Games on the Ave: Gamespot Reviews Lollipop Chainsaw

Also on Xbox 360

Juliet isn't having the best birthday. Sure, she's a chirpy, fresh-faced, popular 18-year-old cheerleader with a perfect body and a loving family, but her handsomely chiseled boyfriend has turned into a zombie, and things just aren't looking up. But Juliet's nothing if not resourceful, so she does what any right-thinking teenager would: she cuts off his head with a chainsaw, performs a bit of black magic, and ties his still-sentient head around her waist.
Clearly, you aren't supposed to take Lollipop Chainsaw seriously. You play as the sucker-loving Juliet, who, like the rest of her family, happens to be a zombie hunter. As luck would have it, her hometown is having a bit of trouble with the undead, and it's up to her and her chainsaw to slice and dice her way through her high school, across a baseball field, and through other mundane locales rendered all askew by vibrant neon-colored graphics and a general disregard for social propriety.
Just how improper is Lollipop Chainsaw? The opening cutscene features a just-18 Juliet welcoming you to her bedroom while the camera lovingly caresses her bare torso. She complains that she's getting fat from sucking on too many lollipops, though she has a physique women of any age would envy. Later, a high school classmate, saved from a zombie attack, happily calls out that he'll pleasure himself to thoughts of Juliet that night; elsewhere, a zombie-fied football player growls that he'll--well--let's just say the activity involves Juliet's noggin lodged somewhere you don't expect a noggin to comfortably fit.



Meanwhile, the screen explodes with pink hearts, yellow stars, and a million other bedazzlements, amping up the "cheerleader" theme just as Lollipop Chainsaw amps up its "sexual imagery" theme. Cheery pop tunes like Toni Basil's "Mickey" and "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" from Dead or Alive brighten the tone, too. With such touches, the game makes a clear attempt to take the pure pandering of Onechanbara (another game about scantily clad zombie killers) and twist it into something cheeky rather than downright crude. The first hour, however, takes these themes to the limits without doing much to outright parody them, which can be mightily uncomfortable. Eye-opening remarks about Juliet's breasts and anorexia references have shock value, but many of these early "jokes" are hardly clever.