In Lollipop Chainsaw, the player takes the role of Juliet Starling, a lively but moronic cheerleader who comes from a family of zombie hunters. Aided by her family and her boyfriend...well, his severed head at least...Juliet runs around her zombie infested town to defeat four demonic forces before the barrier between our world and the demonic/zombie realm is destroyed. This barrier is being brought down by a fellow schoolmate of Juliet who has felt rejected from society. Maybe if he tried to be more presentable in the looks department....
The story itself shines a light on the major problem with Lollipop Chainsaw. There's just nothing really special about it aside from a few bells and whistles. The characters themselves are annoying with Juliet being the standard airheaded bimbo that cheerleaders are stereotyped as. Juliet's family does have Cordelia who is the saving grace of the Starling family as the only one I really liked. Their dad is a toned down version of Elvis that doesn't add much other than some remarks to Juliet's beheaded boyfriend. Her younger sister, Rosalind, is spunky but incredibly dense and loud whose only use in the game is driving some large vehicles. Juliet says her mom is the reason they "wear their vagina proudly", but she doesn't do anything in the game to make me understand why. Luckily, Juliet's boyfriend Nick helps make the game a tad more tolerable to get through. Whereas Juliet seems to roll with the punches and nothing seems to shock her, Nick is the more sane one in the game. He constantly remarks about how crazy things are, and the constant bickering and witty banter he has with Juliet is quite pleasant. Whereas most talking heads don't really think about it, Nick asks almost immediately, "How am I able to talk without a thorax?!"
The dialogue in the game tends to be a toss up. Most of the game is littered with comments to Juliet from zombies about how they want to "fist your ass with my head" or "I'm going to fuck your father." Mix that in with the usual "bitch", "slut" & "whore"and you see why this can get old real fast. In fact if hearing it wasn't enough, one of the boss battles actually spell it out for you where you are attacked by the giant words of "vanilla slut" or something to that affect. The students you save aren't so rude, so instead they'll comment about "I'm totally going to masturbate to you tonight". Fortunately, there are times where it catches you off guard with something funny (such as how Frankenberries are propaganda). The problem is wanting to not mute the tv from everything else being said in the game.
The music, however, will also keep you from turning it off....probably. The majority of the game has tracks from Children of Bodom, Arch Enemy, and Dragonforce. That doesn't keep them from adding in the tracks of "Lollipop" by the Chordettes for the store menu or "Pac Man Fever" by Buckner & Garcia. The set list for Lollipop Chainsaw is surprisingly solid, but also incredibly quick to repeat. As much as I loved the soundtrack, I found myself getting sick of some of the music as it would begin to loop. Not the biggest turnoff, but like most things from Lollipop Chainsaw, one good thing is offset by a bad.
The actual gameplay of Lollipop Chainsaw, while simple, doesn't bring anything new to the table that other action games haven't already done. Juliet has the ability to attack zombies with her pompoms which act as light attacks to eventually stun the zombies. Once this happens, a heavy attack is the next best option which is when Juliet will rip out the chainsaw and start slicing away at the zombies. If the zombies had been stunned, it leads to an automatic decapitation. If you are able to remove the heads of three or more zombies at once, you are treated to a starry and colorful closeup screen of Juliet with zombie heads rising from the bodies in a still frame display of sorts. Based on the number of zombies this is used on, Juliet is rewarded with coins that can go to improving her stats or learning new moves. She also receives a bonus in star power which will cause her to go all sparkly with one-hit kills with her chainsaw. The combo attacks themselves don't pose any problem as they are easy enough to perform, but there's no need to use a whole lot especially since the one of the messages on the loading screen specifically tells you which single combo move is the strongest. There's also the option to hone in on enemies, but it made the combat worse and it wasn't really necessary.
The Chop2Shop.com store is a little kiosk with a giant yellow chick on it that is found throughout the levels. Here, Juliet can spend gold and platinum coins she receives on new clothes to wear, new attack combos, stat boosts, original music, concept art, or items to use in game. These items consist of lollipops Juliet will eat to regain health, the ability to buy platinum coins (the more difficult coin to obtain), or bullets for her speaker gun.
I think it's a speaker gun at least. It appears to be a megaphone that Juliet will pull out which then fires bullets in a less-than-ideal shooting mechanic the game has. While blowing off zombie heads are possible, it can be frustrating to do so as it's an automatic lock-on, but the zombies don't always move straight towards you. So you fire, they move to the side, you miss. Happened quite a lot for me, but it's an easy way to remove zombies from a distance if you don't want to get up close and personal. This is also an easy way to rack up some coins and star power as getting three zombies in a row isn't difficult, and you are still treated to extra coins and power.
