Nick, Juliet’s quickly-decapitated boyfriend, is the perfect straight man to Juliet’s constant positivity. This stiffness is remedied somewhat as you buy more combos, there are still points where it feels as though the game is simply ignoring your inputs in order for Juliet to pose after a pom-pom attack or put her chainsaw back into its neutral position if you don’t have an enemy to dodge over. While there are a few tricks you can use to make combat feel more fluid, like utilizing the B button as a dodge that can cancel your attacks and put you directly behind enemy zombies, the combat still feels a bit jerky.

While the distinction between the two sounds nominal, it’s important not to go into the game expecting combat on par with the likes of Ninja Gaiden. You enter an area and kill everyone until you’ve maxed your “Kill Zombie” meter and the next area opens up, trying to build up as many points as you can along the way. Instead, it’s a score-based beat-em-up, more along the lines of Streets of Rage. Despite the fact that the game has three attack buttons (X is speedy pom-pom attacks, Y is regular attacks, and A is low chainsaw attacks for cutting legs off or dealing with zombies crawling along the ground) Lollipop Chainsaw isn’t a stylish action game in the same vein as Bayonetta or Devil May Cry. It’s important to go into Lollipop Chainsaw with this in mind, because the combat doesn’t feel contemporary.

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