Lollipop Chainsaw

Game Info

Lollipop Chainsaw is the latest game from acclaimed director Goichi Suda, aka Suda51.  Well, maybe not acclaimed.  Infamous, perhaps?  Anyway, it starts with a lollipop obsessed cheerleader named Juliet Starling who also happens to be a zombie hunter, but as she says, don’t hate her for it!  Did I mention that today is her 18th birthday and it also happens to be the day that a massive zombie outbreak occurs at her high school, San Romero High?  A short while later Juliet’s boyfriend who kinda, sorta loves her gets bitten and infected and the only way she can save him is- Okay.  Let’s just stop this nonsense.  Nobody plays a Suda51 game for the story.  With him, it’s more about style than substance.  And this game has plenty of style.

If there is a Guinness World Record for most eclectic soundtrack in a video game, Lollipop Chainsaw would definitely be the title-holder.  During the game you’ll hear everything from doo-wop to dubstep to death metal from the likes of The Chordettes, Skrillex, and Five Finger Death Punch.  Also included are original songs composed by Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka who also worked with Suda51 in the stellar Shadows of the Damned, and they are all very listenable.  Be prepared to hear a lot of chainsaw sound effects, from small motor revs to all out roars, since basically every strong attack triggers it.

Lollipop uses the Unreal Engine 3, so most players will know what to expect graphically. It has the usual smaller budgeted games with Unreal Engine problems: texture loading delays, minor screen tearing, and sometimes unrealistic lip flap animation.  It should be said, though, that Juliet has one of the most detailed character models I’ve ever seen in a video game.  She’s definitely where most of the modeling budget went, since chainsaw-fodder zombies and rescuable classmates fair a lot worse.  The end level bosses look somewhere in between. Overall, it’s a solid visual presentation with mostly bearable load times.

It’s the gameplay that really shines in Lollipop, and not because it’s an intense, white-knuckle hack-and-slasher with responsive controls ala Ninja Gaiden. No, it’s far from it.  Attack chains and combos can be difficult to pull off simply because Juliet just isn’t responsive enough to compete with the Devil May Cry’s and the Bayonetta’s.  But she wasn’t designed to be and she doesn’t need to be, thanks to the game’s plentiful healing items- lollipops.  Numerous health upgrades and powerful new attack combos also help alleviate some of the input lag induced frustrations.

Sparkle hunting is probably the most interesting feature to this title.  When zombies are stunned or have both arms severed and you connect a strong attack with 3 or more of them you get a bonus to your score and currency along with a 4 or 5 second slow motion glory screen pose complete with rainbows, glowing hearts, and sparkles.  And at its heart, this is basically a score attack arcade-like game, much like Pac-Man. But with zombies. And chainsaws. And zombies meeting the business end of said chainsaws.

My initial playthrough of the game lasted around 5 hours, so this definitely isn’t the game to get if you’re looking to get the maximize your dollar-to-gaming-hours ratio.  But during those 5 hours a player will never find themselves getting bored.  One minute you’ll be clearing out a group of farmer zombies, the next you’ll be escorting a school bus by shooting falling boulders with your chainsaw blaster, and then you’ll find yourself grinding up zombies with a farm combine harvester to the tune of Dead or Alive’s You Spin Me Round (Like a Record).  At times it can seem like it’s a game for people with attention deficit disorder with the camera spinning from objective to constantly changing objective, but if the game is one thing- it’s never boring.

So is Lollipop Chainsaw for everyone?  Of course it isn’t.  It’s a Suda51 game, remember?  The only people I would heartily recommend this game to would be Suda51 stalwarts.  Everyone else should at least give it a rental.  It’s definitely his most accessible game to date.  It’s a bit on the short side, but there’s plenty to do after the credits roll: new costumes, songs, attack upgrades, multiple endings, online leaderboards, more challenging difficulty levels, and of course those trophies and achievements that the kids these days are chasing.  I even liked it enough to collect all the PSN trophies for it and felt saddened when I unlocked everything the game had to offer.  The good news is that I talked my wife into playing through it, so I might end up stealing the controller from her from time to time.