Lies of P is the funniest video game of 2023.

It's also the best non-FromSoftware Soulslike ever made, and it's not particularly close. Lies of P is maybe the only game that's adhered strictly to FromSoft's design principles and also managed to get somewhere near standing toe-to-toe with FromSoft themselves. There are a lot of reasons for this: Gameplay feels great on a very primal level; combat design has genuinely unique ideas that are built around to forge a strong identity; the world and story are shockingly engaging. All of that is fantastic. It's what makes Lies of P fun and interesting to play. But it's not the reason why Lies of P manages to approach greatness. Lies of P's real success is in how completely unhinged it is - in the fundamental comedy of it all.

People like to talk about FromSoft games being "fair" and "balanced" and "not cheap". These people are liars who, in their dishonesty, do Hidetaka Miyazaki et al. a massive disservice. Souls games are stupid and unfair. Souls games are out to get you. They're filled with dumb tricks designed to screw the player over. Sometimes that's a gimmick boss that forces you to rely on something completely different than the strategies most of the game is built around. Sometimes it's a poisoned swamp that makes basic traversal obnoxious. Often it's deranged enemy design and placement (think the Anor Londo archers). Souls games revel in playing stupid little pranks on the player - in introducing chests that are actually going to eat you; in locking content behind unindicated invisible walls; in giving the player major debuffs through innocuous actions and then not communicating that.

There's a tendency to treat these things as exceptions to some imagined core value of Soulslikes, as though the Platonic ideal of a Souls game is something perfectly fair and never annoying or dishonest and anything that is annoying or dishonest is a corruption of that pure ideal. And that misses the point of this genre. Because really, these games are made very specifically to be annoying and unfair. Deep down, that's what's so fun about them. You put hours into dying to stupid things and laughing about it, and then you slog through it anyway. That's what makes these games so satisfying to play. It's what makes beating them feel like such an accomplishment. It's what makes every inch of forward progression feel earned. It's what makes this genre so funny.

The Soulslike genre is, in truth, a genre of comedy - maybe the most inherently comedic game genre. A Soulslike is supposed to be funny, and can't be truly great unless it is, at least a little bit. And Lies of P is a very, very funny video game.

This is what Lies of P fundamentally understands about the genre. Lies of P is filled with nonsense (affectionate). One section of the game forces the player to platform (using controls deeply unsuited for platforming) on narrow rafters while enemies pelt them with projectiles that can and will knock the player off the beam to their death. Another positions the enemy below some snipers, then puts a bunch of hidden bear traps in front of them so that they're immobilized when they inevitably panic and run for their lives. The first eight bosses freely allow the player to abuse summons and farmed consumables for relatively easy wins, while the ninth takes those options away just to make sure the player is paying attention. All of these bits of gameplay (and many more) are cruel, and unfair, and extremely stupid, and hilarious.

That's the sort of joke that Lies of P loves to tell. It fully believes in the idea that Souls games should be made for masochists. It's a game of untelegraphed ambushes and hilariously punishing traps and completely insane encounter design. It's a game that will, at least once, kill you in a way that's completely outside of your control.

All of this is a good thing. It's why Lies of P succeeds where so many have failed. It doesn't try to be fair or accommodating. Much like FromSoftware before them, Neowiz is out to get you. They want you to suffer and die before you ever find success. They know the secret truth of video games, which is that screwing the player over can actually be an extremely valid design choice, or even a necessary one. They know that screwing the player over can be so, so funny - and Lies of P loves to screw the player over.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is like a buffet where every dish was cooked by a different Michelin-starred chef. It contains most of the best ideas from most of the best video games in its genre, but simultaneously and often better. When people talk about Mario games, they usually talk about how expansive they are, how individual levels will contain enough ideas to fill an entire game. Wonder is the metaphysical representation of that talking point. It's incapable of going more than a level or two without presenting something totally new, and incapable of going a single level without taking that new idea and twisting it and turning it upside-down and exploring every possible way in which that idea could ever present itself. It somehow manages to throw the player over and over and over into new situations with new mechanics and new play patterns, and yet make each individual idea feel totally complete. This game contains a hundred games within it, and all of them are masterpieces.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder makes me want to use big, annoying words like "masterclass" or "magnum opus" or "banner year". It makes me want to replay every other 2D Mario game, and then replay Wonder once I inevitably realize that it's just better than everything that came before it. It makes me want to write tedious think pieces about how Nintendo is, in the year 2023, somehow still one of the most inventive game developers on the planet. It makes me want to play more 2D platformers. It makes me want to play more video games. It makes me want to do this because it is, in a way, a teaser trailer for the entirety of its own medium. Super Mario Bros. Wonder is the most video game to ever video game.

It's actually an extremely good and cool thing when a game makes the player's movement really bad. I'm not kidding. I hate when people call Resident Evil 4's controls "dated", because they're just inspired today as they were in 2005 - just for very different reasons than they were in 2005.

Resident Evil 4 makes the act of moving through the game world feel like absolute shit, and it rules. It's neat to consider how Resident Evil 4 pioneered the modern third person shooter control scheme and signaled a shift away from fixed-camera models of the past, but I think it's even more neat to consider Resident Evil 4 from the opposite end, to look at how even today it distinguishes itself from other third person shooters (including its own remake) by refusing to let the player ever really have completely free control over their actions. It forces every player action to be deliberate and committed, makes you think ahead every time you try to act and then punishes you if you planned poorly. It's frustrating, but only in a good way. It's scary, in a way the game never could have been otherwise.

And all of the rad set pieces and intricate level design and terrifying enemy behaviour depends on that. Every combat encounter and haunted house sequence in Resident Evil 4 is a sort of little macabre dance. Action from the player, and then reaction from the enemy, all deliberate and in step. It's a formula that works so well, and one that probably wouldn't have been half as interesting if the controls hadn't sucked so terribly.

The lesson here is that developers should make player controls be really bad more often. It can, in fact, be really interesting to make the player's experience worse!