THERE WAS A MOMENT, after watching Pinocchio carve through his 200th rampant puppet with a squeal of grinding gears, when I wondered how we got here. Impossibly, in a year where Elden Ring’s expansion is still waiting in the wings and Lords of the Fallen is reusing the name of 2014’s most middling Soulslike, our best shot at an off-brand Dark Souls is a Korean-Italian puppet and his chatterbox cricket companion.
But somehow you can put an oversized bonesaw in Pinocchio’s hands and it just feels right. While trips over some mechanical clumsiness and can’t escape its inspirations, it’s a competent action game with a unique toolset for experimentation. Maybe more impressively, through the grim spectacle of puppet violence, it’s a successful gothic
