Will Plays Weird Games: LISA (The Painful)

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I don’t finish many games these days. Growing up, playing a game to full completion was more about wanting to play SOMETHING and only having a handful of games to scratch that itch. Fast forward to 2017. Computer games are constantly on sale and development tools are such that anyone can make a playable game at home. I have to actively CHOOSE what’s worth my now-limited time. So a week ago, I chose LISA.

LISA can best be described as an homage to my childhood with an adult filter pulled over it. The vibrant colors and character designs are a blatant throwback to the mid 90’s. It’s chock-full of tongue-in-cheek, absurdist humor that harkens back to a day where it was normal for a plumber to ride around on a miniature shoe-wearing dinosaur. It also manages to take the tired, Japanese-style RPG systems make them feel fun again. After playing this for an hour, I was downright gleeful.

That’s not to imply the game is for everyone, though. It’s a brutal experience more often than not, and it doesn’t shy away from gore in the slightest. It occasionally dips its toe in the horror genre (I physically jumped out my chair a few times). The developer seems to delight in his ability to make you angry; I’ve quit the game in fits of rage after jumping off a cliff by accident, and having all of your cool characters die permanently. Despite this, it’s such a goofy, varied experience that it continued to pull me back in, which is unheard for a game of its type. I can safely recommend it to anyone with a taste for the weird.