Lollipop Chainsaw

Suda51  X-Box 360, Playstation 3

The zombie sub-genre of horror movies has finally reached the last leg of its ten year span, parody. In Suda51's latest release "Lollipop Chainsaw" the player takes control of Juliet Starling, a stereotypical cheerleader, all-American eighteen year old girl, who battles hordes of undead with her highly accessorized chainsaw.

The introduction provides a lot of background about Juliet, but also does a decent job of explaining certain items and characters that are featured in the game. Lollipops are used for health regeneration, while her boyfriend (at least in part) can be used as a secondary weapon. While most of the characters introduced provide Juliet various new main weapons, or power-ups.

The story (written and adapted by James Gunn) begins with Juliet rushing out of the house to meet her boyfriend Nick at school. On the way Juliet begins to encounter zombies. Once Juliet does meet up with Nick, he is bitten by a zombie and is decapitated by Juliet in a very Evil Dead 2-esque fashion. From this point on the storyline keeps getting stranger, and really is what makes "Lollipop Chainsaw" an enjoyable experience.

The gameplay seems to be a throw back to retro gaming, as most of the game's pattern is enter a room, kill all enemies, sometimes destroy debris, head to next area, rinse, repeat. This is good for story progression, as it means the player will not have to wait too long between plot points; however, it does severely limit exploration in the world. This is too bad since the levels all look like they were intended to be open and erxplorable, but for whatever reason were limited to a linear path.

One of the oddest differences between levels in "Lollipop Chainsaw" is the breakable items. While this may seem like an odd gripe, it still warrants a note. In the prologue, items that can be broken is very limited. Usually it is an obstructing item that is required to be destroyed, and yields no zombie medals (the games currency). In the High School level, almost everything is breakable, sometimes yielding zombie medals, and sometimes not. Yet, after the High School level, the breakable items are once more extremely limited.
Every level has mini-game portions, some of which are fun, and some that are annoying. The fun games range from running over zombies with a combine harvester to a few 8-bit styled games. Mini-games that are not so much fun usually include Nick.

The controls are easy enough to learn, although there are combo moves that can be purchased similar to those found in fighting games such as "Mortal Kombat," or "Street Fighter." One of the more humorous aspects of the combat system is the star power up. When the star power meter is activated "Hey Micky" begins to play for a brief period of time. "Lollipop Chainsaw" also has a feature called sparkle hunting. This is activated when three or more zombies are killed in a single strike.

Overall, this game is short, roughly four to seven hours depending on individual gaming level. While the game does have its flaws, it is a fairly entertaining experience, although at times "Lollipop Chainsaw" feels like it would have worked better in a film format. Definitely a game worth owning, but wait until the price drops as it has low replay value.