Lies Of P's horrible puppets and gloop cannon prove it's more than a Bloodborne clone

rockpapershotgun.com:

I wasn't too hot on Lies Of P when I played its first demo way back when. I felt it was so close, too close, to Bloodborne in everything from the cadence of the Chalamet puppet's jog, to the "duhhnng" noise of pickups, and the gothic sheen of its streets. At the time I thought it was a bit of a duff pretender, honestly.

But a good chunk of time with it at this year's Gamescom has swivelled my head back in its direction. Having clacked through some dingy streets, fired blue gloop from my arm, and fought the literal King Of Puppets, I've come to realise it has the potential to be a magnificent Soulslike in its own right.

My demo, like many at this year's show, was split into two bits. The first dumped me into chapter 3, where I made my way through a horrible town and the sorts of old houses with dark wood grain stairs and rich mahogany desks. The second popped me into chapter 6, where I entered the bright glow of a beautiful concert hall, home to singers-who-are-somehow-also-mechanical-spiders and a boss fight against machine royalty. To summarise: it was a traumatic experience and my hands were shaking when I got up and left.

Lies Of P's first demo had a lot of boring fodder like dogs, and mateys who could barely scratch you. Both slices of the Gamescom demo, though, ushered in a mixture of the nastiest, creepiest puppet contraptions, and it showed the game really is home home to a deranged set of clockwork bastards. I remember entering the quiet of a house and seeing these robotic old ladies, their bodies juddering as they paced to and fro. The moment they spotted me they held their brooms aloft, and only when their brooms whirred to life did I realise there were horrid grins on their faces. The brooms were chainsaws.

Th