Lollipop Chainsaw Review
Bored of zombies? Here's an under-dressed cheerleader with a chainsaw. Oh look, you're back.
While there are plenty of bloody zombie bits flying, especially the heads, the game is more striking for its rainbow colours that follow every chainsaw swipe and the starburst of colour that greet pom-pom strikes and cheerleader kicks.
Looking at the game in action can be deceptively pleasing, but when you get to play it yourself you’ll realize there’s a delayed disconnect between button presses and what happens on screen, some presses even go unnoticed completely. This makes even simple combos more difficult to pull off than they should be. Right from the start of the game it’s concerning how few combos are on offer. The way that pom-pom strikes link into chainsaw combos feels awkward like playing the piano with a few missing fingers. The zombie blaster gun allows for some ranged attacks, but the aiming is sticky and awkward.
Combos can be bought from stores dotted around the game, but they’re always disappointing when you try them out. Always promising power, you’ll often struggle to notice an extra attack being added to the end of a combo or will find purchases to be weaker than what you already have. Health and strength upgrades are available and you can use your separate platinum coins to unlock a series of outfits that get more revealing the more expensive they get.
Coins are found in breakable objects or are rewarded for offing zombies. If you can decapitate three or more at once you’re given a Sparkle Hunting reward where the action slows down against a striking glittery background which manages to please every time, even when you should have been getting a reward for six zombies rather than three. You can enter Star Soul mode when you fill your candy pink rage metre which grants you insta-kills galore which is always handy to clear the busier rooms of the more powerful zombies.
In the game’s favour the zombie types on offer are a nicely varied bunch. You’ll encounter regular students, charging football jocks, cheerleaders, basket-ballers, trigger-happy cops, bombers, flying scarecrows, f**kwit farmers, flatulent fatties and fire breathing firemen. It’s a shame then that the bosses lack any decent design creativity. Instead they’ve been written as obnoxiously as possible, all the more annoying when they’ve got multiple lives despite cutting them in half multiple times.
Making your way through levels is usually just a case of mowing down the dead from A to B. But sometimes minigames are thrown in, such as hitting heads into a basketball net or completing a series of gorgeous-looking retro games. There are only 6-8 hours of play here with about seven stages that can take up to an hour to complete. With only a ranking mode and a few music tracks to unlock afterwards, it’s unlikely you’ll bother playing this more than once.
Our ratings for Lollipop Chainsaw on PlayStation 3 out of 100 (Ratings FAQ)
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