The sad reality of video games is the troublesome issue of preservation. The medium is more complex than books or film since many games need to run on specific platforms or won’t run on modern PCs due to technical issues beyond my understanding. Other times games get delisted and go out of print and never come back due to expiring licenses.
In 2012, Lollipop Chainsaw came out on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Little did anyone know that this cult classic would become a tricky game to acquire later due to the various licenses within its soundtrack and alternate costumes. At the time it was regarded as a middling action game compared to the likes of Devil May Cry 4, Bayonetta, and even its developer’s prior games such as No More Heroes. As time passed, it gained a cult following due to its James Gunn connections, creative bosses, and racy fanservice.
Lollipop Chainsaw was close to becoming a victim of licensing hell. Thankfully, it didn’t but not without compromise. There was always a question of how modern sensibilities™ would affect a game that primarily appealed to men with a very fan servicey protagonist. Compounded with the sticky situation surrounding the licensed music, would it even be the same game? Find out in our Lollipop Chainsaw RePop review!
LOLLIPOP CHAINSAW RePOP
Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture, Dragami Games LTD
Publisher: Dragami Games LTD, Warner Bros. Games, Kadokawa Corporation
Platforms: Windows PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox 360 (as Lollipop Chainsaw), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 3 (as Lollipop Chainsaw), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 (reviewed)
Release Date: September 12, 2024
Price: $44.99
Juliet Starling has everything going for her. She’s the captain of her cheerleading squad, has a loving and supportive family, and her boyfriend Nick is the coolest and most loyal guy in San Romero High. It’s a good thing that she and her family come from a long line of zombie hunters because Swan, the local goth outcast performs a necromantic ritual to invoke an undead apocalypse. All because she rejected his advances.
The Dark Purveyors summoned by Swan aim to infect the world with the zombie virus. These undead lords of rock came from Rotten World and will die for their master. Each one represents a different genre of music. Zed embodies punk, Lewis Legend is the avatar of rock and roll, Mariska symbolizes psychedelic pop, Josey personifies funk, and Vikke is death metal incarnate.
With San Romero High’s student body almost completely turned into zombies, Juliet rushes to the campus to save her beleaguered boyfriend. Nick gets debriefed about his girlfriend’s zombie-hunting lineage, but not before he gets decapitated and magically reanimated. Juliet will have to saw her way through a horde of undead if she hopes to thwart the dark purveyors and prevent the summoning of the Zombie of Zombies.
Lollipop Chainsaw was Grasshopper Manufacture’s best-selling game and a lot of its success was owed to the story and writing contributions from James Gunn. This was before he was a Marvel shill-man and still had it in him to produce some wildly creative and edgy concepts. There are tons of hilarious incidental lines peppered throughout the entire game that are obviously Gunn-isms if you are familiar with his work when he wrote Tromeo and Juliet.
Combining a Buffy-esque premise with punk in a gorey and over-the-top action game was an inspired premise that could have only been possible with Goichi Suda’s daringness to work with unusual creatives. It’s a shame that there was only one Lollipop Chainsaw title because it always felt like there was potential for a fun series where Juliet and her family could go on further adventures.
The one game we got is tightly packed full of implications of a larger world and it goes by fast… too fast. Regretfully, Lollipop Chainsaw RePop is still a very short game. It has only six stages and there are still several cutscenes that cannot be skipped. It would be unreasonable to expect the developers to add new gameplay content, but they could have at least made it so all cutscenes can be skipped so its less tedious to replay levels for a higher rank.
The gameplay is very much a product of its time. Stages are linear setpieces of battles, gimmicks, and sometimes a minigame. Along the way, Juliet can save a few of her fellow students… that is if they don’t glitch out., Unfortunately, RePop is very buggy. While the original game wasn’t perfect, this remaster has new bugs that are more frequent.
There are missing effects when sawing through doors, the lighting will often not work as intended, and sometimes enemies will convulse and completely break. The RePop visuals also don’t look as good as the original. The new graphics are overly bright and lose the pop art accents like the comic screen tones and high contrast lighting.
Thankfully, the Lollipop Chainsaw is uncensored. Juliet’s sexy and tight body looks great and the skirt physics are convincing when it twirls, lifts, and flips up. There was no compromising. You won’t see ugly shorts added or a black void. Juliet’s panties are safe and secured.
The chainsaw combat is the same as it ever was. Juliet combines high and low attacks with cheer maneuvers. She can buy combo attacks to add some variety to her moveset, but no matter what, players are going to want to keep zombie heads rolling in one fail swoop.
Dicing up the different kinds of undead has the appropriate crunch when Juliet’s saw bites down… or at least it does when the sound doesn’t glitch. The sound issues persist in cutscenes where some lines won’t be audible.
No matter what, a lot of the dialogue sounds muffled. Worse yet, several songs were cut and unfortunately, they were crucial pieces that hurt the experience. When Juliet activates her super mode, you no longer hear “Hey Mickey”, but a generic-sounding song instead. All of the boss tracks have been replaced which is a horrible shame because they were some of the best pieces in the game.
The load times have been mercifully reduced, but there were also transitional scenes that had great tracks too. What the developers should have done was make the load times fake, lasting about seven seconds, and make them skippable. These animations were important because they filled the gaps between areas when one level ended and another began.
Other issues with this port are some shitty design choices from the first game that still suck in 2024. Whenever Juliet beats a Dark Purveyor, she gains a new ability. This is good because it further expands gameplay options. However, the implementation sucks because players can only use the upgrades before the stage it is acquired.
As fun as the chainsaw run or the baseball blaster is, gamers won’t be able to take them to the earlier stages. RePop had the chance to fix this, but now it’s another mistake in the pile of blunders in this port.
Other issues that run deep in Lollipop Chainsaw‘s foundation is the utter waste of the voice talent for Juliet’s family and the Dark Purveyors. Michael Rooker is the voice of Vikke, the heavy metal zombie and he is given almost no material to work with. Greg Henry plays Juliet’s father and is also given barely anything which is a waste since he is an incredible talent with unbelievable range.
Michael Rosenbaum as Nick gives the best and funniest performance. He plays a great straight-man jock who struggles to cope with the absurd situation he’s in.
Tara Strong as Juliet gives a typical ditzy performance as Juliet who is intentionally written as a very dumb and flat character. She does give the character a lot of energy and sounds like an authentic high school cheerleader, but the character is incredibly one-note.
Lollipop Chainsaw RePop needed more time for polish. This is a very sloppy and rough port that manages to be worse than it was on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The bugs and missing music are not worth the enhanced visuals and (inconsistent) frame rate boost. It’s also steeply-priced compared to Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered, another Grasshopper Manufacture game from the seventh console gen.
If you can’t get your hands on the original version of Lollipop Chainsaw and you’re very desperate for zombie hunting with panty shots, get OneeChanbara Origin. Maybe if the developer patches things up, RePop might be as awesome as it should be. The missing music will always loom over this port, but is it even Lollipop Chainsaw anymore without it?
Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP was reviewed on a PlayStation 5 using a copy purchased by Niche Gamer. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. LOLLIPOP CHAINSAW RePOP is now available for Windows PC (via Steam), Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.
