Platform: Xbox 360

Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture

Publisher: Kadokawa Games and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

Release Date: August 12th, 2012

Genre: Action, Hack-and-Slash

Nerd Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Reviewed by AKA Persia

Lollipop Chainsaw is non-stop stimulation. Constant action and definitely never a dull moment. If you love zombies and barely-legal, half-naked cheerleaders, you’ll love this game. Even if you don’t love the cheerleaders, this game is for everyone.

The game begins with a young, high school student, freshly 18, telling us of her typical, shallow life, including all about her cheerleading team, boyfriend, family, and hints about her secret “unusual” side of life. This story is told with plenty of shots of skin and an up-skirt shot. Her favorite food, she mentions, is a strawberry lollipop, which is making her “ssssooooooo fat!” The story line starts out with us finding out that Juliet, the main character, is a zombie hunter, and her entire high school has been transformed into zombies. A disturbed fellow classmate has summoned dark forces into their world which has connected an evil dimension with our own. Juliet’s job is to rid the world of the evil by destroying the main zombies from the dark dimension one-by-one.

This game is fun, with colorful visuals, non-stop sparkles, hearts, and stars. Pretty much what you would expect in a diary of a stereotypical high school girl. Each special combo or move is met with extra hearts and fireworks shooting from Juliet. Many of the cutscenes are told with a comic-book style as well as any introduction to new characters.

Juliet’s moves are whimsical and dance-move-inspired, whether it be with her pom pom attacks which are moves like kicks and punches with pom poms in hand, or with her pink hearts-decorated chainsaw. When your meter is full from bonuses killing zombies, you are able to Sparkle Hunt, which decapitates zombies with one hit and enables extra bonuses with killing multiple targets at once. This doesn’t last long, so use it wisely.

Dialogue is quite funny. Juliet’s boyfriend’s (almost) last words before he passes out from a zombie bite are romantically, “I love you. . . I fuckin’ love you.” :: Swoon :: Speaking of boyfriend, his severed head hangs like a keychain from Juliet’s micro-skirt, swaying with each movement she makes. Don’t worry, he’s still alive from a charm Juliet performed on him after she decapitated him to prevent his turn to zombie. He’s like a little, talkative sidekick.

There are many mini-game-esque parts during the story, such as controlling the boyfriend Nick as a zombie, playing basketball with zombie heads, playing zombie baseball and creative ways to kick ass, like pole dancing (spinning around a pole with a chainsaw).

You are constantly being introduced to new characters, enemies, different types of zombies, environments, moves and mini-games. Each zombie boss is unique in its own way, taking different moves and techniques to kill them off. Each boss has three different levels, if you will, having to kill each one in different ways each time. This makes for a long boss fight, which is a good thing, because it is switched up during the fight.

The game is fast-paced, with constant enemy bombardment at every turn. The zombies shit talk to Juliet, calling her a bitch liberally, which makes it truly satisfying when their body is sawed in half by Juliet’s pink chainsaw.

This is an exciting and fun game that keeps you constantly engaged with hilarious dialogue, lots of action and an overall very entertaining experience. The game isn’t too short, giving you plenty of gameplay between each boss.

Written by Nerd Bacon