Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture
Platform(s): PS3, X360
Reviewed On: Xbox 360
Release Date: June 12th, 2012
Genre: Hack n' slash, action, zombies
My Rating: 7/10
Lollipop Chainsaw is the 'un-deadly' story of sweet and killer zombie hunter Juliet Starling and her quest to uncover the root of a colossal zombie outbreak. With her wickedly awesome chainsaw in hand, Juliet slices, dices and splits her way through hordes of the undead, but soon realizes the horde is only the opening act to a festival of zombie rock lords determined to kill the chainsaw wielding cheerleader.
It's become sort of a running theme here on my blog to review games with female protagonists. There's no particular reason for that really, other than I feel like the gaming industry really does need more games like that, specifically ones that don't treat said females as sex objects and overly inflate their sexiness to the point of offensiveness.
Well... That isn't the case with Lollipop Chainsaw, unfortunately. And yet I still found myself enjoying the game regardless.
The setup is pretty basic. You play as Juliet Starling, a lollipop-addict cheerleader who's secretly a zombie hunter and carries a giant pink chainsaw around with her wherever she goes. When zombies start to attack her school and her entire town, she has to disembowel all of them one by one and save humanity. You know the phrase "save the cheerleader, save the world"? This time it's the cheerleader herself who has to safe the world. Like, totally no pressure, right?
Juliet herself is voiced by famed voice actor Tara Strong. Because of this, I could not listen to her talking without hearing the voice of Twilight Sparkle. I found it infinitely amusing thinking of Twilight saying things like "what the dick" and "you smell like shit".
Unsurprisingly, Juliet is selfish and dumber than a bag of rocks. Luckily, however, in her journey she has a companion who acts as a voice of reason; her hot jock boyfriend Nick. Who also happens to become a decapitated head that Juliet starts treating like an accessory. How that came to be, you'll have to see for yourself. Nick is absolutely hilarious. I call him the voice of reason because it seems like he just says outright what the people playing the game are thinking. The conversations between him and Juliet are a riot, and further cement how stupid Juliet is and how surprisingly smart and quick-witted Nick is. He also starts to question what's going to happen to his life now that he's basically just a decapitated head, but Juliet constantly just treats him like an accessory, which sorta bugged me because I sorta grew an attachment to Nick. He was just that likable and charming of a person.
Before I jump into discussing the gameplay, I have to warn you that this game is ridiculously offensive. Everyone and everything in this entire game wants to get in Juliet's pants. Even the zombies growl out crude things like "Let me fuck your father!" or "I'm gonna fist my ass with your head!". Yes, that second one is actually a line in this game, I did not make that up. Juliet gets called a slut in this game more than I get called fat, and that's saying something. If you wanna play this game, I suggest you do it for the mindless fun and chopping up zombies. Turn off your brain like, 90% of the time and chances are you won't get too offended.
Now let's talk about the meat of this game, which is the gameplay. It has pretty basic hack n' slash combat. Using triangle or Y lets you do chainsaw attacks, and using square or X lets you do pom-pom bashes, which don't really do much in the way of killing zombies but is a great way to stun them. You collect zombie medals during combat that you can spend on a little in-game shopping system, chop2shop.com. You can get new combos, upgrades, consumables, and of course, costumes. Because female protagonists! They always need multiple outfits, amiright?
Side note, yes, the outfits are ridiculously over-sexualized, but keep in mind that this game's target demographic is horny teen boys. They eat this shit up. There's even an achievement/trophy for looking up her skirt, for chrissakes.
Anyways! Back to the gameplay. I thought the combat was pretty fun, albeit repetitive. But hey, it is a hack n' slash game, so that wasn't a shock to me. Along the way Juliet gets new power-ups like Chainsaw Dash, which allows you to move faster outside of combat, and Chainsaw Blaster, which turns your chainsaw into a machine gun of sorts. You can also utilize Nick in combat, oddly enough. There are these items you can either buy or pick up called Nick Tickets, and it lets you use Nick's special abilities that I actually found pretty helpful at times.
The game sort of adds in certain things to shake up the combat and not make it too repetitive like the running "Zombie Basketball" minigame and... stripper poles. *sigh* Yes, I know. Throughout the game there are these stripper poles you can trigger that makes Juliet spin around while holding out her chainsaw. The zombies that go near are all automatically beheaded, and you have to mash triangle or Y to spin faster. As if this game wasn't offensive enough, let's add another layer to it. They were..okay. I became numb to em after a certain point.
I did like the boss battles in this game as well. They were ridiculously campy, because Japanese games, and for the most part each of em were pretty original in their own ways. Although there are a few boss battles where you have to fight giant zombie chickens. Yes, you're reading that correctly. Giant zombie chickens. I can't find a picture of them, so you're gonna have to see that for yourself.
In short, the game's good for some mindless fun and if you're in the mood to chop up zombies while looking pretty. It's horribly offensive, but also hilarious in a lot of parts. I'll give it a 7/10, cause I'll be lying if I said I wasn't having a blast playing it. Check it out for yourself, if you wish. Just remember to turn your brain off.
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