I played this, so you shouldn't have to: Lollipop Chainsaw.

See the title to this? Yeah, it kind of
gives away the stance on how I feel about it. If I hadn't played
Lollipop Chainsaw and saw this article, I'd be in disbelief.

I've forever been a Suda51 fan, and
have always picked up anything he's been involved with. Contact on
the DS became one of the most entertaining RPG's I've played, and I'm
not big into them. From there, Killer7, No More Heroes and so on.
When Shadows of the Damned came out, I loved it. The abundance of
dick jokes, the insane level changes, the designs for the villains,
the music...to me Shadows of the Damned was severely underrated and
one of Suda's finest games.

Lollipop Chainsaw was announced and
interest immediately piqued. Here was this game based on a horror
theme, with a cheerleader warrior, and the ability to be another gem.
As time progressed my initial hype was drained by all the different
pre-order bonuses, the addition of James Gunn (nothing against the
guy, I just don't think mixing eastern and western styles in games go
too well), and some of the gameplay that was released.

I went ahead and bit the bullet, picked
it up and immediately proceeded to play. As I said in my review of
“Binding of Isaac”, I had a lot of time to game while I was sick,
and I had to run through “Lollipop Chainsaw” to get back to my
five dollar “Isaac”.

Most of the bulk of my complaint comes
from the combat animation. You have a ton of combos available to
you, but the game's focus seems to be “hey let's make these combos
look purdy”. Inputting a combo or changing the way you fight is
incredibly difficult because of how long it takes to act out one
press of a button. It makes Juliet look like Bayonetta with the
reflexes of a 3 year old. I mean, Dynasty Warrior's hack n' slash
methods control better than this.

Aside from that, voice acting is pretty
bad and syncs up horribly. Some of the jokes are incredibly lame,
there isn't a lot of variation in the in-game banter, and the story
too predictable. “But Jesus, this is supposed to be mindless fun!”,
I know this but at the same time it's too mindless. Maybe that's why
they asked Jimmy Urine on board ...yes, that was a “Mindless”
joke. Oh, and I totally forgot...I beat it in a couple of hours,
like four and a half.

I do have to say graphics are pretty
neat, and the design of the bosses is pretty cool, for some reason
villains never disappoint in a Suda51 game. Aside from that, little
touches that are reference to pop/horror culture are awesome. And
although the game is short, it has replay value for those that are
completionist...new outfits, and being able to collect music and
meeting new zombies of importance are part of that.

The one thing that I HAVE to admire
above else is that, in an era in video games where women are asking
the industry to be treated equal, not much was said concerning Juliet
and her skimpy outfits and over sexualization. As Sean pointed out
to me, Tomb Raider's new installment received some flak because it
put Lara through basically assault. It could be the case of this
actually being a game not taking itself seriously, and because of
it's non-realism, gets a hall pass.

In the end, I'd honestly wait until
this gets a couple of price drops. It's very imperfect and with
today's economy, a 4 hour sub-par game does not merit 60 dollars.
Let's just hope Suda51's next game gets back to being weird.