LISA Session 05 Review

Like the first hour only now the fourth

04Index06

Why I played it:

It's like if my screams had pictures.

How it works:

The Gang wake up in front of two burly dudes ready to fuck them up. They then fuck off to kill about thirty snakes, leveling up. The Gang then decides to use their items more effectively, and kills the two faster than a miniboss. I guess a game is more of an exercise in patience when you can die without consequence.

The Gang then decides to adventure forth, and finds a man with a spider crawling up his ass. This does not make sense in context. Long story short, we have a new party member - perfect to replace the one we left for dead after some asshole gang boss with max stats decides to kill him off. It was supposed to be one of those moral choices, but it wasn't that hard. The bitch wants to kill somebody, that's his business, not ours for being coerced into his scheme.

And I suppose this is one of those "wham" episodes we so often hear about, being one of great trial. And sometimes error. And sometimes trial and error, seeing as there's a bit with Russian Roulette later in the game that is completely luck-based, fortunate that I'm a lucky fuck and only lost one party member forever due to this poorly-designed and mandatory minigame. Just like I lost Terry due to a random event, with the Wiki telling me I can't ever get him back because I didn't reach the arbitrary gang headquarters in time. Fucking ace design, LISA.

Anyway, the game has made it clear that any attachment we have to these characters will be swiftly kicked in the dick, seeing as your hard-earned bonding and experience points will lead to them arbitrarily taken away from you. That's not even the Mass Effect comparison where it had an in-story justification - it just happens in this game for no reason. Yes, I'm pissed, because I liked my crew, and would have liked them to get fucked in a more realistic way.

There was also some business with a motorcycle that came out of left field and was more filler than anything, a new hub area which I'm expected to learn the layout of in order to continue (so just like the start of the game. at least it's fresh), and the dreaded feeling of choice remorse, where you wonder if the game would have been more fun if you didn't kill that bloke, or if you didn't have to play Russian Roulette. I'm not some pussyfooting save scummer who can't live with his choices - that defeats the whole point of the game. But there's always the feeling of "Am I playing this right" - a feeling that a game should never force on its players.

What I felt:

You may be questioning my extraordinary reviewing skills, such as complaining about unfair mechanics in a game that's supposed to be unfair, or about visiting the Wiki like it was just no thing. Let me say fuck you. You can let me, but I won't. I will say that, given the choice of either having the rest of the gameplay experience be ruined by "Is it supposed to be like this?" or visiting a webpage, I'll choose the latter option. And fuck you.

Indeed the game is supposed to be unfair, though it usually does that with story-based encounters, or some of your shit being taken away from you. I even expected some blokes to get killed along the way, because it wouldn't be a tough video game without having some of your party members get fucked due to your own actions. I'm okay with all of that, because it isn't crippling, and doesn't feel like your time has been wasted.

I find a lot of umbrage, however, in forcing us into a fundamentally luck-based minigame where there is potential for our entire party to be wiped out (if I understand it right), and where it is impossible to progress because of this luck. That's not being challenging! That's like if you were playing DOOM and every time you killed a monster it had a 10% chance to explode and make you drop your weapon. There's a difference between making the player grin and bear it, and smashing a cactus up their ass for unexplained reasons.

Beyond that, there's not much to complain about. LISA is still fundamentally a good game (unless its ending turns out to be a rickroll), and these issues are more like a razor blade in a bar of soap rather than a razor blade in your pudding. It's still fucking annoying, but at least it doesn't kill the game. By the way, you should really check your food for razor blades, or else that will be a long and painful death.

A niggling complaint might be those newfangled party members who join me for no reason. I guess we're living off the Animal Crossing economy now. If you don't like a villager, never fear! Just cut off their head, ship the body out, and bring in somebody who more or less does their job but with none of the reason for you to care about them. At this rate, I'd be lucky to even have two of my original four with me by the end.

I honestly can't stand, and this is how you know I'm writing from my own personal biases, a game that dumps a whole cast of characters on you and expects you to care about each and every one, as opposed to focusing on a few good characters who we learn a lot about. It feels vapid, less that we are focusing on the relationships between a select group of privileged individuals, and more that we are watching a Game of Thrones episode where if you don't like one asshole, just wait a minute and a new asshole will take its place.

Yes, I understand that LISA is less about the relationships and more about the sights you see in relation to a bunch of weird-ass strangers, but it's just like Paper Mario. You're not expected to know the intimate details of your party members, but you feel something for them by the time they join you. The original three in LISA meant something, because they were your first members, and so represented the last remnents of your baby steps into the wide, wide world of the game. They aren't a peanut gallery - they're your comrades!

So it's a damn fucking shame that LISA seems to think that this is a peanut gallery, where our party is disposable and the rest of the game can be completed by you and three random assholes who you only lugged around with you because four is better than one and you get the same experience regardless of party count so there's literally no downside to it. I just can't help but feel I'm raising a barn full of slaves as opposed to characters I respect.

What I learned:

It is very hard to respect a man whose first encounter we see is him coercing a spider into his asshole.

Even a blank slate like you'd find in Dragon Quest is more respectable a cast than a bunch of people who join your party for no reason. At least then you lovingly crafted, named, and armed everybody in your party. You can project yourself onto them if you want to play as the King of the Hill cast and have Hank Hell kill hundreds of innocent slimes. Not some fuck with a spider in his ass!

Actually, the man with a spider in his ass has decent attacks. But he'll always have attacked worst of all... my heart. And my boner, because even I have standards and that doesn't meet any of mine. He could have been laying an egg and I would have been less disgusted. You'd think the man who has read a tutorial in graphic detail about how to shove a live earthworm down your cockhole would have less standards than this, but considering that I was frowning intensely while writing the words "live earthworm down your cockhole", I guess not.

Rather than end this review with the words "live earthworm down your cockhole" (if you say it enough times you eventally forget about it), I'll say that it is incredibly hard to find a torrent of LISA, so if one of you blokes have it, could you upload it to the Pirate Bay so you don't have to go onto a seedy Russian forum just to download it? Please, mates - I had to use fucking Google to get the hook up. That's the lowest you can go!

Total time: 04:15:30

04Index06

Up its own ass - Froghand.

Today's page was updated on October 13, 2016!

Spiders is where I draw the line with asshole interaction.