Lisa The Painful Bosses
Whenever games allow me to make moral choices, I always play the good guy. Being a scoundrel is fun, but a part of me can’t help but feel sorry when I hurt a character’s feelings (or worse) even though I know that character is no more than data and lights on my screen.
The Worst Boss I Ever Had: 11 True Stories That'll Make You Cringe. Stacey Lastoe. If you’ve never had a terrible boss, then you are one lucky human being. Most of us have some experience dealing with a manager that brought us to tears, made us red with rage, or that simply made us dread going to work every day. Immediately made a.
In a game whose Steam page promises that “you will learn that in this world, being selfish and heartless is the only way to survive,” I refused to take the immoral route. I failed. Lisa made being the good guy a lot harder than I thought.
Picture the wastelands and motorcycle gangs of Mad Max. Now add a little Children of Men—only no women and definitely no children. The story of Lisa: The Painful RPG has been done before: a world overrun with violence and the sweat of men, all resources depleted. The world’s gone to hell because for whatever reason nobody knows, all the women died out. The only hope is an infant that the protagonist, Brad, finds abandoned—a baby girl.
He wants to keep her a secret—keep her safe from the world, from the ruthless men who would rape her and torment her. Brad knows evil: He felt it in the punches and kicks of the bullies who beat him and his best friend up on the playground, who taunt him still as an adult. He heard it in the degradation of his father, abusive and drunk, who called him a “worthless shit kid.” Brad crying alone in his room is our introduction to the pain he would face. Cue the title card.
Because Brad knows monsters, it might be easy for him not to become one. When the girl, nicknamed “Buddy,” grows older and is found out, she’s taken by gangs and men who would hurt her. Brad vows to save her. He sets out on a mature, Earthbound-like adventure, where enemies and allies alike do weird moves in battle and you fight the ridiculous: guys who fall from one good hit to the groin (just payback), tiger kung-fu masters (or is that karate?), and poor bastards who were defenselessly taking a nap. The music is even weirder, bringing both joy and sentimental sadness when you’re riding your bicycle around in a world full of mutants, lingerie-wearing transvestites, and a self-professed Fabio whose weak point is the bottle of dirty water you lob at his luscious blond hair.
But pain can make a monster of anyone—and turn a world that is sometimes happy and simple despite its problems wretchedly ugly. Brad, a former Joy junkie, can’t help but suffer cravings the whole game for another one of those blessed blue pills. The player must make unbearable choices for him. Take the Joy in your inventory, or let it sit there. Let your enemy kill your friend, a dumb and innocent fool named Terry, Lord of the Tutorial, or allow him to cut off your left arm. The consequences are permanent, affecting the rest of the game, but by no means are your sacrifices not in vain. Once you play Russian Roulette with your party members and learn how the world and everyone in it (including Buddy) really feels about you and your savior complex, you’re not sure whether any of your decisions were right at all.
Imagine how blood-soaked Nathan Drake would seem if everyone realized just how many bodies he was leaving behind. Or Joel in The Last of Us, if Ellie learned what he had done. How would they look to us then?
Lisa has a way of allowing you to revel in a joyfulness of pain—a place and feeling where all the agony and loneliness becomes an idiotic caricature of life. I rode my bicycle down a church aisle to a funeral coffin in a vision of the future that blossomed from Brad’s own deep-seated fear, and I couldn’t help but laugh despite the gravity of it all. Other times, I felt sad. Two of the game’s worst crimes are cutting down one of the world’s last trees to make a boat and killing an obese, smiling mutant so you can take his bicycle. When bloodshed is so commonplace, murder is but a trifle offense to commit.
Perhaps great wisdom was said by a character who revered a sport that endured into the post-apocalypse: “Pro wrestling is forever,” he told me. “Even at the end of the world, it still thrives. It completely fulfills the primal need for violence and glistening bodies.
“All humans have this need. Only few are willing enough to accept it.”
Through the final battles with the dozens of people you never thought you’d kill, Buddy “is crying deeply.” It’s only a status effect, meant to reduce your accuracy. But everyone seems to be crying. No one can stop for long.
