Lost Records: Bloom and Rage
MSRP $40.00
“Lost Records: Bloom and Rage pays tribute to 90s angst and the riot grrrl rock in a deeply moving coming of age story.”
Pros
Natural dialogue stream
Authentic camcorder hook
Killer soundtrack
Fantastic coming of age story
Cons
Takes a bit to get going
Supernatural thriller falls flat
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
The dream of the 90s
Growth by way of rise up
When you develop up in a small city, punk rock isn’t simply music: It’s a lifeline. Fuzzed out guitars blaring out of garages change into the soundtrack of rise up. It’s the music that the cops let you know to show down, that your mother and father can’t stand, that your politicians attempt to demonize. It is loud. It is antagonistic. And in Lost Records: Bloom and Rage, it’s freedom.
Set towards the backdrop of 90s angst, the newest recreation from the creators of Life is Strange pays its respects to a riot grrrl motion that saved a technology. The narrative journey tells a coming of age story about 4 teenage ladies struggling discover themselves within the confines of a suffocating city. It’s a jail cell the place greasy locals play the function of guards, and the wailing guitars of Bratmobile’s Love Thing are sufficient to encourage a jail break.
You can’t lock us in right here perpetually. The bars received’t maintain us. We’ll chew by way of them. And then eat you alive.
Lost Records: Bloom and Rage is a mature reinvention of the Life is Strange components with a formidable dynamic vary of feelings. It’s a gradual burn, one which struggles to search out the proper steadiness between grounded realism and supernatural intrigue, however its coronary heart thumps like a bass drum at nighttime.
The dream of the 90s
Lost Records tells its mysterious story throughout two generations. In the current day, Swann returns to her hometown to reunite with a bunch of childhood associates that she hasn’t seen in a long time. We start to uncover why that’s in a sequence of flashbacks to their days as rebellious children within the 90s. In that story, Swann strikes to city and connects with Nora, Kat, and Autumn. The quartet spend a formative summer time bonding with each other over punk rock and remodeling an deserted shack right into a secure hideaway from the uninteresting city they will’t wait to interrupt free from. It’s a honest coming of age story about self discovery, queer identification, and studying what’s value preventing again towards. All of that occurs within the shadow of a simmering supernatural thriller radiating from a glowing abyss within the woods.
To inform that story, Don’t Nod employs the signature narrative hooks that outlined Life is Strange. It’s a story crammed with powerful decisions that result in branching paths that form the place every part goes in each the previous and current. There are a number of new tweaks to that components, although, which go a good distance. Choices, for example, really feel extra pure right here. They aren’t large, signposted moments that make it clear that gamers are going through a defining second of the playthrough. I solely realized how a lot my choices had modified the story as soon as I used to be completed and noticed what number of permutations of the story had been attainable. Lost Records feels extra pure for it. Our lives and relationships are formed simply as a lot by the unassuming moments as they’re the large decisions.
Lost Records creates loads of quiet moments that make all of the noise really feel worthwhile.
That thought is baked into the dialogue system, which isn’t nearly selecting what to say subsequent from a listing of choices. Don’t Nod encourages gamers to truly hearken to the folks they’re speaking to slightly than focus solely on their responses. I’m typically given a set of two or three dialogue choices throughout conversations. If I’m impatient, I can select one to butt right into a dialog earlier than my associates are completed speaking. But in some circumstances, a unique dialogue choice will pop up the longer I let the opposite particular person discuss. That’s counterbalanced by the truth that I solely get a brief period of time to say some respondes, in any other case my silence is perhaps misinterpreted. That creates an important stress, as I must steadiness being an lively listener and saying what I actually imply with out hesitation. It higher encapsulates the difficult nuances of communication, particularly for a young person looking for her voice whereas not attempting to embarrass herself in entrance of the cool ladies.
That pure contact is current in Lost Records’ greatest thought: its camcorder. Swann isn’t a musician like her associates, however slightly a budding videographer who’s all the time carrying a digicam together with her. While exploring between dialogue sequences, I can escape my digicam and movie every part from birds to scenic landscapes. It’s a intelligent stand-in for conventional collectibles that reinforce Swann’s want to doc the world round her.
Don’t Nod
As somebody who used to movie on mini DV camcorders on a regular basis as a child, it’s a remarkably genuine recreation. My footage will get a grainy filter pulled straight from the period and I can use my DualSense’s gyroscope on PS5 so as to add pure handheld shake to it. The digicam even continues filming for a half a second or so after I hit file, resulting in pictures that finish in a fast pan right down to my ft earlier than the minimize, simply as so lots of my actual life pictures used to.
Small touches like that create a extra tangible imaginative and prescient of the 90s slightly than one which panders to hole nostalgia. It wasn’t all simply Furbys and Moon Shoes. It was a time outlined by angst, resulting in a counter-culture revolution that birthed fierce bands like Sleater-Kinney. I can really feel the unrest of the period as songs by riot grrrl legends like Babes in Toyland soundtrack Swann’s growth. That punk spirit is balanced out by moments of peace and tenderness, as I spend summer time lounging within the woods with my associates. The evocative visuals so successfully seize the heat that I can virtually hear the mosquitos buzzing in my ears and really feel the solar on my pores and skin. Rebellion is motivated by the assumption that the world might be higher; Lost Records creates loads of quiet moments that make all of the noise really feel worthwhile.
