Lies of P is the next big game in the darksoulsbloodbornesekirodevilmaycry3and5 genre that’ll be sure to make you point at your screen and yell “Hey, wait a minute!”. Let’s play a fun game; every time you see a new thing in this game, try to figure out which thing it was originally from one of the following: Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, or any Devil May Cry, your choice of which one really. Sometimes you can choose multiple answers! Just pick one fast, if we take too long they might find out about open world games.

Lies of P is a game that broke me to my very core, a game I tried so hard to like and was constantly knocked into the pavement had my neck pile driven into the curb and then rolled into the street to be mulched by the first oncoming school bus. A game that I couldn’t stop myself from constantly thinking out loud “how is this not fucking over yet”, it somehow, despite the fancy coat of paint smeared on top of it and the pretty decent game feel, sets itself HIGH on the list of worst souls games. An overly derivative genre receives its most comically derivative entry, Lies of P is truly a game with not even an ounce of creative drive. No ideas, no charm, just a brooding, hackish nature. I’m a bit of a hack myself, I’m all for media gobbling up cool shit from other media, I’ve been one to stand and clap when I see something I recognize, but this is not one of those times. It took almost no time for me to not be able to take a single thing this game says or does seriously, when it’s 2 biggest points of interest are so comically bad for different reasons.

Point 1: Souls game (not actually a point of interest for a real human being)
I’m not exaggerating when I say that everything in this game is lifted from another game. At first it’s not that egregious but not even at the half way mark it starts to become TOO obvious what’s going on. An area that is just sens fortress, we love that place right? An area that IS NOT just anor londo, but really wants you to know how much it likes walking through the rafters of anor londo. Every single boss in this game, every single one, has at least one thing very obviously taken from a souls boss. Sometimes it sneaks up on you too, sometimes you’ll just be fighting a bad boss and then they hit you with the slave knight Gael combo. Nameless King? Never heard of him. Fire Giant? This is how you know this game is bad. Even aside from all the shamefully stolen content, looking at it for what it is, it’s still not good. Doesn’t even take getting half way through the game to hit the “literally every boss has 2 health bars” threshold, which is never done well, but could be, not that it matters because they definitely didn’t figure that out with this game. Aside from the fact that a lot of these areas are clearly just ideas badly repurposed from other games a lot of the game takes place in one place, you mostly just go to different parts of it. So while I’d say the game does look good, you get sick of even just looking at it. The one area that really shakes the foundation of this game on a level design front is the final area. These games don’t have final areas for a reason. You have failed. They made a final area for this game that is somehow 3x longer than any other part of the game, shockingly had some of the worst bosses in the game and in most games honestly, and just overall fucking sucked. Every single shitty and lame aspect of this game blended into the worst puree you’ll never use in anything but they just dumped into their hands and slapped it onto the board. Game goes down a whole point because of it and for generally just wasting my time. These people LOVE traps. Bear traps, arrow traps, shock traps, I played a fun game with myself that got me fucking LAUGHING at a certain point, the game is called ‘will this bridge collapse under me too?’ This game is addicted to wasting your time like that, suffice to say that when I got to the area that was mostly bridges and none of them collapsed I was pretty impressed, of course they resumed immediately after but we take the wins we can get around here. Introducing new trap like obstacles in the final area was already pretty absurd, a piston that knocks you off a staircase, doesn’t even do damage? Exists purely to annoy you or waste your time. It’s such a small thing to bitch about but when you lump it in with all the other things I said it’s just strange the degree to which they love doing this shit. This is also the absolute peak of a souls game just shoving guys around corners and on the ceiling to fall down on top of you in droves. You people canNOT be criticizing dark souls 2 for that specific problem and then be turning around to eat this shit up.

Point 2: Pinocchio? Geppetto’s puppet? The boy that looked like that other guy? Definitely not.
The dark twist on Pinocchio here could have been pretty cool, but it’s obviously not. I guess I’m gonna spoil what little there is to spoil throughout this paragraph? Pinocchio being the baseline for this story is really just that, it’s the baseline. They take all of the most basic story beats from Pinocchio and depressingly scatter them throughout an otherwise very mundane story. Pinocchio you’re not actually relevant to any of the happenings of this world, your dad is just a fucking weirdo, and your name is Carlos, not Pinocchio, dumbass! They did a great job of making Geppetto go from being a weirdo seething dad with the most stilted and awkward dialogue possible into being the dumbest motherfucker in this fucking world. And everyone around us seems to be just as dumb? Geppetto was the one that caused the puppet frenzy that killed us all? Oh, well okay I guess. Guess we’ll have to ask him about it later, lol! Geppetto being the real villain of the story is a twist exhausting both for just not being built up to well or executed well at all, but also for making the game go even longer than it needed to! The game realistically should have ended long before their shitty oc villain that they built up as a villain that wasn’t even actually the real villain because we need to make this game even longer total playtime upward trend steady revenue flow day one denuvo patch dlc and sequel announcement. This guy was also just a weird divorced atheist which I would have gotten a laugh out of if I wasn’t already so exhausted with it. Not even getting into the weird out of nowhere character transformation that Pinocchio goes through randomly and without explanation is just so fucking funny, where literally all that changes is his hair looks worse now. His sex appeal; gone. The moment my interest completely tapered. Top it all off with a post credit scene that is all but completely ridiculous and undeserved but still made me laugh somehow and you get fucking nothing! Shit! Send it back please! It’s not even worth talking about any of the other Pinocchio aspects because they all amount to nothing, and to be clear, you can base your story off preexisting stories and STILL write an original story, it’s not like I’m seething I didn’t get a 1:1 adaptation of Pinocchio as a shitty dark souls game, they just did it really badly. It genuinely feels like these people fucking LOVED the fact that his nose got longer when he lied and just couldn’t shut the fuck up about it. Really felt more like a Disney’s Pinocchio atmosphere most of the time than it did Collodi’s Pinocchio.

