The Chainsaw Blaster you receive fairly early on in the game comes with horrible aim and similarly poor feedback. The Chainsaw Dash, in which Starling turns into a flesh-shredding freight train, is used only for a handful of fast-paced traversal sections and provides little sense of impact when you actually collide with an enemy. Yet the new moves you unlock don't deliver that many interesting twists on the basic hacking and slashing, while the asides offered up often make things worse. It's a smart idea to offer light and heavy attacks in the form of a kind of weaponised pom-pom display that stuns foes and chainsaw lunges that can then efficiently decapitate them - and that good ol' fighting game hit-pause is as reliably motivating as ever. Be warned, though - such characterful animation is tied to a brawling system that's knockabout fun, perhaps, but is lacking much in the way of real flair. There's something deeply brilliant about the way Starling uses her cheer skills in such gruesome combat - hopping over baddies, backflipping between roundhouses and performing chants after a particularly memorable decapitation. On the battlefield, Lollipop Chainsaw is equally divided. Between Starling's youthful, fairly wholesome energy and some of the grottier intentions of the cut-scene direction, you get an uncomfortable blend of elements that comes off, well, a little like cheerleading can when it's out of the sports stadium and splashed across the internet.Ī mini-game might see you hopping on heads or playing Pac-Man inside a giant vector arena. That doesn't really counter the perviness, though, and for much of the running time the script seems peculiarly at odds with the sweaty visual presentation. It's true that most of the men you come across are pathetic freaks, and everyone else is a zombie waiting to be chainsawed into pieces. It's a bit annoying, then, that the game's always trying to disappear up her skirt or down her top, that other characters can't stop calling her a whore, and that the camera lingers and ogles whenever it gets a chance. What's more, Starling gets a thoughtful characterisation than goes beyond what most heroines could hope for. In a weird sort of way - even though it's set knee-sock-deep in rotting gristle and twinkling multiplier scores - it's a far more convincing depiction of a relationship than you expect from a video game. Meanwhile, Nick is both a straight man to Juliet and the stand-in for the befuddled audience: Zombie farmers? Zombie quarterbacks? What's happened to San Romero? Riddled with convincing quirks and warm humour, she's also surrounded by a supermodel rockabilly family that's every bit as engagingly nutty. Juliet is smart, breezy and confident, yet quietly prudish with it on occasion. It's the script that provides most of the real charm, however, drawing its lovesick leads with surprising bite, and offering everyone a selection of decent lines as the adventure rattles along. A little light cel-shading and handfuls of quirky, colourful effects do much to disguise the cheapness of the production. In its corner-cutting and jerry-rigging, it feels like a true punk aesthetic. Visually, Lollipop Chainsaw is appealingly ropey, with blurry, fairly simplistic assets, naff physics, and only Starling's astonishing animation standing out as she dispatches ghouls with star-jumps and spinning head-stand kicks. The couple - Juliet keeps Nick's head on a keychain tagged to her belt - bicker and flirt while she hands out gas-powered justice with a tree surgeon's favourite accessory, and he gets dropped onto headless zombies for the occasional rhythm action mini-game, or swings by in special attacks. With the undead spilling into town in unprecedented numbers, the stage is set for a weirdly romantic action game. The set-up is pure Buffy, as Juliet Starling admits to her - sadly decapitated - boyfriend Nick that she's a secret zombie slayer as well as a star cheerleader. It's typical Suda 51 stuff: a muddle of pop culture nods, scattershot puns and antic gore.
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