Lollipop Chainsaw Review for Xbox360 and PS3

     Lollipop Chainsaw! Suda51! James Gunn! Rainbow Sparkles! Chainsaw Death! Is it fun? Can you eat it? Let's find out!

Non-Gameplay Stuffs

Teenage-angst, zombies, and sugar-sweet emotions

     Juliette Starling, her sisters Rosalind and Cordelia, her mom, and her dad are all zombie hunters/slayers/killers. It just so happens that zombies have invaded her school, San Romero High, and are terrorizing the entire student body, not to mention her dreamy boyfriend, Nick. In a turn of events, Nick is bitten and Juliette is forced to separate his head from his body so she can save him. Not to worry though, Juliette knows of a magical spell to keep Nick from expiring and he now sees the world from the perspective of being attached to Juliette's waist. With her boyfriend-turned-accessory, they both come to find that the evil behind this zombie outbreak is none other than goth-outcast, Swan. Swan wants revenge for the years of harassment he endured from the jocks and the popular crowd by summoning the Dark Purveyors of the demon world and unleashing Hell on Earth. Juliette's not about to let some weirdo freak do what he pleases though, it's up to her and the Starling family to stop him.
     Every character is its own take on a certain perpetuated stereotype or archetype of a highschool clique or teen movie cliche, except with James Gunn and Suda 51, those takes are extraordinarily exaggerated and injected with a twisted sense of humor. If it didn't wring so much good-natured, juvenile, and self-aware humor out of itself, I'd say we have a much more forgettable game on our hands. Good thing we lucked out and got an endlessly entertaining chucklefest instead.

     Juliette's character is playing on the stereotypes of high-school blondes. She's a cheerleader, ditzy, has a bubbly way of approaching every situation, thinks she's totally fat even though she possesses a desirable body figure and has an exaggerated diet to match. And yet, although she's the target of a lot of jokes and derogatory humor, she has this strength about her. She's a bit self-conscious and acknowledges her insecurities but she also has the confidence to tackle the opposition in front of her. Though she may stumble, she'll giggle it off and show she's not one to mess around with. She's also very dedicated to her boyfriend Nick and would do anything for him. However, like most of us in our teenage years, her immaturity can get in the way and her wants occasionally drive a wedge into her relationship.
     Nick is pretty much the straight-guy of the whole cast. He observes all the insanity around him, holds the rational point of view, and occasionally gets in on the fun by joining in with a joke here and there. He's always looking out for Juliet's butt (at times literally, I mean, it's gonna happen when you're just a head dangling from the back of your girlfriend's waist) and the feelings he has for her are mutual with a level of respect I think everyone is deserving of in a relationship.
     As one might predict though, the story essentially ends up with a weak focus and an average conclusion. I'd say you would be playing for its quirky cast and off-kilter humor over its story. The humor comes from how self-aware Lollipop Chainsaw is of itself and how eager it is to take dark and embarrassing truths we're familiar with and stretch them into something ultimately more perverted and repugnant. Honestly, sometimes what you see is so politically incorrect that you'll erupt in laughter just from the shock of it. Aside from the humor though, there are some interesting messages to be found.
     For the first boss you encounter, one of his attacks is to shout slurs like "Vanilla Slut" and "F***ing Cooze" and the words physically manifest themselves and come hurtling towards you. It's a creative way to show that girls do undergo some unnecessary judgment and that words can hurt but Juliet overcomes such harassment, not only with her own physical ability, but her self-confidence as well. Nick also experiences a certain helplessness being just a head. He's objectified by those around him, including Juliet. Everyone does and says whatever they want to with Nick despite his protests and he struggles trying to get the attention and respect he deserves. It's interesting to see these situations exaggerated and flipped on their head. These ideas don't call that much attention to themselves as the focus of the writing seems to be on having as much fun as possible, but it is cool that there's something deeper you could extrapolate if you wanted to.

Who came up with this awesomeness!?

     Lollipop Chainsaw is... well, it has so much energy and so much to say and show that it actually leaves me speechless. Everything is candy-coated, gory as hell, rainbow colored, comic-inspired, and filled with sparkles. Have you ever seen what epileptic shock looks like? Sometimes I feel like the amount of color and flourish is enough to push one to that point. If you kill a number of zombies in a single strike, time slows down as you're taken into space where the zombies' heads pop off into the air, blood spewing and turning hot-pink, hearts bursting into and out of existence as Juliette declares "Sparkle hunting! Woohoo! Zombies taste my chainsaw death!" as a cheer-squad applauds her feat. Yeah, Lollipop Chainsaw is insane. One of my favorite interactions between Nick and Juliette is when Nick asks, "Where do all of those rainbow thingies when you cut a zombie in half come from?" and Juliette responds pridefully with, "From awesome."
     The visual style instantly reminds me of a comic-book, both thematically and aesthetically. Violence is over-the-top with camera positions that provide angles to glorify the action. For example, after jumping atop the heads of zombies in a quick-time event, Juliette will strike a pose and utter a catch-phrase as the camera zooms out, moves down, and pans upward to a dozen zombie heads popping off into the air like champagne corks with trails of sparkles, hearts, and rainbow gore. The pause menu is setup like a page from a comic with different frames for different options and the art on the menu screens share the same look as a 1950's newspaper comic with dotted colors and hard outlines. They even use Comic-Sans as a font!
     One of my favorite parts of Lollipop Chainsaw's style is something I consider a brilliant stroke of creativity. Every stage is aligned with the theme of the Dark Purveyor (the boss characters) awaiting you but what makes each Dark Purveyor unique is that they're associated with a different genre of music. On one hand, this is great because music provides a large part of what makes up a teenager's identity. It makes sense to me that these all-powerful demons are based on an aspect that holds a large amount of power over a teenager's social life which, in turn, is essentially their entire life. It does a great job of providing awesome ideas for the bosses like the punk-rocker being able to physically attack with his screams and using his mohawk as a buzz-saw projectile. The other aspect I think is great about this is that it takes one of Suda51's greatest assets, Akira Yamaoka, and allows the composer to stretch out and strut his stuff with these different music genres. There's punk, metal, psychedelic, funk and more and each level has a selection of five tracks that play throughout. My hat goes off to Akira Yamaoka for being so flexible and prolific, a lot of the original tracks for the game are wonderful songs in their own right and do well standing out individually and collectively. Jimmy Urine of Mindless Self Indulgence also contributed to the music of each boss fight featured in the game which are diverse and suit each boss's theme well.