I like collecting games, I’ve never wanted to get rid of a game. Even bad ones. This is a full priced game, I want to get rid of this game. I was gonna buy either this or Ghost of Tsushima, I wish I bought Ghost of Tsushima. I should not have played this while I’m off my medication. I told no lies in this game but everyone still kept calling me a liar. I am not a liar. Why did they give Pinocchio’s gay boyfriend breast implants. They never referred to anyone as Pinocchio, so I still don’t even know who P is! A game so devoid of creativity, with no good ideas, let alone original ones, that I genuinely wonder WHY? What was running through their freaked up brains when they were even just planning this? 3 hotboxed rats that ran through an unfinished maze for a snack could have made it through the maze and still had the stamina to come up with something better than this. I sat and thought for a looooong time about what I would even say is worth praising about this and there are a couple things I guess, but I don’t even think they’re interesting enough to give the time to talk about them. This genre needs to be extradited to the bottom of the ocean, tie an anchor to its waist and never look back.

Despite what the propaganda might tell you otherwise, there is NO game more new, OR super than this one. Finally the days of shoveling slop and goop since (checks shelf) 2012? Well they’re hopefully done and buried, sorry to all the New Super Mario Bros. 2 lovers, genuinely, it’s just my go to for Mario’s era of crud.

It’s crazy that they went from the textbook definition of safe with NSMB to this, it feels like it would be easier to name what wasn’t new about this game, and I probably won’t even do that! Who cares! I love this game! To contain my love for it though I should probably actually say something about it, like how visually vibrant and expressive this game is. I’ve seen a lot of people compare it directly to NSMB which IS really funny, but even despite how unimaginative and dull those games visuals were (besides the first 2) this game is still fucking beautiful even when not compared to other games in the series, especially with this fucking elephant. The elephant is probably one of the best things they’ve ever made for a Mario game, I was almost sad that there were only a few new power ups in this game but it didn’t even matter because they’re all pretty great and useful and a lot of interesting ways, but the point with the elephant is how much attention was given to it. The unique animations for doing almost anything as an elephant like going through doors or down pipes, or the fact that the music shifts dynamically for when you’re an elephant is just lovely.

Speaking of music… music? When was the last time a 2d Mario game had more than 3 songs that already existed 30 years prior? You got a pass on that once, not 4 times. Though the music in those games is totally fine for me it was just totally fine. Serviceable. Can barely remember anything besides the one song they never. stop. using. This games soundtrack is fucking GREAT, and huge! It’s like 200 tracks including jingles and whatnot, so there are probably around like 150 actual songs, most of which are completely original. It has the best 1-1 theme, it has the best second stage just in general, the final boss without saying anything about it really emphasizes the 2 points I’ve made to an extreme degree. I’ve just been listening to it since I beat it pretty much and it’s just delightful, brings a smile to my stupid face. Also related to music and sound, your reward for 100%’ing the game is great. I’ve seen people complain about it and I think for most games and especially games like this, when you get 100% most people are not gonna be playing it much if at all after the fact, for a decent amount of time. So I think for what it is it’s perfect, it’s a very charming reward and remember these games are pretty much made for 40 year olds to play with their 5 year old children and those 5 year old children will love this shit. Even if you’re a group of friends playing together it’s still just so much fun, this goes for the game as a whole.

A few other ancillary things, I thought the online would be a little underwhelming since they seemingly could have put “true” online co-op in the game pretty easily, which I still think would be a good thing, but I actually ended up loving the way the online works. Just playing together with random people and emoting to each other and helping each other and fucking around and finishing the stage together is actually really fun. Standees are actually useful and you will forever love people that actually used them properly, and just the fact that you still can play online with your friends is great, being ghosts is just part of that Halloween charm I guess. I might even just be happier with it how it is versus having it be “proper”. Peach not being the boring damsel anymore is pretty fun since it’s just bowser “fucking shit up” now… in his own special way. Having the other playable characters was great, I initially was saying to myself “but I HAVE to be Mario, it wouldn’t be right” I switched his dumb ass out for Toadette stage 2 good RIDDANCE. It is weird that Yoshi is just the easy mode but not as easy as Nabbit easy mode, but I also don’t care because Yoshi has almost never been as expressive in any game before… almost. He does look a little fried though, something’s definitely going on with him. The only real complaint I could possibly make isn’t even a complaint, mores being spoiled by 3D Land/World but I do wish there was a bonus world in this game, besides the secret world which is also really good. Fuck that final final act though, easily the most trouble I’ve had with one of these 100% stages, thank you to the Luigi named srpoopalot I may have never made it out without your kind patronage.

In short I like Mario. I was a child at one point after all so it’s almost mandatory. Adults like Mario too, did you know that? Crazy that they can make games for 5 year olds also really fun for 25 year olds. Also one more thing that has been fucking pounding along in my mind the last couple days, this game was directed by Shiro Mouri who went from programmer on a handful of pretty non-mentionables minus a couple, to co-directing a link between worlds and then to directing this? So this guy co-directed one of the best Zelda games and directed one of the best Mario games and had no other roles besides programming? (besides directing NSMBUD but I like to think everyone in that office was fucking chain smoking for weeks because no one gave a fuck) Guys, your kitchen is fucking DUSTY let this guy in there like 2 or 3 more times PLEASE. If you’re like me and you’ve been on your knees for the last 12 years crying and begging for a NEW 2D Mario game then this is it. Like seriously, this is the best 1-1 song right?