Retro Review: Lollipop Chainsaw PS3

What feels like an eternity ago, back in 2012, I turned 16. That year, Lollipop Chainsaw, the strange brainchild of future MCU director James Gunn and Suda51, was released for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Lollipop Chainsaw is an arcade-style hack-n-slash action-game in the vein of Devil May Cry and Bayonetta. The main character, cheerleader and secret Zombie Hunter Juliet Starling, a quirky and competent fighter, but also incredibly dated stereotypical “bimbo”, has to chop her way through hordes of zombies with her chainsaw, all the while eating lollipops for health and lugging her boyfriends decapitated head around in her belt. Her target? The school outcast, a stereotypical goth who, in a fit of jealousy and teenage-angsty rage decides to open a portal to “The Rotten World” (it’s hell) to get back at school or society or something. The story isn’t really that great. A lot of things about Lollipop Chainsaw aren’t great. 16 year old me was intrigued though.

Stylistically and aesthetically, it’s all over the place. The game is a chaotic mix of rock-genre pastiche, cutesy and camp 80’s pop, and shock horror. The 6 stages all have unique and fun aesthetics inspired by different era’s and genres in rock history. From the Punk-inspired high-school to the psychedelic Farm-level and the black-metal inspired boss-fight atop a flying viking ship in a thunderstorm, there’s a lot of cool visuals and ideas here. Sometimes these stylistic collisions work well, other times they fall flat. This is what upsets me the most about Lollipop Chainsaw.

I adore the presentation of a lot of the stages. The psychedelic 70’s rock farm has Juliet chopping down mushrooms which induce trippy fight-sequences against giant chickens. The funky 80’s disco skyscraper features numerous arcade-game segments complete with colourful neon aesthetics. The designs of all the bosses are imaginative and I really like all of them, even if the fights themselves can be a bit bland. Every stage showed me something fun, neat or cool that made me go “I wish this was in a better game”. The juxtaposition of Juliets sickly-sweet bubblegum aesthetic and upbeat personality with the B-grade horror and metal soundtrack is at the very least refreshing. And even if it interrupts down the action, I like “sparkle hunting”, which, on top of giving extra currency, creates a slowmotion effect complete with stars and rainbows whenever you decapitate more than 3 zombies with a single slash. It’s stupid and silly and I adore it.

The soundtrack mainly consists of instrumental punk and metal tracks written for the game, although some parts feature licensed music. Toni Basil’s “Hey Mickey” which plays every time you activate Juliet’s instakill mode, and “Lollipop” by The Chordettes which plays whenever you enter the shop, will undoubtably have burned themselves into your mind by the end of your first playthrough. Overall the soundtrack is pretty good though, and the game even lets you pick up to 5 favourite tracks, overriding the standard music in many of the games levels, just in case you really want to listen to “Nemesis” by Arch Enemy all the time.

The gameplay doesn’t reflect the visual variety, however, with the linear stages divided into sections of hack-n-slash combat. While these sections present as different, you’re essentially going to be chopping or shooting zombies for the vast majority of them. Occasionally there will be a minigame, but most of these consists of the normal combat with little to no spin, and only the Gondola-section of the 4th stage actually feels like a new style of gameplay. So you’d hope the hack-n-slash combat feels good, since you’re going to be doing it for the vast majority of your playtime, right? Well, it’s painfully average, bordering on bad. You have a dodge/jump, high and low heavy attacks, and a quick-attack for stunning zombies. The game starts you off with very few combos, and while you unlock a decent number of combos near the end, these are trapped in the shop behind the same currency as stat-boosts. So while subsequent playthroughs can be fairly entertaining, the first will likely be a bit of a bland slog, even more so for those wanting increased damage or health first. So ultimately, while servicable, the combat lacks the depth and fun of the genre greats. But at least the writing and story can tide you over until then.

Or can it? Well, once again, it’s a mixed bag. The story is very bare-bones, and the writing reeks of edgy teenage gross-out humour and pop-culture references. While Juliet and Nick, her boyfriend turned accessory, have some cute and at times funny dialogue, the vast majority of the humour has aged incredibly poorly. I still have nightmares about the fat zombie farmer who appears to crudely tell us of his need for Preparation H. While Juliet is strong and competent in battle, her appearance and innocent personality are often the punchlines of jokes and, personally, I often got a bad taste in my mouth. Compare to something like Bayonetta which, while also playing on the main characters sexuality, does this in a way that always feels like she is in control and intentionally presenting in this way. There are many moments without onlookers (other than the player) in moments where Bayonetta plays to her sexuality and I always got the impression that she did it for her own sake. Juliet, on the other hand, is often the butt of jokes and doesn’t even realize it. Combine this with numerous “jokes” centered on the idea that her Sensei is an old pervert and more “jokes” that she’s a “stupid slut” or “bimbo” and you have a game which, while having a physically powerful female lead, ultimately feels demeaning and disrespectful towards her. There was certainly a case where this could have worked, but they clearly missed the mark with the writing. This was perhaps slightly more accepted in 2012, but never really funny or good, and in 2020 seems downright unacceptable. A small ray of light is that Nick actually has a pretty decent arc throughout the game, and probably ended up being my favourite character.

You may take all this to mean you shouldn’t play Lollipop Chainsaw and honestly, in 2020, I doubt it’s worth the hassle or price of procuring it. Despite all this, I did platinum the game, and I hesitate to admit that it will forever be my very first platinum trophy on my PSN account. Lollipop Chainsaw is more a series of flawed executions than anything else. With stronger writing, deeper combat and a bit more gameplay variety, we might have ended up with a game that, like other Suda51 games, could have become a cult-classic. If you stumble across it for $5–10, really like raunchy 2000’s teen comedy or desperately need another hack-n-slash, feel free to check it out. Just don’t expect anything other than mediocricy, sprinkled with a few flashes of what could have been and far more groans of cringe and despair.