Lollipop Chainsaw: Review

Gameplay

From an action hack-and-slash perspective, Lollipop Chainsaw is a excellent. The combos are easy to learn, use and master. Triangle for heavy attack, Circle to jump, Cross for low-aiming attack, Square to melee with pom-poms. When used in sequence, other special combos are activated. But that's not all. There's also sparkle hunting (decapitating 3 or more zombies together results in bonus medals which are used to buy items), Nick Roulette (Nick is Juliet's boyfriend), Chainsaw Blaster (the camera goes into first-person shooter mode and you use your chainsaw as a bazooka) and so much more. The combat system is rich and intuitive, making battles fun and it doesn't feel like grinding even if you're replaying cleared stages.

Graphics

The graphics are comic book-style mixed with HD cutscenes. Apart from a few minor graphical glitches when using Nick Roulette near walls and 1 grainy moment in the ending, the graphics are great. The camera is responsive but doesn't always show you the way because in some areas the camera is locked, making targeting zombies a little difficult. 

Longevity

Lollipop Chainsaw's main story can be completed in roughly less than 10 hours on first playthrough without guides. This is not a game you're looking for if you want a long-winded story, rather it was designed to be replayed multiple times to collect everything there is in the game.

Music

The music in Lollipop Chainsaw consists of punk, metal, groovy, funk and rock n' roll. Each category is based on the theme of the stage it is found in. I'm not really a fan of rock music so I can't comment here. I did enjoy some of the classics here such as 'You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)' by Dead or Alive and the theme of Lollipop Chainsaw, 'Lollipop' by Ronald & Ruby.

Replayability

I've played the Prologue stage over 20 times and I'm still not bored. The combat system really extends the life of this game. You have to play each stage at least 3 times if you want to unlock every trophy, costume, soundtrack, artwork and combo in this game. Theoretically, it is possible to unlock everything in two playthroughs, but that would be if you used a guide (which spoils the joy of discovery). Also, some stuff are only unlocked on harder difficulties. And, you need to register a high score online for leaderboard rankings if you wan absolutely everything this game has to offer.  

Story

Quite original for a survival horror action game. I won't spoil it. The story is simply put... unique.

Trophies

On your first playthrough, you will most likely unlock 10~ bronze trophies, assuming you took your time and went over eveything meticulously. After your initial playthrough, you can replay older stages now with experience of where everything is and Juliet (main heroine) is also now stronger and able to take down zombies with less difficulty. Hence, more playthroughs are needed for silver and gold trophies. The excellent combat system helps make it fun and replaying stages never feels like a chore.

Conclusion

Lollipop Chainsaw is an excellent hack-and-slash action game that is on par or even better than God of War, Bayonetta and the rest of the action game legends. This game received mixed reactions due to the abundance of fanservice content. I'm thinking "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?!". Since when is fanservice a bad thing? Go to hell, haters. I'm loving my upskirts and panty shots. <3 Juliet forever <3

Killabilly... Defeated!

Whew... finished Lollipop Chainsaw today. The final boss wasn't really that difficult, getting to him was a lot worse. I still got a few things to wrap up in the game, mainly uncollected trophies. I also wanna farm platinum medals in the Prologue to buy up all the costumes, music and artwork I didn't unlock. Maybe I'll revisit the earlier stages and try to set a high score now that I have the ultimate combo - Holy Chainsaw. 

Seriously, Holy Chainsaw is effing cool! Square, square, square, square, triangle, triangle. In effect, a full non-upgraded pom-pom bash combo to stun zombies directly in front, followed by two 360 degree horizontal heavy swings and ending with a super huge range and damage version of the Chainsaw Full Swing (the most powerful single chainsaw swing). I see a lot more 3 and 4 zombie sparkle hunting now, even 5 and the occasional 6. For the Sparkle Hunting Master trophy (acquired by performing a 7 zombie sparkle hunting) though, I had to retry several times since Juliet's chainsaw sometimes auto-targets single zombies rather than groups. But I got it in the end. 

Lollipop Chainsaw: Tips & Tricks #2

The Gondola in Stage 4

My biggest advice is: don't rush. Take your time and be cautious of window panes opening and closing. Stay on a lane without a zombie dropping swords on you if possible. The blue discs will stop moving and drop a cow on your lane if you stay in 1 lane too long. Use this to your advantage. You can trigger the cow drops and falling billboards by coming within range, and then quickly moving out of the way. These drops are one-time drops so you don't have to worry about them once you've triggered them. Unfortunately, swords and cars dropped by zombies are randomly timed so you just have to be patient if an unlucky drop happens. Fire your blaster to destroy swords but avoid cars since those need more than 1 shot to destroy. Near the goal gauge the timing of the opening and closing window panes and move quickly when the first pane is closed.

Lollipop Chainsaw: Tips & Tricks

I'm in Stage 5 in Lollipop Chainsaw at the moment, and am very lose to finishing the game. Here are some parts of the game I found very difficult and had to retry over and over. 

The Cake-bomb in Stage 1

The aim of this part of the stage is to protect the dynamite-rigged birthday cake from coming into contact with the fire zombies. At first, this may seem easy since you're dealing with slow-moving zombies, but once running zombies come into play, things heat up considerably. I played this on Easy, and you have 3 chances for fire zombies to touch the cake (that means once 3 fire zombies reach the cake, GAME OVER). The trick is to dropkick the early zombies and decapitate them with normal chainsaw swings. Then when the big star pops up, take the big star to charge your sparkle meter. If you think you can handle it, don't use the sparkle mode just yet (it won't last the entire part). When you think you can't handle it or a stray zombie touches the cake, enter sparkle mode and kill all the remaining zombies as quickly as possible. Once you finish, a cutscene occurs and you have a small time limit to reach the exit. Ignore the spawned baby zombies and make a mad dash to the exit to complete that part of the stage.

Zombie Baseball in Stage 2

You don't have to kill all the zombies, just make sure Nick's health bar doesn't reach zero. Sparkle mode is not needed here because the zombies that appear here are weak 1-shot kills anyway. Stand on the bullet refill spawnpoint so when the bullet refill spawns, you don't have to move to take it (it automatically fills your ammo). Hold L2 and shoot with R2, then let go both triggers and repeat. This makes the crosshair automatically snap to the nearest zombie without needing you to aim manually. This occurs only if your aim is AUTO in the options menu so check it before starting this part. Once Nick finishes his second run, zombies will spawn faster and in larger numbers. At this point, focus on killing the zombies that are closest to and in the path of Nick. Don't panic, as I said, as long as Nick survives to finish 3 runs the zombies will all despawn.