The last battle mechanic is Nick Roulette, which uses Nick's head as a weapon. To do so, tickets can either be bought at the Chop2Shop or found throughout levels. Using one brings up the roulette wheel to use a number of moves: Juliet can tie Nick's head to a rope and swing it around her body hitting any nearby zombies, use head's Nick as a sort of piggy bank in which she shakes it and coins or lollipops bounce out, shoot his head out of the megaphone, or something else that wasn't particularly memorable. Not a particularly useful battle mechanic as it's not really any stronger than anything Juliet is already capable of, but does add another option when attacking zombies.
However, Nick's not done there. At various points in the game, a headless zombie will pop into the fray and stand there. No real explanation why, but he's glowing blue. These are for Nick. You force Nick's head on them and you get to enjoy a frustrating Quick Time Event moment where he will dance or shuffle his way to something that's blocking your path and remove it. It's not fun, and it's used repeatedly. The same seems to happen with Juliet where she finds a trampoline or some blocks that bounce her into the air. Yet another QTE but fortunately is done for bonus coins. As you perform these, Juliet will pose in the air as if her cheerleading squad is tossing her at an event. But don't worry, if those QTE's don't do it for you, Juliet can also be above zombies in parts of the game. Here, she can hop across a section on top of zombie heads in another QTE moment. Oh yes, one more. QTE's happen at other points in the game as objects fly towards you and you have to chainsaw them or flip out of the way. If you haven't caught on yet, Lollipop Chainsaw enjoys it's QTE's. But I didn't and you probably won't either.
Mini-games also plague the game in one form or another. On two occasions you will find yourself playing basketball with zombies. In this game, zombies rush you as you try to score enough points to beat the zombie team that's already ahead by a 100 points. You have a time limit to do so and one zombie who guards the basket. These are automatically one hit kills with the chainsaw, and as you attack, the heads act as a basketball and go for the basket. The one guard zombie can block these keeping you from scoring. Get him out of the way, and it's smooth sailing. This is similarly done with baseball where you have Nick run the bases with one of the zombie bodies. Shoot the zombies trying to attack you until he can run around the bases enough times to win. Dull and lazy games to incorporate in Lollipop Chainsaw that felt like afterthoughts to pad the game time out. However, one level has Juliet and Nick take a trip through an arcade. In this, you get to reenact old school video games such as Pac-Man and Pong. Although these aren't anything special, I still enjoyed these nods to classic games and a break from the lackluster level designs.
While zombies can pose a problem due to sheer numbers, there's nothing about them that should cause you to worry about difficulty. They do provide a variety of zombies from ones that fly, to ones that spin around like a vortex, or even ones that spit fire or shoot guns. However, they just aren't that hard to finish off. The same can be said about the boss battles which are also uninspiring but I was always curious as to what musical genre that boss would be based around. Sadly, Josey (the funk zombie), had his gimmick played out in Saints Row: The Third. Auto tune for a character is no longer funny. Sorry Josey.
Of all the disappointments, there was one that hit me the hardest. It was the look of the game. Lollipop Chainsaw isn't ugly by any means, but...once again...there's nothing to make it stand out. Instead of keeping this clean but bland cartoony look, they should have went the route that they did with their loading screens and some cutscenes. Focus more on the comic book appeal that this game could have brought. I would have found this game much more interesting to look at had they went for a Ben-Day dot approach to the look of Lollipop Chainsaw. Had they brought in panel transitions and maybe speech bubbles from time to time to exude the goofiness that this game could have been, I would have paid more attention to character and level designs. I will continue to look to the future for a Comix Zone reboot of some sort to fulfill this game fantasy I have.
Looking back over this review, it seems like I focused on a lot of the negative parts of the game. Trust me, there's a lot of improvement this game could make. But I really did enjoy it. I do like a more cartoony approach to games as the more serious realistic art style has grown tiresome. The combat was solid, just nothing worth noting in terms of making it any better than other games out there. The game has some quirky funny parts, but it also has a lot of face-palming moments. Character interactions are great, but sadly it's only one character that makes them great. For every positive thing that I can say about Lollipop Chainsaw, there's something that it can improve on. In an industry that seems to shy away from loony and goofy story ideas, this game could have been a real blast. Instead, it turns into a slight bummer. The bummer of the summer.
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