This game is an enigma. By all accounts of "good game design" this game is complete fucking dogshit and yet it seems like tons of people who play it end up falling in love with it, myself included.

Maybe its specifically for that kind of nonsense design it loves to indulge itself in, maybe its just the visual and audio atmosphere paired with the relative lack of challenge creating a really pleasant vibe, or maybe its just that Sonic's pinball physics make him fun to move around in such strange environments. Either way, Sonic CD is a must-play piece of art in my opinion if only just for how strange it is.

The first time I played LISA was way back at the tail end of 2019. I got maybe 30 or 40 minutes in and dropped it for some reason or another; I recall there being some bug with the game fullscreening or something, but honestly it was probably a mix of that, a slow walk speed that was already starting to get on my nerves, and this sort of insinuation that I picked up on of a "This is a REAL MAN'S video game for the HARDCORE GAMERS who want to feel PAIN!!!" vibe that sort of irked me at the time. And man, what a mistake that was.

When taken as a whole, LISA is such a captivating and intense piece of work that, even despite my general indifference to pretty much the entire first area, I don't think I could in good faith leave it out of the small list of games I've given a 9 or a 10 to. LISA is one of those games that takes a little bit of time to get going, but once it picks up, it REALLY picks up.

Few games I have played have tied narrative and gameplay together so meticulously and meaningfully as LISA does; as an example, without spoiling anything, LISA likes occasionally casting decisions onto the player character that operate both as moral, narrative decisions, and as pragmatic gameplay ones. All of these choices, for lack of better words, are Really Fucking Cool!!! They're something I can't talk much about without ticking the spoiler box but just know that they are some of my favorite parts of the game.

Another thing I can't talk much about without ticking the spoiler box is the last hour or so. It's Really Fucking Good!! It's what tipped this up from an 8 to a 9! if you play this game you really should see the conclusion of the narrative!! It's handled a million times better than I thought it would be and it's great!

All of this praise aside, LISA has flaws, and very obvious ones at that. Partner balancing kind of sucks. The music has its fair share of standout tracks (particularly the ambient stuff is great) but overall not great and I winced every time I heard those fucking stock FL Studio drums. This is the knowledge I am cursed with as a producer, never become a EDM producer, kids! And yeah, the first area is, at best just alright, and at worst kind of a slog. But trust me when I say that the rest of the game is good enough that none of this really matters!!