Growth by way of rise up
Those gameplay methods create a spine for Lost Records’ unbelievable story, although it’s one which requires plenty of endurance and belief. The narrative is cut up into two “tapes,” dubbed Bloom and Rage respectively. That episodic cut up is a bit deceptive, because it creates the sense that the story goes to be crammed with cliffhangers and twists like Life is Strange earlier than it. That’s not the case, and it makes the primary half laborious to completely grapple with initially. In actuality, Lost Records is a slow-burn coming of age story that’s simply as snug watching its solid lounge within the woods as it’s teasing out a supernatural thriller.
The two elements needs to be taken much less as TV episodes and extra as one full arc divided by a key emotional flip. The nuance is within the naming. Bloom is a becoming title for Tape 1 because it’s largely centered on the ladies rising alongside each other. Swann begins the chapter as a shy child who struggles with physique picture points, however she slowly begins to search out herself by way of days spent documenting her associates’ messy storage jams. Player selection helps make that really feel extra genuine. In my playthrough, I wished to start out a romance with Nora, however I used to be intimidated. Nora is the definition of 90s cool, a spitting picture of Kathleen Hanna. I felt too shy to pursue apparent flirts initially. It took time for me to check the waters by way of the story, finally gaining the boldness to make a transfer after a number of cautious prodding. The second the place all of it got here collectively didn’t really feel mechanical, achieved by way of an optimized dialogue path; it felt like Swann landed precisely the place she belonged on her phrases.
Tragedy doesn’t invalidate all of the love and pleasure we expertise.
Just as vital as the ladies’ relationships to 1 one other is their relationship to rise up. In Bloom, it’s an act of play. A storage turns into a secret base the place they will shout their lungs out in peace. Their hideout within the woods virtually looks like an imaginary place. Punk rock is a gown up recreation. The extra they embrace the riot grrrl ethos, the extra they settle for that it’s not one thing they need to preserve a secret. It all culminates in Bloom’s climax, a pop-up punk present meant to trigger a visual disruption of their small city.
Then comes Rage.
Reality units in as Tape 2 begins, taking the story in an sudden, sobering route. It’s straightforward to rage towards the machine by shredding, however a revelation a couple of character’s well being places the ladies in a combat that they will’t win as simply. Their frustration begins to boil over as they scream at a monster with no ears. The innocence and pleasure of the primary half provides method to vandalism and arson because the quartet tries to push again towards the forces of life and dying in any method they will. It’s a robust expression of uncooked anger, which makes it all of the extra disruptive when the story detours right into a supernatural, neon-soaked climax that needlessly teases a sequel. Those otherworldly parts are simpler once they’re used as backburner metaphors for the ladies’ angst, which deepens like a by no means ending abyss.
It’s solely as soon as we emerge from Tape 2’s large revelation that Lost Records actually pays off its gradual construct. That’s when the ladies, now absolutely shaped adults who’ve gone their separate methods, can replicate on what that interval of their life actually meant to them. It wasn’t simply the moments of bliss that had been formative, however the anger and sorrow too. Tragedy doesn’t invalidate all of the love and pleasure we expertise; it sharpens these emotions and makes the individuals who assist us get by way of it all of the extra valuable.
Don’t Nod
I believe again to my very own days as a punk rocker in a small city. Late in my highschool years, I used to be a bassist for a band referred to as Aguasaurus. What started as a bunch of unskilled musicians overlaying Creep to a crowd of our associates quickly grew to become an outlet for pushing our city out of its consolation zone. We confirmed as much as an acoustic espresso home present with a totally electrical setup and thrashed. We performed a set at our city’s summer time pupil music competition the place we performed the identical music seven instances. During one set, we merely obtained on stage, performed a recording of a DMX music, after which left. We thought it was a rise up towards our boring classmates and academics, nevertheless it was about pushing ourselves greater than something. It helped us perceive our relationship with authority. We grew to become bolder, extra inventive, much less terrified of confrontation. It was liberating, as if we had been caged animals smashing by way of the bars. The few units we performed formed me into who I’m right now, one thing I couldn’t absolutely perceive on the time.
Decades later, I attended a funeral for our guitarist. It was probably the most painful expertise of my life and I nonetheless carry the scars from seeing his physique mendacity in an open casket to at the present time. After the viewing, my childhood associates and I all obtained collectively to reminisce. We spent the remainder of the night telling tales about all of the stuff we managed to get away with in highschool. Aguasaurus inevitably got here up and the surviving bandmates and I instructed tall tales of our messy practices and even messier reside reveals. For a quick second, I used to be now not centered on the truth that my good friend had been tragically taken from us too quickly. I used to be grateful that we obtained to share the stage collectively so many instances and use our music as weapons. His off-tempo guitar riffs nonetheless echo by way of my physique. There’s electrical energy in my blood. I carry the spirit of punk rock with me daily, simply as I really feel that Nora nonetheless should even after buying and selling in her guitar for a subdued grownup life.
You can’t stamp out a rise up as soon as the sparks have been lit. It is a fireplace that can all the time burn inside me, solely glowing brighter to honor every fallen comrade. Punk rock by no means dies.
Lost Records: Bloom and Rage was examined on PS5 Pro.