Lollipop Chainsaw: taste of promise.
Sucking Lollipop Chainsaw (PS3)
So, I saw this in bargain bin: a cheerleader, her decapitated boyfriend, zombies and a killer soundtrack for 10 Euros. Sound like a deal right? Well, it might be for right kind of person. On the outside Lollipop Chainsaw seems to have lot going for it, but underneath there is simple and basic arcade action game that feels like a cold dead corpse from the past, rather than new fresh and vibrant modern game.
Key word here is surface value: you get a girl in a skimpy outfit, sometimes witty dialogue and brilliant, but rather small soundtrack. Comic book look of the menus and super saturated neon colors in some parts of the game really stand out in a good way. Digging deeper result in disappointment: fighting mechanics are too basic, lack of polish and combo scoring system is flawed, having a problem of seeming to be rather random with the results.
Even with the looks department Lollipop Chainsaw has some problems. Levels tend to be simple, linear and boring looking. Brightly colored places are rarity here, which might come as surprise. Also most of the polygonal things have a cheap look to them. Speaking of levels, they seem to be frustratingly long time-wise and rather empty on the enemy side of things, making huge zombie killing fests rarity in a game that has little nothing else to offer.
For a game that has huge emphasis on various high score runs, everything is planned very poorly. Loading screens take a lot of time and there are plenty of them. You have to quit to main menu to change difficulty levels, quit to map to change clothes, go to level to see what students have you rescued and to do the shopping. There are plenty of other bothersome quirks that I will not list here. Some levels are very time consuming for high score runs, taking something like over 30 minutes for one run. As bonus if you die because of missed quicktime event or failed some minigame, you will have to start level all over again.
So, Lollipop Chainsaw has lots of negative things, but I kind of like it - for a while. I think this mainly has to do with its pure arcade-, score hunting nature. That said it is a very short game that is really hard to recommend to anyone – even with 10€ price tag. If you can tolerate simple, surprisingly slow gameplay plus b-grade production values, and have a heart for score hunting with interest to cheerleaders in skimpy outfits – this might be an OK game for a while.