There are plenty of things about Lollipop Chainsaw that are obvious to the casual observer. The game is a third person action game that has some provocative elements in it. This is a fine description and probably one that could be found on the Metacritic description line for the game. But Lollipop Chainsaw is a little more than that. This is a game for the hardcore gamer in a way that not that many games are now a days. When I say that I’m not referring to the overt sexual themes or the violence. No, neither one are very much like the typical games you might find in this genre. When Juliet, the main character, decapitates a zombie it explodes into sparkles, rainbows, and a star that adds to your meter. The amount of blood and gore is kept to a strict minimum. The sexual themes, for as much as they have been beaten to death these past few months in anticiaption for the games launch are pretty light. Juliet will wear some slightly provocative clothes and many characters will speak in innuendoes. But I’ve seen PG-13 movies with more sexual content than this game. These things aren’t meant to be taken anymore seriously than a Saturday Morning Cartoon for Adults. Lollipop Chainsaw wants to be a Grindhouse game and it tries very hard to do so. But ultimately it fails in that regard. It certainly has some Grindhouse style but nothing like games such as House of the Dead or even Shadows of the Damned. Perhaps this was all in the name of appealing to a broader market but as the reviews come around for this game; few people understood what the game was trying to do and even fewer even liked it. I think this probably had to do with Lollipop Chainsaw not having a clear vision of what it was. Just being funny, a little gory, a tad crude are just not enough here. I tried as best I could to divine meaning from the game and certainly finally had an idea of what it PROBABLY was going for. But only SUDA 51 himself knows for sure.
Juliet Starling is the main character, she is a cheerleader and a zombie hunter. Her parallels to Buffy the Vampire Slayer are apparent. But they stop at the door of appearances. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the movie version; was a terrible comedy/horror romp and had the main heroine learning of her destined powers to be a vampire hunter and world savior. She was a vapid teen that was only interested in boys and being prom queen. The revelation of her do or die destiny was more of a burden than a self defining feature and in the movie she was really only slaying vampires for the last 20 minutes or so and then not very well. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the television show, featured a Buffy that was also a cheerleader; although this aspect was played down a lot from the movie version. Also as someone who was reasonably intelligent. But she all ways felt like an outsider and even though she had SOME friends she usually felt like everything wasn’t as important as everyone made out. She was a pretty tough chick to begin with, at least emotionally. She also had immense strength and agility for all of her life, unlike the movie Buffy. But when she found out she was a vampire slayer and destined to save the world she tried to balance normal life and the life of a slayer and usually ended up just being a slayer. The television Buffy was incredibly deep and conflicted; which is why Sarah Michelle Gellar won numerous awards for playing her and Joss Whedon is probably one of the best directors that television has ever had. So it would be nigh to impossible to convey this kind of thing in a Grindhouse style video game. Nor was that what Lollipop Chainsaw was trying to do.
All of this teen turmoil and overdone comedy is mostly lacking from Lollipop Chainsaw and Juliet Starling is really neither of these women or perhaps both. She is at once determined to save the world and Nick(her boyfriend who she beheads in the beginning of game to save him from turning completely into a zombie. He spends the rest of the game on her hip), has a strong family bond with because her whole family are Zombie Hunters, and she loses all of her friends, except for Nick at the very beginning of the game. Juliet also seems relatively well adjusted to the facts of her life and only really sees to explain them logically to Nick rather than trying to prove something to herself about it. So Juliet may seem vapid, like the movie Buffy; but determined, like the TV Buffy. Don’t confuse them, because she both and neither. Which is probably what made some players annoyed at her right at the start. When you’re a tough girl and someone calls you a whore, you say something back. When your Juliet Starling you either ignore them or cut off their freaking head. She has nothing to prove to anyone about her promiscuity or her way of dressing. She just doesn’t care. This fact being further muddled by her “dirty old man” mentor, who was obviously put in for sight gags and comic relief. Which would have probably been fine had it been handled better. Over the course of the game the story itself continues to be handled badly. I all ways found myself wondering why the Juliet Starling at the games beginning wasn’t really the same one at the game’s end. Perhaps it was the constant introduction of new family members and game mechanics. I’m not sure. But I can say that overall the story of the game was handled pretty badly. I’m not saying that for a Grindhouse style story you need to be complex or emotionally deep. But what you do need, is to be consistent. Even consistently inconsistent would be fine. Which Lollipop Chainsaw borders on.
