Some people might
not know whom I am about to talk about. I am going to talk about a very
wonderful and passionate voice actress named Tara Strong. She is probably the
best female voice actor of all time. She has such a charm and passion for what
she does. Plus, she is EVERYWHERE in today’s entertainment media. She has been
voice acting for years and she is just amazing at it. She has been in shows
like Powerpuff Girls, Drawn Together, My Little Pony, Teen Titans, and many
other shows that I could mention, but this opening paragraph would be 500 pages
long. She has even done amazingly well in video games like Psychonaughts, Final
Fantasy 10, Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, No More Heroes 2, Batman Arkham City,
Ratchet and Clank Future Tools of Destruction, Eternal Sonata, and Asura’s
Wrath. Man, if I could, I would marry her because I just love how talented she
is! Well then, why am I talking about her you may ask? It is because she is the
main voice actress and main hero of today’s review, Lollipop Chainsaw for the
PS3 and 360.
Let’s get started
with the story then! Tara Strong plays Juliet Starling, one of three daughters
of the Starling family, lover of lollipops, and local zombie hunter at San
Romero High (the school she used to attend). One day, a goth punk named Swan,
voiced by Sean Gunn, shows up at the school. He has decided to bring Hell to
Earth and revive a group of rock zombie lords to conquer the world! Juliet,
along with her head of a boyfriend, Nick, voiced by Michael Rosenbaum and with
the help of her zombie hunting family, must stop Swan from bringing Hell to
Earth and conquering this realm! Let’s be honest here, the story is grungy,
stupid, crude, rude, sexy, and blood-filled, and…THAT’S WHY IT’S AWESOME! It is
so enjoyable, so crude, rude, sexy, and freaking hilarious! If you take this
game seriously, STOP IT! JUST STOP IT! The characters are enjoyable, the bad
guys are enjoyable, and everything just hits it in all of the right spots. It
does use profanity just to use profanity, and yeah, some of the lines can be
rather outrageous, but you know what? Enjoy it.
The game play is a
hack-and-slash action game with some platforming, QTE’s, and mini-games thrown
in to keep you on your feet and break up the game. The main meat of the game is
going through linear levels chopping down zombies, eating lollipops, eating
fat-filled snacks to increase your health bar, and at the end of each level,
take down one of the zombie rock and roll lords. Your main weapons that you
will be using are your chainsaw and pompoms. Instead of being a straight up
hack-and-slash style of game, there is a bit of strategy and score-making to be
had here. Your pompoms are your light attacks, and your chainsaw is your heavy
attack. It’s recommended you make the zombies bundle up to each other using
your pompoms and then use your chainsaw to decapitate them. You can use just
your chainsaw, but you can gain more coins, points, and medals when you kill a
bunch of zombies at once. Throughout the game, you will be gaining upgrades and
new weapons to add onto your chainsaw. You will get stuff like a huge revolver,
a super dash attack, and attacks involving your boyfriend’s head! Oh yeah, I
should explain that. Early in the game’s story, Juliet chops off Nick’s head to
prevent him from becoming a zombie, and it can be used in many different
attacks. You can even put his head on a zombie’s body to solve minor puzzles
with. From time to time, you will have to use QTE sequences, but they are not
that bad. Plus, we shouldn’t be surprised that games use them now. There are
different mini-games thrown in throughout the entire game to break up the
action. They range from lopping off zombie heads into basketball hoops, zombie
baseball, riding a wheat-harvesting machine to run over zombies with, and even
tributes to games like Pacman and Elevator Action. Throughout the game, you can
gain items ranging from upgrades, music, different outfits, and concept art.
Everything is pretty dang pricey so it helps to score as many coins and medals
as possible. You get an exciting, over-the-top, and fun package, even if the
game is a bit on the short side, though that doesn’t matter because the game is
fun, funny, and enjoyable.
The graphics fit
the game perfectly! Gritty, colorful, and well-detailed. Sure, some people can
say that it looks rough, but that’s the point of it. It’s like an over-the-top
grindhouse flick. Not everything has to look like the Final Fantasy games or
Heavy Rain. In an industry that is afraid to make every game a shooter and not
look unique, Lollipop Chainsaw looks amazing and unique amongst the games of
this year. The voice acting is wonderful. Do I even need to say how amazing
Tara Strong is as the role of Juliet? She is perfect. All of the other voice
actors are also putting in so much emotion and are just having a lot of fun
with their characters. This is how voice acting should be in a game. It
shouldn’t be as dull and boring as Inversion, it needs to be lively, like this
game and many of Suda 51’s work! The music fits the game. Among having some of
the best songs to come out of the 80’s and some recent stuff, the original
music for the game is great. It’s composed by Silent Hill composer, Akira
Yamaoka, and Mindless Self Indulgence lead singer Jimmy Urine. There is just something
to be said when you fight the first part of the final boss with Dragonforce
playing in the background, or hearing that extremely catchy lollipop song in
the store menu.
With such a unique
set-up, simple-yet-fun combat, and perfect voice acting, music, and humor, what
is wrong with this game? Well, during the beginning of the game, Juliet’s
controls feel a bit tank-like. Granted, it’s not Eternal Darkness or old
Resident Evil-style tank controls, but you can’t move around as fluently as in
Bayonetta or God of War. I adjusted to the controls, but it was a bit awkward
at first. I also found some of the levels to be a bit long. I guess I would
have liked shorter levels with more bosses, since each level can take about 40
minutes or so to beat. I also found a lot of the upgrades to get rather
expensive since some upgrades take normal money and others take silver medals
and they can take forever to get. I also found some minor glitches, but they
didn’t break the game or make it crash so they get a pass. I also found the
rule of dying if you failed a mini-game to be tedious since sometimes the
mini-games can be rather unpolished like zombie baseball, and I kept dying over
and over again, but that could have been personally my fault. Still, why
couldn’t I just have the score I got and continue the level instead of having
the start the whole dang mini-game over?
Overall, this is
one of my personal favorite games of 2012 so far. I LOVE IT. I love that it’s
an original game amongst mediocre shooters. Not only is it a new IP, it’s
actually good! I mean it, too. In an industry that is afraid not to make a
shooter and won’t step into making a more creative game, I am happy to see
games like Lollipop Chainsaw exist. If you are hesitant about picking this game
up, depending on your experience with Shadows of the Damned, I would highly
recommend renting it. If you are a super fan of Suda 51 and James Gunn, buy it.
It is definitely worth your time. If only more companies could have more fun
and really run with a fun idea for a video game. Platinum Games does it,
Twisted Pixel does it, why don’t you, game industry?
This
game gets a 7 out of 10
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