Review: Lollipop Chainsaw

Lollipop Chainsaw is an action game for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It was developed by Grasshopper Manufacture.

Juliet Starling, chopping up her former classmates.

It’s the eighteenth birthday of Juliet Starling, head cheerleader at San Romero High, and she is working up the courage to tell her boyfriend Nick that she and her entire family are actually zombie hunters. Her birthday plans are put on hold though when zombies rise up and attack her school and kill Nick. Armed with her bedazzled chainsaw and Nick’s reanimated head, Juliet sets off to fight the zombies destroying her town.

In Lollipop Chainsaw, you button mash through hordes of zombies across seven levels. Juliet has a light attack that can stun zombies and does a little damage, a dodge move, a chainsaw attack that hits the heads, and another chainsaw attack for the legs.

Weak pom-pom attacks only stun zombies.

Killing zombies awards you zombie medals and platinum zombie medals, the regular for just killing zombies and the platinum for killing multiple zombies at once. Regular medals can buy new attacks for Juliet and items that increase her health and other stats, and platinum medals can buy new outfits for Juliet, music, and art.

Killing zombies fills up Juliet’s Sparkle Meter. When the filled Sparkle Meter is activated, it turns Juliet invincible for a couple of seconds, makes all of her attack instant kills, and gets her more medals when she kills zombies.

Because sparkles are more unusual to see coming out of zombies.

There is a second mode besides the story mode, where you try to get a high score from killing zombies, which is put on online leaderboards against other people.

Combat is extremely repetitive. You can buy different attacks, but it is just as easy to mash one of the heavy attacks as long as you do not get surrounded. You can do this entire game. The only time you have to change it up is when you fight mid-bosses and end level bosses, then you have to dodge their slow attacks. If you do take enough damage you can refill your health meter with the many lollipops lying around the levels.

It is difficult to even enjoy slashing zombies. They just stagger in the exact same animations when you hit them, until the limbs of whatever area you were hitting fly off. Cutting up zombies loses its magic when you have to run your chainsaw through a zombie’s head three times for it to actually decapitate.

The only thing that breaks up the combat are the occasional quicktime event, a few instances where you have to save a couple of students from zombies, and a few instances where you attach Nick’s head to a zombie body, which results in a quicktime mini game.

Levels are not interesting either; taking place in areas like a stadium, or a farm. The only interesting level is in the neon lit arcade.

It is sad to see how much Grasshopper thought people would want to play through Lollipop Chainsaw more than once, it is obvious by how few attacks and items you can unlock on one playthrough. It would take several hours of grinding through the same boring levels again and again to get everything.

The story, characters, and humor that permeate this game are all painful to watch and listen to. Juliet’s entire shtick is that she cares more about typical teenage things like whether she is too fat, than all the horrific things going on around her. Nick’s thing is being upset that he is just a head. Almost all of their dialogue is back and forth between these two bits, with occasional snarky remarks from Nick about the zombies. Jokes in this game are extremely forced pop culture references, lazy innuendo on Juliet’s part, and people saying they are going to do gross stuff. There is nothing witty about any of the jokes; saying you are going to go take a shit or going to go masturbate are not jokes, Nick thinking that Juliet is going to have sex with a zombie is not a good joke.

This scene of an old guy looking Juliet's skirt pretty much summarizes this game's range of jokes. 

The only story is Juliet going after the emo high school student who raised the zombies, and killing the zombie gods that run each level. There is a bit of a subplot of Nick becoming increasingly depressed over his status as a head, but all that leads to is a lot of whining on his part and a lot of stupidly oblivious statements on Juliet’s part. We also meet Juliet’s family during the game, all of who are crazy idiots. The story is shown through cutscenes with terrible lip synching, though the animation is at least decent.

Lollipop Chainsaw is a rental at best, if you are really desperate for terrible jokes. It is not worth your money though; the gameplay and design are too boring to warrant playing this game more than once.