Killing Zombies Gives Me Total Wood.
My inspiration for playing today’s game can sadly be defined with one word: boobies. This movie appeared to have them in bulk. Technically, there was probably more than interested me in this game. I wouldn’t consider myself a fan of James Gunn – who collaborated on this game – but I’ve definitely had interest in things he’s done before. I’ve also had interest in the games of his collaborator, Suda51, but I’ve also never played anything he’s taken part in. I also consider myself a fan of the main voice actor in this game, Tara Strong, and I’ve actually enjoyed many things she’s taken part in. But that’s far too much explanation and it’s much easier to say I played Lollipop Chainsaw strictly for the boobies. In fact, all of that was too long. Remind me to erase it later. Lollipop Chainsaw was written by James Gunn, produced by Goichi Suda (Suda51), developed by Grasshopper Manufacture, published by Kadokawa Games and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, and includes the voice acting of Tara Strong, Michael Rosenbaum, Kimberly Brooks, Linda Cardellini, Gregg Henry, Vanessa Marshall, Bruce Locke, Sean Gunn, Little Jimmy Urine, Michael Rooker, Shawnee Smith, Dave Fennoy, Rick D. Wasserman, Fred Tatasciore, Nolan North, and Kari Wahlgren.
Juliet Starling (Tara Strong) is a cheerleader that just turned legal. But she is no ordinary cheerleader. Well, technically she is exactly the definition of what you’d expect out of a cheerleader. But also she carries a chainsaw and fights zombies. She is off to meet her boyfriend at San Romero (HAAAAA! I see what you did there, zombie game!) High School, but she arrives too late. Her boyfriend Nick (Michael Rosenbaum) is bitten by a zombie. She performs a ritual to allow his severed head to remain alive and decides to keep him around in this form. It turns out that the whiny Goth kid Swan (Sean Gunn) has summoned the zombies because people in high school were mean to him. He summons musical themed zombies – punk rocker Zed (Little Jimmy Urine), Viking drummer Vikke (Michael Rooker), hippie guitarist Mariska (Shawnee Smith), autotuned R&B-ish guy Josey (Dave Fennoy), and some kind of rock dude Lewis (Rick D. Wasserman) – to seek his revenge. Along with Nick, Juliet teams with her sensei Morikawa (Bruce Locke), her Mom (Vanessa Marshall), Dad (Gregg Henry), gun-toting older sister Cordelia (Linda Cardellini), and clumsy younger sister with far too much energy Rosalind (Kimberly Brooks) to send them back to Hell, or wherever.
I knew what I was getting into with this game. I had assumed that it would be a pretty run of the mill hack and slash game with occasional funny parts and lots of Japanese quirkiness. So, now that I’ve proven that I can read the future, I will be accepting premium rates to read people fortune cookies and tell them I’m magic. I really can’t say that there’s too much to say about the story of the game. The zombies show up and Juliet has to kill the shit out of them. The dialogue is pretty hit and miss in the game too. Quite often, I found the dialogue between Juliet and Nick to be pretty cute, especially the part where Juliet thinks Nick speaks Japanese because he knows what the word “sensei” means. But other parts of the dialogue just seemed like they were trying too hard to be funny, or perhaps even edgy. Not really a problem, I suppose, but noticeable more in the times when they fall short.
Not a lot to say about the look of the game either. It wasn’t particularly good and it wasn’t particularly bad. It was fairly colorful and goofy in how dismembering zombies was muted by rainbows and stars because of how most guys think the world looks through the eyes of most girls. The only real issue I took with the look of the game was the sexuality. Don’t get me wrong; I love boobies. The problem I had with it is that it felt like it was telling me way more than I ever would want to know about what James Gunn and/or Suda51 masturbate to. That’s information I’d do better without.
The game plays well enough. It’s vaguely Bayonetta-esque. And by that, I mean it’s a hack and slash game. Spam the hell out of that X button, then throw a Y button at the end for good measure. They add a gun thing that doesn’t really work unless you take off auto-aim and a few other things to break up the monotony, with limited success. They also often try to break things up with quirky minigames, like a baseball one where you have to protect zombie Nick as he rounds the bases and a basketball one where you try to make baskets with decapitated zombie heads, but these never really became more than irritants for me.
The achievements aren’t necessarily what I’d call easy, but they’re not the hardest ones either. The only thing that makes them a bother is that it means you’ll probably have to replay levels a few times. I got to about 800 before I finally got sick of the game and decided it wasn’t worth the bother anymore. But I imagine I could’ve gotten 1000 without too much extra work. It’s just that the game isn’t interesting enough for me to really work at it.
Lollipop Chainsaw was a goofy, fairly standard hack and slash game. The story was simple, but funny enough when they weren’t trying too hard, and the look was pretty cute for a game with so much dismemberment. But I’ve never really been a big fan of hack and slash games because I can only press X so many times before I realize that I’m getting bored. This game is satisfying enough for a rental, but can’t justify a decent price tag. Lollipop Chainsaw gets “What the dick?” out of “These zombies suck dick at driving.”
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