Review: Lollipop Chainsaw

I have a fairly well documented love affair with Suda51. I thought Killer 7 was brilliant, Michigan was extraordinary, and I proudly raised the banner of Shadow of the Damned on this very site. When Lollipop Chainsaw was first shown, I was prepared to continue my affair unabated. It looked to have all the crazy elements of a Suda51 production, but this time with a heavy dose of Joss Whedon in the center, and a cacophony of rainbows, glitter and sprinkles on top. The dichotomy of the visuals alone was enough to pull me in...at the time.

But even the best relationships can stumble at times. There are no perfect fairy tales and even our most beloved designers are bound to hit an errant note now and then. Unfortunately for Suda51, Lollipop Chainsaw is filled with them, and not all the visuals in the world can keep this song in tune.

Title: Lollipop Chainsaw (Xbox 360)
Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture
Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Release date: June 12th, 2012 (North America)

In Lollipop Chainsaw you play the role of Juliet Starling, a chainsaw wielding, valley-girl teenager who comes from a family of zombie hunters. She's on her way to school (San Romero High School that is) when the zombie apocalypse suddenly breaks out, attacking her and her boyfriend Nick in the process. Of course, you've seen this character before. Juliet Starling is a more sexualized version of Joss Whedon's Buffy character in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show (though more in line with the 1992 film version of the same name) intermingled with a touch of Bruce Campbell swagger. Though some of the initiated might take umbrage with this, it's important to point out that this is what Suda51 does. Often using pop-culture as a starting point, Suda51 then takes that base material and moves it into a stratospheric type of ridiculousness through both his story-driven and visual flair.

It also would be remiss not to point out that the sexualization of the Juliet character is actually absurd to the point of self parody. One can easily paint the character with a sexist label and accuse Suda51 of blatant misogyny, but only if one can perform the mental contortions required to actually take Juliet seriously as a character at all. In fact, not to peel back the layers too much since this is a review and not a dissertation on the adult themes in Suda51 games, but I see Juliet as the antithetical component to Garcia Hotspur from Shadows of the Damned. Both characters are used to poke fun at the male and female desire to be beautiful...but taken to its most obnoxious extreme, resulting in Juliet appearing as a cheerleader with a skirt like a belt, and Garcia with a talking motorcycle and cannon for a penis.

As Juliet you'll be trying to vanquish the evil assaulting your town by fighting through hordes of zombies using two basic attacks; chainsaw attacks that do quick and heavy damage, and pom-pom attacks whose main function is to stun your foes. Juliet will acquire various upgrades throughout the levels and will also have the ability to purchase additional combo's with points she earns by collecting coins from downed enemies. It's all basic fighting-game fair, that is until the game comes screeching to a halt for one of its numerous mini-games.

Now, I'm one for variety in my games. Changing up gameplay is always welcome. Most of these mini-games however, just aren't really much fun. You'll be trying to make baskets with zombie heads in a basketball game not once, twice, but three times. You'll also find yourself playing a badly check-pointed version of Q-bert, a dull Elevator Alley, a merciless version of Baseball that took me ten tries to complete, and probably a few more than I'm either forgetting or have completely blocked from my memory. By the time you get to the 4thmini-game you can't shake the feeling they were shoehorned in from a bin of ideas that were never fleshed out as much as they should have been. At best they seem erratic, and at worse they completely grind the game to a frustrating halt.

Unfortunately, this erratic feeling tends to permeate the entire game. The visual style of exploding rainbows and sparkles, while brilliant at times, also comes at the expense of creating an extreme dichotomy with the rest of the game, which is presented in dull hues with a grainy overlay. The game also has a terrible habit of ripping the camera from the third person perspective and swinging it through a level to show you an area of interest. Of course, this is a common feature games sometimes use, but this game does it constantly. You won't get through a single area without it happening at least 4-5 times, and after a while you will almost feel like you are getting some form of video-game induced whiplash from it. Combine this with the constant back and forth of sparkle explosions and ejaculating rainbows and after a while, I found my brain becoming completely awash with a catatonic sort of desensitization.

Even with all the splashes and sparkles and rainbow explosions, Lollipop Chainsaw also just looks surprisingly bad for a game at this point in the generation. Juliet looks good but her zombie enemies are mostly duplicates with not much going on. Levels are fairly bland, low-detail affairs...quite the downgrade from the fantastically realized world of Shadow's of the Damned, and general animations are awkward at best. This applies to the fighting as well which feels overly heavy for a cheerleader, and Juliet also has the terrible habit of finishing every exact frame of an animation before she'll dare to do anything else. Bayonetta this game is not, and it's a shame too because there is potential here. If this game carried with it the visual ideas of Suda51 but had the gameplay designed by Platinum Games, Lollipop Chainsaw could have truly shined.

And there is certainly potential. The characters and bosses are well thought out, and are often deeper than they appear on the surface. Suda51's humor and sense of self-parody remains intact and as entertaining as always, and the cut scenes are often a joy to watch. Just getting to these bits, however, requires a clunky slog that is almost too much to pay for the reward. Lollipop Chainsaw is not, as some might say, a lighthearted game that should just be fun.

It just isn't that much fun to begin with.

Score: 35%

(30-39%: Poor - Very few redeeming qualities in this title)