Lollipop Chainsaw Review

Mike Kayatta | 19 Jun 2012 18:08
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Lollipop Chainsaw follows the tale of Juliet, an eighteen-year-old cheerleader whose second biggest fear in the whole universe is that all those lollypops she's eating will make her butt, like, way fat. Her greatest fear, however, is that she'll somehow manage to upset Nick, her hunky new B-average boyfriend. Normally, with her not-so-modest skirt and bubbly attitude, this may not have been an issue, but Juliet has a problem: she's part of a secretly-trained family of zombie hunters, and some people might see that as just a bit weird. Nick leaves to meet the clan for his girlfriend's birthday dinner, only to be waylaid by some kind of catastrophe causing the dead to be much less dead than normal. As Juliet heads out to find him, an impertinent zombie tries to drive a bus over her bicycle, she whips out a giant pink chainsaw, and the game begins.

It's difficult not feel some sense of attraction to Juliet's world of brazen sexuality, bus-driving zombies, and disembodied boyfriends. But even for those gamers who prize novelty over mainstream, the first time you shift from cutscene to gameplay, most of that shimmer begins to wear off.

You'll spend most of the game saving classmates and killing zombies, swinging the game's titular chainsaw to attack while sucking on its titular lollipops to heal. Juliet isn't very smart, so Suda 51 kept things simple for her: one button for the chainsaw, one for the pompom kung-fu, and one to jump. Use these in two or three different ways, and about five to ten minutes later, hopefully you're the last one standing in any particular zone.

These segments can get repetitious fast, and Lollipop Chainsaw does a good job of breaking them up with quirky little quick time events and minigames that ask you to do anything from hop across the heads of a crowd of zombies to pole dance in circles with your chainsaw hooked over your elbow. Most, if not all, of these don't require much thought or skill to accomplish, but give the game just enough variety to help transition between its more tedious grinds.

Killing the zombies will grant you two types of currency: gold coins for standard slaughter, or platinum ones for doing something more impressive (either besting a boss, or mowing down three or more zombies in a single swing). Common coins can then be used to purchase stat boosts, lollypops, or combos, while the tougher-to-find platinum scratch gives access to new get ups. As you may imagine, it's all pretty standard combat gear; a revealing maid uniform, or tight, pink leather suit with an open zipper running down to the crotch.

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