Shameless Gaming Reflection #1: Lollipop Chainsaw

The concept here is pretty simple. I want to write a bit about every game I’ve completed (or in the case of Zelda, spent a good deal of time on) during Shameless Gaming Month as a sort of reflection on the experience. I guess they could be considered mini-reviews, only without a silly score tacked on at the end. It’s just a fun way to remember the ups and downs of each game.

During my first playthrough of the game my Xbox froze on this shot, at which point I became convinced my Xbox is haunted by the spirit of a pervert.

While I’ve heard the name Suda51 thrown around in the past, I’ve never really come to know anything beyond the name until this year. Chalk that one up to spending more time this year getting to know about aspects of the gaming world I’d never been into before. Regardless, Lollipop Chainsaw is my first venture into a Suda51 game, and it’s been a lot of crazy fun.

It’s a very straightforward , if zany, premise for a game; a cheerleader fights off a zombie invasion in her school with a chainsaw. The gameplay isn’t exactly anything spectacular, then. It’s mostly a combination of cheerleading kicks and chainsaw slashes, but the simplicity is part of the fun. It doesn’t take long to get into the rhythm of combat, timing chainsaw slashes just right in order to maximise the multi-kill bonuses. You can unlock better combos through the in-game stores, but once I’d bought a few that made things a lot simpler I tended to stick with them and ignored a lot of other possibilities.

There are a few gameplay shifts that take shape as mini-games which, while tonally adding to the quirky style, are also the most frustrating parts of the game.  The baseball mini-game in particular proved difficult because it acted as the introduction to a new gameplay mechanic, and it was easy to fail simply because you weren’t accustomed to that mechanic. It meant multiple retries, and in a game with a scoring system that penalises you for each retry, it sours the experiences.

On a lighter note, I’ve nothing but praise for the soundtrack, which is primarily made up of 80s tracks that bring a very unique style to the game. The sequence where Dead or Alive’s ‘You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)’ started playing is a definite highlight of the game for me. And I always enjoyed visiting the stores to hear the overly happy ‘Lollipop’ play over my purchases. It added a layer of absurd charm to a game that is already quite absurd.

If I had to compare it with anything, my immediate response is Bayonetta, as both games rely heavily on sex appeal but also mock it in very exaggerated and sarcastic ways, and they both use lollipops as a way to recover health. There’s a lot of humour drawn from this sexualisation, from the amusing achievement for attempting to peek up Juliet’s skirt to the over-the-top, pole-dancing moves occasionally used to take down a wave of zombies. I never found anything to be offended by, simply because the game is aware of how sexual it is, and plays that facet to its strengths. It acts as a mockery, and it’s a damn good one.

Absurdity is definitely a part of what makes this game so fun. Lollipop Chainsaw is at its best when it is completely aware of just how silly it is. Juliet can be in the middle of killing zombies and she’ll strike up a conversation with Nick about how excited she is to be the only girl at school with a talking head for a boyfriend. Both of the characters seem to have some understanding that this is a game, as they break the fourth wall at the start of one chapter to outline the irony of spending a level primarily killing video game zombies in an arcade. To me, this tone was refreshing. Games take themselves very seriously these days, and while that isn’t by any means a bad thing, sometimes it’s nice to fall back on something that’s willing to mock itself a bit.

Unfortunately, the tone of the game shifts dramatically in the final chapter and it ruins some of the game’s great charm. The dramatic scenes are suddenly played straight, and it all seems very cliché as a result. The end of the prologue was very promising in the way it set up the supposed tragic death of Nick. As the two admit their love and say goodbye, the screen fades to black and the word ‘fin’ appears in cursive. Suddenly, Juliet yells ‘No!’ and brings a chainsaw down on her boyfriend’s neck. It was the perfect tonal shift that demonstrated just how delightfully absurd the game was. But the final chapter ignores that for the most part, losing a lot of the humour in favour of what felt like a very lazy attempt to give depth to characters that honestly didn’t need it.

I wouldn’t say this tonal shift ruined the game for me, but it definitely isn’t what I remember this game for. When I think of Lollipop Chainsaw now, I think of that wacky 80’s soundtrack playing as I mowed down zombies in a combine harvester, while Nick lied to Juliet about taking drugs, completely forgetting the hordes of zombies in front of them. And I smile and look at my Xbox and think ‘maybe I should play some of it again soon’, which is exactly what I want to say about a game.