Smells like (Undead) Teen Spirit - Lollipop Chainsaw Review
Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture | Platform: PS3 | Playtime: 7:00
While corporate meddling has always been a problem, it feels like a long time ago where games in the AAA space were allowed to be games rather than thinly veiled money making schemes for executives. The PS3 era was a haven for the linear 10 hour game. Legendary video game Auteur Suda51 had a couple of these in as many years, both of which are seeing remasters this year. In honour of that and just wanting to play them, enjoy a two part pseudo series of reviews, rounding out with the second game – ‘Lollipop Chainsaw’
You play as San Romero High school cheerleader, Juliet Starling. She rides to school only to discover the place has been overrun with zombies and her poor boyfriend Nick is being eaten by one! Fear not, for Juliet hails from a family of seasoned zombie hunters, and with a bit of magic Nick is ahead of the game, hooked at Juliet’s waist to be front and centre for some chainsaw based zombie massacre.
Set across 5 linear stages in addition to a prologue and final boss, the game has a primary focus on its combat – there’s very little to break up that pace. I don’t consider this a good or bad thing, I just compare it to Shadows of the Damned which interspersed combat with darkness puzzles. However like shadows of the Damned, each level is a linear affair, comprised of many individual set pieces where a certain number of Zombies must be killed. The presentation of this might change or even expand into little minigames or QTE sections but the game is nearly entirely about beating waves of zombies before progressing.
It may be because I’m not very good at the combat but something just didn’t fully gel. You can attack with the chainsaw as well as doing low sweeps as well as hitting zombies with your pompoms. Doing so stuns a zombie leaving them open for a one shot, but I felt this wasn’t really practical in the many groups the game wants you to fight. I also struggled with the lack of block/parry system, instead everything was based around dodging instead. I maintain that this feels like a me problem rather than one with the game.
This is especially since the game gives you a chance to buy new combos in the Chop N Shop stores spread out throughout the levels. Destroying the environment and killing zombies gives the player Zombie Medals which can be used on upgrading Juliet’s Health and Power (as well as homing capability and recovery speed from knock downs which is odd) as well as new combos. Platinum Medals are a rarer currency used to unlock outfits for Juliet. As the games combat is definitely more combo based than say, light attack/heavy attack games, I didn’t really see many of the combos I bought from the shop. Button mashing got me through but in an unsatisfactory way.
Alongside your main chainsaw attacking, you also unlock the ability to dash with your chainsaw – something that only has usage in scripted specific sections, very little use in combat and the Chainsaw Blaster. When ammo is available, which isn’t all the time but quite often, it trivialises the game with regular zombies dying in one or two hits and bigger zombies melting. As far as I can tell, there are no upgrades or other story related powerups to these two aspects of the chainsaw meaning they feel removed from the main gameplay.
On the topic of trivial, unfortunately the games bosses call into that category too. The Dark Purveyors – super zombies summoned by the games central antagonist, Swan. Their easy difficulty is made up for by their cool theming however, each of them is based on a genre of music – Punk Rock, Viking Rock, Disco just to name a few. It means each fight feels quite different and despite their ease, they’re all really fun and highlights of the stages they are in.
That’s the thing that kept me going throughout the game. Even when the combat didn’t feel the best to me, the game is just Vibey. The entirety of the games premise is silly and campy and all the characters feed into that and play into it. The fact that decapitated head Nick is the only normal one of the characters we see makes for a surprisingly funny experience. The music of the game is something that people bring up – the shop theme is Lollipop by The Chordettes and the theme when you enter Sparkle Hunting mode is Hey Mickey! By Toni Basil. Both of them add to the tongue in cheek tone of the world and the premise of a cheerleader with a chainsaw.
With the upcoming remake, I didn’t bother going for the Platinum trophy this time around which would involved beating the ranking mode as well as playing on hard mode for exclusive collectibles (A strange feature I’ve not seen other games do). Other trophies seemed fairly grindy too.
I’m kind of sad I didn’t enjoy Lollipop Chainsaw as much as I did Shadows of the Damned, but I’m still glad I got the chance to play it. With the remake coming out within weeks, I may have a chance to rectify some of my opinions on it. I think others would enjoy the game more than me though. I had fun but I can’t say much more than that.
