Lollipop Chainsaw is a loving parody of the B-zombie movie genre filtered through the sparkles and rainbows of Rainbow Brite and My Little Pony. This game is the latest concoction to come from Suda51 and Grasshopper Manufacture. Highly talented screenwriter and director James Gunn wrote the story for this game and had a hand in creating the game’s colorful cast of characters.
The game follows Juliet Starling, a cheerleader for San Romero High School who happens to also be the middle daughter in a whole family of zombie hunters. Her father is a rockabilly-styled badass, her older sister, Cordelia, is a highly trained sniper, and her younger sister, Rosalind, can’t drive for crap. Her mom is the stay at home kind, though.
On her birthday Juliet is late to meeting her boyfriend Nick before class starts, and as she hurries to meet him, she encounters a large group of zombies. After fighting through these zombies, and the zombies in a nearby parking lot, Juliet eventually makes it to where she was supposed to be meeting Nick, only for Nick to save her from a zombie that sneaked up on her, getting bitten in the process. Nick seems doomed to death when Juliet lobs his head off with her chainsaw and by doing a magical ritual on his head, Nick is able to live.
Juliet attaches Nick’s head to her waist like as if it was an accessory and the duo fight their way through the school. When they make it to the school’s courtyard, they encounter the cause of the zombies, one of their former classmates named Swan, a goth punk druid who summons an opening between our world and the Rotten World, a realm filled with the undead and other demonic forces, the corrupting energy from the Rotten World being what is turning everyone into zombies. In addition, Swan summons five Dark Purveyors, extremely powerful zombie spirits, from the Rotten World.
The Dark Purveyors serve the purpose as the game’s bosses and they each fit a musical theme. Zed is a Punk Rock zombie with a mohawk who attacks with his magical microphone, any word he shouts into it is turned into physical letters. Vikke is a Viking Metal zombie who attacks with lightning based powers and a giant axe. Mariska is a Psychedelic hippie zombie who attacks with bubbles and hallucinations. Josey is a Rick James type Funk zombie, love of cocaine included, who fights with a hovering platform and video game effects. Lewis Legend is a Rock ‘n Roll zombie who fights with an elephant themed motorcycle that can transform into a giant mech.
Lollipop Chainsaw is a hack ‘n slash game, meaning the crux of the gameplay is fighting through waves of zombies using light pom-pom bashes to stun and corral the zombies and high and low chainsaw attacks to lob off limbs and heads. The strongest of the attacks, though, are the combos, which are done by doing chainsaw attacks and pom-pom bashes in a specific order. Juliet can also do acrobatic jumps and dodges to avoid being hit. As this is a Suda51 game, though, there manages to be a bit of pro wrestling in the gameplay as well, in the form of Juliet being able to perform dropkicks and flying crossbodies to stun zombies.
The health meter in the game is represented by a group of lollipops and health is replenished by eating lollipops. If you kill three or more zombies in short succession of one another, you activate a Sparkle Hunting, which rewards you with zombie medals, the game’s currency. You can use the zombie medals at an in game kiosk called Chop2Shop to unlock things like health and strength upgrades for Juliet as well as new combos, concept art, soundtracks, and new outfits.
Most of these new outfits are the token affair, like skimpy bikinis and new cheerleader outfits. The most standout thing, however, is there are five anime/manga inspired outfits, three of which are for characters belonging to series that have been covered on FAN in the past. The first is Shiro from Deadman Wonderland, which glitch covered here, and the other two are Rei Miyamoto and Saeko Busujima from Highschool of the Dead, which I covered here.
Throughout the game Juliet’s chainsaw gains upgrades via the birthday gifts given to her. Examples of such gifts include a gas-powered turbo boost that mows down enemies in her way and a blaster upgrade. In addition there are fun mini-games thrown into each of the game’s 5 main stages, such as a mini-game in Mariska’s stage that sees you running over zombies with a large crop harvesting vehicle while Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Right Round (Like A Record)” plays in the background.
Visually Lollipop Chainsaw has a heavy comic book styling. All the characters have a noticeable dark outlining to them, the various parts of the HUD as well as all of the menus have a dotted coloring style similar to that in comic books from decades past. Mixed in with the blood and gore of zombie killing is large amounts of rainbows, stars, pink hearts, and sparkles.
Audio wise, the music is top notch. The soundtrack is a mixture of both original songs and licensed songs. Famed composer Akira Yamaoka does the majority of the game’s music, like he has for most of Grasshopper’s games since his departure from Konami. However, the game’s boss battle themes were done by Little Jimmy Urine from Mindless Self Indulgence. Jimmy Urine also does voice acting in the game, providing the voice for Zed. Juliet is voiced by veteran voice actress Tara Strong and Nick is voiced by Michael Rosenbaum. The voice cast is rounded out by the likes of James Gunn’s brother Sean Gunn as Swan, Linda Cardellini as Cordelia, Michael Rooker as Vikke, and Shawnee Smith as Mariska.
Lollipop Chainsaw is admittedly a short game, taking about 5-6 hours to beat a complete playthrough for, but there is a lot of replayability to the game in the form of trying to beat high scores and buying more stuff at the Chop2Shop. By far the game’s greatest strengths are its memorable cast of characters and its over the top humor.
If you are a fan of Suda51, I highly suggest buying this game. Hell you probably already had it pre-ordered the moment this game was announced. If you’re not a Suda fan or have reservations about the game, I say give it a rental first and see if it fits your tastes. I feel that with each passing game, Suda51 comes closer to having a game where the gameplay matches the quality of the characters and humor. I personally can’t wait to see what crazy ideas he has in store for his next game.
Lollipop Chainsaw is rated M for Mature, retails for $60 US, and was released on June 12th for the PS3 and Xbox 360. I played the PS3 version of the game for this review.