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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ThatOneBoss/Lisa
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Lisa The Painful Bosses
- Joy mutants are devastatingly powerful and almost always come with at least one perma-kill attack. Thankfully, a majority of them are optional on Normal mode... except for Charmy, who is fought in Area 1. Charmy can easily one-shot pretty much anyone in your party that isn't Brad, and has a mountain of HP, especially this early in the game. The extremely limited roster of party members doesn't make this fight any easier, and while it is possible to grind on the snakes and shadowy figures in this area, doing so quickly becomes inefficient. While it might seem smart to just unload on Charmy with firebombs, doing so makes the Men's Hair Club much tougher to handle.
- If you enter Factory Town, when you come out, you'll be ambushed by the Road Scholars, who will demand all your mags. If you choose not to give them up, then you get sucked into a fight with a five-man gang. They all have very respectable HP and can hit ridiculously hard for this stage of the game, and worse yet, several of them can Stun or Paralyze your party members. Often, this ends with the five of them whaling on your helpless, immobilized party. Even worse, Crack Ripper, the leader, knows a perma-kill move, and will start using it if you drag out the fight too long. About the only way to win this fight is to know it's coming and either bring Firebombs, grind Brad up enough to use Head Slide, or just fork the mags over. Losing this battle will result in the town getting blown up, along with the powerful party member Mad Dog. Oh, and don't try to be smart and spend all of your mags beforehand; the Road Scholars will just blow up the town without a fight.
- Kim Sex Machine. You'd think a male exotic dancer would be wimpy, right? His HP is pitiful, his defense is nonexistent, his attacks aren't likely to scratch you, and, oh yeah, he's packing two perma-kill moves. Even worse, since he has a tiny movepool, he's likely to get at least one off if you can't kill him almost immediately. Thankfully, he only fights you if you're a jerk to him.
- In Normal Mode, Sweet Tea Rakeem is a forgettable early game boss. In Pain Mode, however, he gets a friend - Vic Cherry. While they don't hit as hard as mutants do, they hit much more consistently, and their damage output can quickly become overwhelming. Oh, and they both have a small chance to use perma-kill moves.
- The two required Joy Mutants that are only fought on Pain Mode, Herb and the now-mutated Hawk, are especially frustrating due to the fact that, barring the basic Joy Mutant bite attack that they use more, overprioritize their perma-kill moves, meaning that it is very likely to see your party members be quickly picked off until they begin to wail on Brad. That, and they are not only immune to Fallen, butParalysis and Scared as well, meaning you will NOT be able to catch a break with either of them.
- Peter. He has pretty solid HP and is tied with Wally for having the second highest Attack stat (and the highest of any required boss), meaning that he can easily KO a party member with ease. But that's not all; he comes with not one, but two perma-kill moves, and he loves using both of them, so have fun trying to keep all of your party members' heads on. Oh yeah, he's required on all routes. Peter's only saving grace is that his Agility is practically nonexistent, but he's still a very powerful killer.
- Wally. Wally has three forms, each of which packs 4-digit HP (which, when added together, gives him 19,000 HP; the highest of any required boss and the third highest overall) and fairly respectable defense with Fallen immunity on the side. Wally can also Laugh, which, while possible to miss, is more often than not capable of inflicting the entire party with Scared (causing the victim(s) to waste their next turn) and the seldom-seen Depressed (a ridiculously-crippling debuff that harms your Attack, Defense AND Speed) at once. Plus, during his third phase, Wally will not hesitate in using a perma-kill move on you, something that is especially bad if the target happens to be inflicted with either/both of the above debuffs. If you've run out of items and SP during the first two forms, then you're in for a beating.
- In Joyful, Vega Van Dam is the lowest ranked living warlord on the list. Despite this, he's probably the hardest out of the first three to defeat. He's flanked by Fatty Peach Dog and Timmy Apple Cat, both of whom hit quite hard and have enough HP to weather several rounds of both Buddy and Rando's attacks. Vega himself can give himself the Super Cool status buff to heal 600 HP each round, as well as blinding Buddy and Rando with his smile. Fortunately, Vega is very weak to Flustered, meaning that once you get him alone, it's not hard to chain together Flash attacks and immobilize him.
- Big 'L' Lincoln in Joyful. With a massive HP pool, immunity to Flustered, and devastatingly powerful attacks, it's easy to see how Lincoln became the strongest of the Olathe warlords. Lincoln can give even a Joyed Buddy a run for her money, and that's all before he starts praying and healing himself. Lincoln is easily the hardest boss in the game, especially considering how easy the final bosses are.