Instead, you’re incentivized to decapitate as many as you can at once, which also gives out the game’s form of currency, Gold and Platinum coins, both of which count towards your final score. You kill zombies by decapitating them, but just killing one after the other gives diminishing results. Like other games in the genre, you are also scored and graded depending on your performance, however style, nor combo are the big ways to get the high score, but sparkle points. Strong attacks, weak attacks, dodge buttons, and shops to buy not only upgrades for your character, but also new attacks and combos are all present.

On the gameplay spectrum, Lollipop Chainsaw is in the style of a “character action” game, a genre that Grasshopper was quite familiar with at this time with the likes of No More Heroes. Juliet and Nick question, but ultimately push off the chants, until it’s revealed after Lewis’ defeat that it was Swan’s plan all along for the Purveyors to be taken out to bring the return of Killabilly, the King of zombies, even more appropriate given his resemblance to Elvis. After each of the Dark Purveyors are taken out, they recite a Latin chant, very much like what Swan did previously. Juliet and Nick go through farms, an entertainment center, and eventually an under construction chapel to find and defeat these Dark Purveyors, meeting up with members of her family, known zombie hunters, along the way. Zed, the obscene Punk Rocker Vikke, the Viking Mariska, the hippie Josey, a man of Funk and Lewis Legend, the Heavy Metal, rather “ELEPHANT ROCK” guitarist.

Thankfully, she has her trusty chainsaw! She finally reaches her boyfriend Nick, but he’s bit, which in haste leads her to perform a ritual to keep him alive after removing his head, from his infected body, Nick becomes your partner in crime and literal talking head, very much like Johnson in SotD.Īfter the two of them make their way through the school, they find the cause of all of this chaos, a bullied student named Swan reciting incantations to bring the recently deceased back to life, including a small handful of incredibly strong, clique themed students known as the Dark Purveyors. The story begins on our lead character, Juliet Starling’s 18th birthday on her way to San Romero High School for class, however there are zombies everywhere, especially in her school. If it wasn’t obvious from the name itself, Lollipop Chainsaw is schlock, and it revels in it in all forms. Yamaoka would share music real-estate with the licensed tunes in the menus and stages proper, while Jimmy Urine would compose each of the game’s boss fights. Akira Yamaoka would return as composer, but this time would be joined by Jimmy Urine, the lead singer of the band Mindless Self Indulgence (also doing voice work for the game), as well as a large selection of licensed music from the likes of Toni Basil, Dragonforce, and even including the song “Pac-Man Fever” by Buckner & Garcia.

This could be explained by looking no further than the title’s writer Hollywood director James Gunn, at the time being known for his work at Troma, and the films Slither and Super, well before his more well-known work on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies. Unlike SotD however, LC would be directed by a Japanese designer from the company, this time being Tomo Ikeda, who previously worked on Rule of Rose and Little King Story as a designer. The one key similarity to be found would be both titles affinity for crude, often referential humor, but while it would just be the occasional side banter in SotD, this becomes the basis for LC‘s humor as a whole. While Shadows of the Damned is a grim, atmospheric third person shooter at it’s core, Lollipop Chainsaw is an action game, exploding with color. In a way, Lollipop Chainsaw is the polar opposite to Shadows of the Damned. Warner Brothers would be the publisher in the west, with Kadokawa in Japan. Released just shy of a year after Shadows of the Damned, came what would be the second of Grasshopper’s collaborations with Western publishers, Lollipop Chainsaw.

Lollipop and chainsaw