The actual game is pretty much exactly what it marketed itself to be: a hack-n-slash zombie comedy about a cheerleader with huge tits. In that regard, it delivered quite nicely. I came into this not expecting much in the way of storyline and to have to put up with a main character who was essentially a ditz for the next eight hours or so, and that's pretty much exactly what I got. I didn't read too much about the game before I started playing it -- really I just watched the teaser trailer from when it was announced and a couple other trailers for it over the last few months -- so I wasn't aware of how central alternative/punk rock was to the general storyline, which was a nice surprise. I knew that Jimmy Urine (of Mindless Self Indulgence fame) worked on some of the music for the game, but that's about as far as I had gotten.
The general storyline is: cheerleader goes to school on her birthday. The school has been overrun with zombies. The cheerleader then pulls a chainsaw out of her backpack and proceeds to fuck up said zombies while saving her classmates. Without getting into specifics, that's about as complicated as the game gets, at least for the first five stages. I was actually pleasantly surprised that the story does kind of pick up a bit in the last couple of chapters, and takes a slightly more serious route. It's still nothing outstanding (fairly standard storyline for a B-list Hollywood movie, which is kind of what this game plays out like), but it's there nonetheless. I also liked some of the pop culture references that they toss in there. It's unfortunate that in 10 years, if anyone plays this game then, a lot of those references will probably be lost on them. Oh well.
Basically, the story plays a lot like the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, except replace Buffy with Juliet and Vampire with Zombie. Seriously, if you've seen the first season of Buffy, that's pretty much exactly how this game plays out (the endings are different, though).
The controls are... decent. A little bit clunky for a hack-n-slash game, which kind of makes me sad. When you're going through and spamming attacks against walls of zombies, it gets rather repetitive, even with picking up new combos. All of the attacks feel heavy, and they either don't reach as far as you would expect or go on much longer than you prefer. I had a couple of moments where I was trying to do a combo and was hitting the buttons rhythmically, but the combo wouldn't go off because I was too slow. Then moments after that, I was trying to stop a combo, so I deliberately didn't push anything for about three seconds, then pushed a different attack, and I carried right into a combo. Finding the butter zone for really feeling the controls can be challenging.
Thankfully, the game itself isn't very challenging. Now, I played through it on Normal, so I wasn't really trying to get myself destroyed during this, but during my first playthrough (I haven't started my second yet), I did not die until Level 4 of 6. That's over halfway through the game. And that's just unacceptable. It's not that the game holds your hand as much as Juliet's attacks are massively overpowered against her enemies, and their attacks barely do anything. I think the closest I got to dying from actual zombie attacks was down to about a quarter health. This is a very easy game.
Oh! And there are QTEs! Lots of them! None of them are hard, although some of them can be a bit confusing. Thankfully there are only a few that you can fail outright and die from -- most others you just get hurt, or can't reach some special point where you get more medals or one of the special lollipop wrappers (for us trophy whores). Still, there are a lot of them.
There is, however, a lot to do after the game if you're looking for more, or if you're an achievement/trophy whore. I've still got at least two more playthroughs ahead of me, which should go at least a little bit faster since I know the game and whatnot now. There are lots of chapter specific trophies that you can go for. And there is a "Ranked Mode," where you can compete online against other people's scores to see who can do the best in each stage. Admittedly, since it's a worldwide leaderboard, chances are the vast majority of us who play the game will never see ourselves in the top ten, let alone the Top 100, but it's something to strive for if you're looking for a bit more out of it.
There really isn't much else to tell. I absolutely adore the art style, but I'm a sucker for celshading. It has a campy, B-movie style humour which I find endearing. The controls are decent, but not great. There's enough to do to keep you occupied, but it's not really a super long game. You can probably blaze through the storyline in about 6 hours playing on Easy or Normal, maybe 7-8 playing on Hard (I don't know how much harder Hard mode is). You'll chuckle a few times, you'll shake your head a few times, and you'll probably enjoy it. At least for the first playthrough.
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, competing in Ranked Mode). There's nothing beyond the main story.
As was the hospital sections.
Originally Posted by Inferno.
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