Lies of P is the latest in the small handful of this genre of games that I've buckled up and really decided to dive into, joining titles like Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order and the original Dark Souls.

The inspirations of the twink Pinocchio game are tattooed up and down on two beefy roided up arms, adorned yet unimpeded by a sleeveless jean jacket that has "HAVE YOU PLAYED DARK SOULS YET" embroidered on the back, which may be a point of irritation or eye rolling to some. But, i don't know. Lies of P kind of feels like If Dark Souls Was Fun?
Or for a less inflammatory slogan, Dark Souls Without The Fat.

Lies of P's level design and structure, whether out of necessity of budget or pure design, feels positively brisk and focused. There's not a lot of pointless meandering to be had, and there's basically nothing in the entire game that felt needlessly cruel to me, which I thought would have been the M.O. for most of these soulslike games based on my limited familiarity with FromSoftware. It's really refreshing how the game's structure is clearly telegraphed with things like chapter numbers and enough narrative to sort of manage the pace of the adventure and help avoid it ever feeling suffocating or overly daunting to the point of being unengaging altogether.

Going into Lies of P, I was admittedly expecting something that was much more of a slog to get through, something to find the path of least resistance through and go "oh yeah ok that was fine" and be done with it. But the sheer freedom of playstyles, approaches, and actually-meaningful progression kept my focus locked in throughout my time playing. At no point did I feel I ever had to cheese the system and abuse obtuse mechanics to win, nor did I even feel like I could had I wanted to.

For the first half of the game I stuck with my starting weapon, in this case the rapier, not out of "this is the best approach" obligation, but just because of how much fun I had using it. Watching gameplay clips of others showed me how drastically I had played not just individual boss fights, but the entire game itself. I can probably count on two hands the number of times I perfectly blocked or parried an attack on purpose: Not for lack of execution, but more for lack of feeling like I needed to, or that it was The Way You Have To Do It.

Bonfire locations are placed thoughtfully and were seldom frustrating, and your Pinocchio Souls being dropped outside of the boss room felt far more. Sensible? than what I was expecting. In a lot of ways Lies of P was easier in difficulty than either Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order (At Jedi Master difficulty) or certainly Dark Souls itself - God knows I was only ever really frustrated at one fight (That wasn't even a proper boss to boot) but this decreased difficulty honestly did nothing to lessen my engagement or sense of reward and self satisfaction. It actually felt more satisfying to be playing a game that felt like it wanted me to keep playing it while also being completely reasonable.

There's a lot to appreciate here when it comes to the minute systems details, and surprisingly, things like the setting, themes and music, which I was also prepared to completely write off but ending up being way more engrossed in than anyone could take me seriously for, so for the sake of not ballooning this blog post any further, I'll leave it at that.

I haven't jumped into NG+ yet, but Lies of P is one of the incredibly few games I've ever actually considered doing it for.

Hitman III ups the production values just a little bit more than it's predecessor, and while the total level suite may not be a strict improvement over Hitman II's (Is there anything as good as the F1 Race in Florida?), they are certainly up to par in scope and replay-ability with most of the previous entries, and feature even more unique story mission tidbits.

While the narrative of these game's is by far the thing that least catches my interest in these games, I was surprised by the end how invested I was - Honestly, still really not a whole lot, but more than I would have expected.

At the end of the day, Hitman III is another top notch billionaire killing simulator in which you play as the world's funniest assassin. There's not a whole lot more you could ask for here.