The gameplay in Lollipop Chainsaw is definitely the shining crown on top of this game. The game is basically a third person action arcade shooter. Meaning that there is a lot of emphasis placed on time and score. There are some attempts in this very music themed game to have some rhythm challenges and such but most are very lackluster and uninteresting. Once you’ve beaten the game once, going back through in Ranking Mode, ranks you on everything from the medals you collect to the time it takes you to complete the level. Once you get past the basic story mode and get into the Ranking Mode the game changes significantly. I would all most venture to say that the game is actually two games. One with a story, pacing, and some sense of trying to be funny. The other simply a game about getting the best score in the fastest time the most complicated way possible. Beating the top score will get you on to the online leaderboards where again, you compete to see who is the best Zombie Hunter. There is a huge upgrade system in the game for everything from attributes like Health and Strength to combos that you also need to unlock. All this done through medals that you earn from killing zombies or you find in the levels. Also there are areas that require the use of some of the special transformation that you get through the story progression and have hard locks to that progression even with new Game Plus and/or Ranking Mode. I’m guessing because one in particular could be game breaking otherwise.
These transformations are actually the part of Lollipop Chainsaw that brought down the game as a whole. I think they are basically what could be called out as being what’s ultimately wrong with the game. The “Chainsaw Blaster",” which is a basically an assault rifle, is a transformation you get about half way through the game. It turns some portions of the game into third person shooter, which would be fine, but it’s available all the time. As long as you have bullets for it(you can buy them if want). The game could be virtually a third person shooter. The Chainsaw Blaster is SO powerful that it will usually take down enemies in one or two hits. Which is a lot different from chain-sawing them. The only slightly less game breaking transformation of the “Chainsaw Dash,” which allows to Juliet to simply run over zombies while she is moving at top speed looked like it was originally used for the travel mechanic of getting her from one large area to the next. This is less of an issue because even with picking up oil cans to keep you going, the player will not be able to use this much outside of the areas it was made for; however, since you can get bonuses and bonus awards for using it. I can see it getting spammed all most as much as Chainsaw Blaster.
The hardest part of Lollipop Chainsaw are not the multistage uncheckpointed boss battles. No, the hardest part are skill challenges. Games like Zombie Basketball, or a keep away game with fiery zombies running toward your Birthday Cake of Dynamite. These are one fail affairs and every time you lose the challenge, you die. In doing so, you use a continue which takes off points your final score and off your overall rank. This would be all fine in Ranked Mode. But in Story Mode, it is more than a little annoying. Especially because as the game progresses these challenges get longer and longer and they too are not checkpointed in ANY WAY. If nothing else what could have been used as a change of pace mechanic ends up bogging down the flow of the game.
Anyone’s biggest take away from Lollipop Chainsaw and this can be said of about any game that SUDA 51 has a hand in, are the BOSS BATTLES. They are normally very inventive and different. Usually requiring the player to experiment a little with different strategies before finding the boss’s weakness. Lollipop Chainsaw does have SOME of this. But, mostly due to the Chainsaw Blaster, the later level bosses are just not as difficult as the earlier ones. In fact, TWO of the bosses seem to have been designed specifically with the Chainsaw Blaster in mind. Which is great! But the ones that don’t really aren’t very impressive due to it. Fortunately or unfortunately for me; I refused to buy ammo for the Chainsaw Blaster. So I usually had to ACTUALLY work to beat some of these bosses. If you really NEEDED the Chainsaw Blaster to defeat a boss, bullets for it would spawn around the level as you used them. Otherwise it was just a possible option if you had bullets. I really did love the bosses in this game but they certainly weren’t of the caliber that have appeared in other SUDA 51 games. While this might have had to do with James Gunn writing the story or perhaps the fact that Grasshopper had decided to try and make this game more, “Western friendly.” Which sounds awful; I don’t know.
I suppose if I had to sum up my feelings about Lollipop Chainsaw they would be, “Excitedly disappointed.” I really enjoyed most of the game from a gameplay perspective. Some of the parts of the game were absolutely brilliant and anyone who doesn’t have the entire soundtrack stuck in their head; word for word by the time they are done playing had the sound turned off. But I have to say that it wasn’t what I was expecting. With all the hype and madness surrounding this game I was expecting a more crazy version of Saints Row the Third thematically. A story somewhat similar to Shadows of the Damned. And probably most importantly a main character that I would really understand by the end of the game. None of this really happened. Lollipop Chainsaw came very close to living up to it’s potential but it just doesn’t quite make it. The other problem is that I have a hard time recommending it to anyone but fans of SUDA 51. Which is a pretty hard sell to most people. Mainly due to the fact that if you really like SUDA 51 you probably own a copy the of the game all ready and have played through it at least once. So even though I really loved you Lollipop Chainsaw, I’m going to have to make a WTD? Move(you will get that if you play the game) and give it a 8/10…
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