When we walked into the booth for WB Games, and we saw the banner for Lollipop Chainsaw, we knew we were in for something special. Once we got to where they were showing the game, we had to get into a school bus that was created just for this event. Inside the bus were couches and several stations playing the latest build of the game. Just outside the bus was the man himself, Goichi Suda, creator of the game. It was an awesome atmosphere to play the game in, and that was just the beginning.
In Lollipop Chainsaw, you play as Juliet Starling who just happens to be a cheerleader hell-bent on getting to the cause of the most recent zombie outbreak. Luckily you happen to have a chainsaw on you to help thin out the horde. As Juliet, you will face lots of different types of zombies and visit several locations from your old high school, to other locations around town. For the demo, we were confined to the high school portion of the game, so we will speak directly to that.
As we mentioned earlier, the game started out in the halls of San Romero High School. From first glance, the graphics were fairly good. It wasn’t the best graphics we’d seen at the show, but certainly within expectations for the generation the game will be released in. More importantly, this had the look and feel of a Suda51 game right from the beginning. For those unfamiliar with his style, it has a mix of East-meets-West game design. It is hard to communicate but to understand what we are talking about. pick up any of his titles As a fan of Suda51, the game was a lot of fun to pick up and just play. Juliet handles very well, and her attacks are strong, and fun to watch. There is a lot happening on the screen, especially when combat gets intense, but that is just the style of the game. Combos, multipliers, score booster all dance across the screen when you start doing well. It isn’t distracting or overwhelming, and it seems to fit the game.
We managed to get to the first mini-boss and dispatched them rather quickly. We also noticed that your chainsaw attacks a quite powerful and there isn’t much reason to use anything else. After the mini-boss escapes, we started seeing the quirks that make Suda51 games so famous. There was a headless zombie stumbling around at the end of the hall, and the game seemed to beckon us to approach it. Once we got up to the zombie, we were prompted to push a button. Just after the press, Juliet reaches around her body and pulls out a head in a jar. This head belonged to her boyfriend who was apparently bitten early in the game, but Juliet saved him by cutting his head off and placing it in this jar. She then slams this head in a jar onto the body of the headless zombie. Just then a mini game starts where you have to make the zombie dance by pressing the corresponding buttons that flash on the screen. It was a bizarre moment, but its moments like that that make this game so interesting.
Unfortunately, the demo ended soon after the zombie dancing part, but what little we did play was quite interesting, to say the least. This beat-em-up is a solid game. If this being a Suda51 isn’t enough to convince you to pick this up, there are a few other things you should consider when deciding to pick this up or not. The graphics are solid, the story is quirky but definitely interesting, and the controls are excellent. If you like games like Yakuza or Streets of Rage, you will definitely enjoy this title but even if you are gamer I still think this game is going to entertain just about anyone. Lollipop Chainsaw is set to release on June 12th for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles.
