LISA: The Painful

Not a big rpg guy but, this is up there with my favorite games so far.

LISA: The Painful is aptly named. Games have been emotionally assaulting gamers for years, but none of them do it quite so viscerally as LISA. In a post-apocalyptic world sans women, it's up to Brad to shelter the only girl left, his adopted daughter, Buddy. After years of hiding her identity as a woman, she's unluckily unmasked one day and that's when LISA truly begins. You take control of Brad, a Joy addict in the throes of withdrawal, forced to pick up his old bad habits to get her home. LISA is absurd. The music is goofy and groovy, the character designs are wacky and weird, and the gameplay is funky and fresh. The surreal world you find yourself in is dichotomized by the somber and serious story that you experience. You might kill a man with a big-ass fart in one beat only to then watch a man kill himself by your command. It kept me on my toes the whole game, crying laughing one second, then just good old-fashioned crying the next. LISA is fed to you in the form of a turn-based RPG, but it's far from typical. There are 30 possible companions, which is great until you find out any given party member is just one slip-up away from permadeath. Characters can suffer from withdrawal, or excel while inebriated. You have to find a balance between helping your party or enabling their addictions while juggling your meager Joy and alcohol supplies. Who matters to you? Who doesn't? Being responsible for the safety of the sole surviving woman in a world of angry, violent, and drunk men lit a fire in me to get Buddy back safe. But LISA begins to ask you how far you're willing to take that. Would you, say, sacrifice a teammate to dodge a fight? When asked to give up your own flesh or have an innocent pay the price, what will you answer? LISA makes you complicit. You're not watching a story about a man doing bad things. You're choosing to do them. I loved my time with LISA. It was fun to play, listen to, and look at, but underneath the colorful and vibrant surface, it forced me to think, too. About what's right or wrong, what ends justify the means, and even about my own humanity. It takes a great game to hit such diverse highs and lows, but LISA never misses.