LISA: The Painful

By all accounts, LISA: The Painful hates you. It hates your optimism, your hope, your instincts, and whatever sense of justice you thought you brought into the wasteland of Olathe. If EarthBound is a coming-of-age story soaked in whimsy, LISA is its acid-washed cousin holding a lit cigarette to your skin and demanding you laugh.

You play as Brad, a balding addict haunted by childhood trauma and worse father figures. When he finds the world’s last baby girl, he does what any broken man would: he locks her in a basement “for her safety.” Years later, when she’s kidnapped, Brad sets out to find her, bleeding, burning, and bartering pieces of himself along the way. Sometimes literally. Want to keep your friend alive? Lose an arm. Need rest? Hope you don’t wake up poisoned.

Combat’s turn-based, sure, but don’t get cozy. Your teammates can die permanently. Items lie. Enemies cheat. Minigames exist solely to humiliate you. At one point, you’re forced into Russian roulette because the game decides you haven’t suffered enough.

And somehow, it’s funny. Absurdly so. Warlords ride deer the size of golden retrievers. Cola trucks randomly maul your party. A man in leopard-print underwear lectures you before trying to kill you. It’s slapstick at the edge of a noose.

LISA: The Painful is bleak, yes. Cruel, even. But it’s not empty. It’s a game about trauma’s aftermath, how broken men break others in turn. Whether you find that compelling or unbearable is up to you. Just don’t expect to leave unscathed.