It’s zombie apocalypse time again folks! LOLLIPOP CHAINSAW by WARNER BROTHERS and GRASSHOPPER MANUFACTURE is here at last after months of hype, does it blow my ra ra skirt up? OK this time you’re a Britney Spears (early Britney, before she lost the plot) look alike cheerleader with a chainsaw. Buffy the Vampire Slayer this isn’t before you ask, just more hack and slash with bimbos.
You play a blonde (why do these developers think blondes are dumb?) zombie hunter and cheerleader Juliet Starling who isn’t the sharpest tool in the box (to say the least). If you don’t like your dialogue peppered with "whatever’s" then go no further. Of course this game suffers from the usual over usage of bad language along with the addition of sexual content and innuendo, which is OK for about ten minutes, then it does begin to grate.
The story is set in Juliet’s old high school where a group of Rock zombies have taken over the place. Iit’s your job to track them down and kill them before they can open the barrier to the ROTTEN WORLD and infest the world with zombies. Juliet carries around the severed head of her boyfriend Nick, who is actually funny, and with some good one liners, one of the few funny moments in this game. The soundtrack is punchy and works well; in fact this is one of the better elements of this game.
LOLLIPOP CHAINSAW promised so much yet doesn’t deliver really. Ok the action is there, but it just feels a little contrived and clinical. Juliet’s moves are pretty basic and you don’t actually get any decent combos until well into the game, which is a shame.
The whole game scenario is; fight some zombies, little cut scene/animation, then fight some more zombies and that’s it really. I know we have not had a chainsaw wielding cheerleader before, but with the emphasis on sexual innuendo and bad language, it sort of distracts from the game itself. Which doesn’t make it the best zombie killing game around.
The graphics and look of the game is very quirky and cartoony, in fact it feels a bit "girly". Whether the manufacturers are actually aiming this at girls it’s hard to say.But there isn’t much gore and more sparkly things instead. To be honest, if they hadn’t had all the bad language and unnecessary sexual content, the age rating would have been much lower. If they were aiming this at adult audiences, then I am afraid it missed the mark really.
As I said earlier Juliet’s moves are pretty basic for a large portion of the game. With either the "Pom Pom" attack or the chainsaw attack, you can stun zombies with the first attack and then decapitate them, or just pile on in there with the chainsaw. Some zombies are harder to kill than others mind, so be careful. Eventually you get to a boss battle, which will be one of the rock zombies.
You do get to purchase upgrades as you go along, which are mainly health upgrades, additional combos, and of course different outfits and chainsaw upgrades.
Now the story with Nick is that his head can be used for a variety of things, either kicked at a zombie or placed on the headless body of a zombie to complete a task (a sort of mini game). There are a number of mini games within LOLLIPOP CHAINSAW (I liked the severed head basketball). Which do add a bit of variety, just not enough to compensate for mediocre gameplay I am afraid.
Summary
LOLLIPOP CHAINSAW tries hard, but just doesn’t pull it off. The combos that are available later should be standard to make the gameplay more enjoyable at the start. I became bored quickly with this game, because of the lack of stimulus and the excessive use of bad language, especially the sexual degradation of the central character. OK it’s just a game, but it doesn’t give developers the right to use offensive language in such a context. As for the game play its fun, but not great, the campaign being only 5 hours long doesn’t offer value for money. At the end of the day LOLLIPOP CHAINSAW didn’t live up to the hype, so I give it 6 out of 10
- Lollipop Chainsaw
- Developers: Grasshopper Manufacture
- Publisher: Warner Brothers
- Xbox 360®
- Playstation 3®
- Genre: hack and slash RPG
- Release Date: June 15, 2012
