Lies Of P Demo – Pinnochio Becomes A Real Boyborne
Lies of P is the first Pinnochio Soulslike game. Perhaps the one and only Disney soulslike. As you can imagine, you play as a very human-like puppet/ automaton based on the classic story Pinnochio. And much like the original tale of the puppet who wanted to become a real boy, this story involves hacking and slashing your way through a robot armageddon. With sword in one hand and grappling hook/power fist/other weapon in the other, you must explore the ruins of the city in order to find out who’s pulling the string (ba dum tss).
The game is not releasing for a few more months, but NEOWIZ was kind enough to drop a demo a few weeks back. After playing I can confirm that Lies of P is indeed pretty cool. Perhaps not enough that Pinnochiolike will supersede Soulslike, but a fun and challenging, and well-built hack-n-slash survival game nonetheless.
The premise of Lies of P is reminiscent of Bioshock: Infinite. The setting is a city once bestowed with technological marvels, now fallen to ruin due to the technology run amok. Something has happened to the puppets that have caused them to rampage and slaughter any person (or fellow puppet that mostly looks like a person) that they come across.
You explore recently abandoned city streets, a train terminal where machines lurch around the bodies of the dead, and a creepy street circus. We are also introduced to Lies of P’s version of Firelink Shrine, which appears to be a fancy hotel with naught but three surviving humans. The setting certainly lives up to the developer’s so-called ‘Belle Epoque’ description, which the best I can understand is as the intersection of electricity and horse-drawn carriages (to my knowledge, Belle Epoque ended before the invention of fairy-powered Terminators).
Most of the enemies in this demo are about what you’d expect. The puppet equivalent of a Dark Souls Hollow. Weak, slow-moving humanoid machines generally armed with a makeshift club or some kind of projectile weapon. Nothing too interesting thus far, but I assume this is the very starting area. There are two bosses in the demo too, both a formidable but doable challenge, but again, both weapon-holding humanoids. Hopefully, as the game progresses, the developers can show of some real creativity in enemy design. I’m thinking of the spider doll from Toy Story or perhaps the Dinobots from Transformers. They’re puppets, go nuts!
Lies of P is a very tight Soulslike gameplay experience. You begin with a selection of three weapons in this demo; sword, big sword, and little sword. I tried all three and found the little sword, a sort of quick rapier-type blade, to be my preference. The game uses traditional hack n slash controls, with a mix of Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Dark Souls forms of defense. You can block for significantly reduced damage, which can then be regained by retaliating quickly, or if you time it right, you can parry the attack. It takes some getting used to, as does every Soulslike, but the mechanics feel solid.
There are some superfluous mechanics, like having to sharpen your weapon using an elbow-mounted grind wheel, but other than that, Lies of P presents a demo that is more than promising for this developer’s first attempt at a true Soulslike. What we’ve seen so far has shown us the “P” part of the game, I’m looking forward to seeing what the “Lies of” part of the title is all about.
