’s just compelling enough of a mechanic to make you want to capture as much as possible for the sake of building out this rich, detail-packed world, and a great excuse to do more than just walking around and interacting with things.
As with any Don’t Nod game, though, exploring is always its own reward. The richness of Lost Records’ setting is impeccable, right down to the shiny plastic crinkles of a VHS case, the detailed and often cheesy descriptions on the back of Swann’s books, or the beeps and boops of her off-brand Tamagotchi. It feels so authentically 90s and crafted with such love that it grants Velvet Cove the vibe of feeling nostalgic for a place you’ve never been.
The game’s stellar presentation does a lot to elevate this vibe on its own, though – while each little knick and knack is beautifully brought to life with incredible texture detail, this also extends to character models and environments.
Everything is stunningly hand-crafted to elevate the game’s setting into a place and time that feels idyllic and haunting in near-equal measure, and shows not just a clear evolution in Don’t Nod’s craft, but a mastery of it. Combine that with great voice acting, fantastic sound design, and a consistently excellent soundtrack that should be a surprise to absolutely nobody who’s played the developer’s other work, and you have a game with literally all the feels in all the right places.
I found that the game ran very smoothly at the highest settings on an RTX 4080 with DLSS set to Quality mode and Frame Generation on – as it should. In the case of my laptop with an RTX 4060, I definitely had to lower some settings to keep things at 60 fps, but the game still looked great even with the mild but perceptible stutter that plagues so many Unreal Engine titles. Unfortunately, I would not recommend Lost Records to those looking to play it on the Steam Deck, though. I only got playable frame rates in the 35-45 fps range by changing everything to its lowest setting and even putting the resolution scalar to 50%, which made everything look like a blurry, Vaseline-smeared mess. While AMD’s FSR is an option to employ for those looking to use upscaling to gain extra frames, turning it on made the game look objectively atrocious, with every swivel of the camera resulting in a complete mess of an image that took a noticeable lag before configuring itself into what the game wanted you to see.
Any setting I altered to make the image quality even half-decent resulted in a sub-30 frames per second presentation even in small indoor areas, so I think the game needs a lot of optimization before I can recommend it on the Steam Deck to anyone. If you just want to play the game and don’t care about performance, though, it totally functions. Just… not very well.
While these could potentially be addressed by launch, it’s worth noting that I encountered some minor bugs throughout my time with Lost Records. One scene that required filming my friends crossing a log in the woods didn’t actually let me film and required me to reload the checkpoint and try again in order to progress. Additionally, there were several cases where the ambient audio of some scenes in the woods felt slightly distorted in a way that wasn’t too distracting but didn’t seem quite right. And probably the most bizarre bug I encountered was one scene late in the game that rolled my camera view about 45 degrees to the left as I was walking through the woods and had me tilting my head with it to keep oriented until a cutscene triggered and the camera decided to be normal again. Weird, but fine.
Overall, Lost Records: Bloom and Rage is the most excited I’ve been about a Don’t Nod game since the original Life is Strange, and that is a tremendous compliment. While most of what’s here is clearly setting up for a darker and deeper Tape 2, I feel confident in saying that this is a narrative-focused developer firing on all cylinders, even if I’ll have to wait until April to decide for sure whether the story truly delivers on its lofty promises. In the meantime, if you’re unwilling to wait that long to get started, I can give Lost Records a confident recommendation as it is now.
GREAT
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