      The other side of the music is a number of licensed tracks that play throughout the game. Juliet's themes consist of Cherry Bomb by The Runaways, Lollipop by The Chordettes, and Mickey by Toni Basil. There are also other songs like Pac-Man Fever and DOA's You Spin me Round (Like a Record), all of which fit in with the environment or the action taking place on screen. The inclusion of these tracks add to the overall charm of the title and creates a number of memorable moments.

The Gameplay Stuffs

Zombies will indeed taste Juliette's chainsaw death

     Lollipop Chainsaw is a beat-'em-up action game. The majority of the time you will be confined to an area and forced to fight a number of enemies before you can move on. There is a lot of variety that rears its head now and again but let's talk about the combat.
     The controls can seem a bit weird at first but actually share a lot in common with No More Heroes. In your average action game, you'll usually have light and heavy attack buttons to one side, a button for miscellaneous actions, and a jump button. For Lollipop Chainsaw, you have a button for high and low chainsaw attacks, a physical melee button, and another for dodging and hopping and they're arranged in a way that corresponds with the action they perform, the low face button is the low chainsaw attack, etc. As you might do with most beat-'em-ups, you'll try to figure out combos and how you can kill enemies as efficiently as possible. What you want to do is either rip into zombies until they die, bash them with physical attacks until they become dazed which allows the next chainsaw strike to kill instantly, or activate Star Soul mode which makes you invincible and causes your attacks to instantly behead most things. Starting out, you don't have a lot of reason to think otherwise but the real goal of combat, in my mind at least, is a lot deeper than mashing on those buttons. Lollipop Chainsaw isn't about hacking away, it's about crowd control and efficient movement.

     The base goal regarding the combat itself is to kill groups of enemies to reach the end of the level but it's not all that challenging or rewarding in that aspect. What breaks the monotony and tasks the player with using a bit of skill is Sparkle Hunting. As described earlier, if you do a killing blow on three or more zombies in a single attack, sparkle hunting activates and tells you how many zombies you killed and how many zombie tokens and silver coins you'll be rewarded with. The more you kill at a time, the more you get. If you were to aim for sparkle hunting, it would require dealing out damage evenly, keeping zombies reigned in together and setting them in formations fitting the reach of your intended killing blow, and taking notice of your position, attack range, and strength utilized throughout your offense. The payoff of is that it raises your overall score which will rank you higher on the leaderboards, your zombie medal gains will allow you to buy attack combos and upgrades for your strength and health, and the silver coins can be used for new costumes, in-game music tracks, concept art, etc. Being that, aside from completing the game, it ends up being all about your score, it's in your best interest to learn the ins and outs of hunting down those elusive sparkles. The one drawback is that Juliet is victim to an oppressive form of auto-targeting and will often switch to another target mid-combo which can destroy your set-ups pretty easily. You can use the lock-on but with so many enemies on screen, it can be hard to focus on the zombie you want and may waste new opportunities for sparkle hunting that pop up over the normal flow of combat.
     The other thing Lollipop Chainsaw does really well is presenting the player with varied tasks and mini-games to complete. There's Zombie Basketball where you have to toss zombie heads into a basketball hoop, using a chainsaw dash to run on rooftops, mow down zombies in your path, and launch off of ramps to collect coins, or traversing a Pac-Man-esque field while dodging fez-wearing puppy-dog ghost heads as you collect keys for the exit. Even Nick will get in on the action as you can place his head atop a zombie body which leads to a quick-time mini-game where you need to mash the right buttons to lead Nick to the obstruction you need cleared to advance through the level. You can also use a Nick Ticket to activate a special attack using his head that can kill zombies, instantly daze everyone in the room, or produce mounds upon mounds of coins and medals for you to collect. You may want to save those tickets though as you can also use them to revive yourself if you happen to run out of health. There's always a twist to the combat which keeps things engaging.

The End Result

     Lollipop Chainsaw is absolutely whacked and I mean that in the best way possible. It's bursting with creativity and the collaboration that brought about the end-product is phenomenal. You can see the individual contributions of each artist but as a whole rather than a fragmented mess. While the game can drag in some spots, there's definitely enough to motivate you all the way to the credits. I highly recommend at least one whole run through the game to witness it's bizarre, offensive, and charming sense of humor and let the mad audio and visual presentation wash over you with its sugar-coated deliciousness. Other than that, I think Lollipop Chainsaw is definitely worth a purchase.

Lollipop Chainsaw was developed by Grasshopper Manufacture and published by Warner Bros. Games for the Xbox360 and PS3. Played through the game on all difficulties and unlocked all achievements over the course of 20+ hours. Review based on the Xbox360 version.