Gaming Websites Not Reviewing Lollipop Chainsaw RePop?

Video Games

Alex Gherzo | Sep 13, 2024 |

Gamers have been sending the video game industry and their media satellites a clear message recently, and their response is morphing into something even more insidious. Recent games designed with the “modern audience” in mind have been bombing, with Concord, Dustborn, Star Wars Outlaws, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League being the prime examples. Meanwhile, games that focus on giving customers a fun time with a cool-looking game that is refreshingly devoid of identity politics have been smash hits, particularly Stellar Blade and Black Myth: Wukong. This is a pushback against left-wing gaming activism that started (seemingly) with Hogwarts Legacy, where Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s opinions on gender issues spurred trans activists to demand nobody buy the game; the result was that Hogwarts Legacy became one of the best-selling video games in history. The frustration from games journalists has been palpable, but it’s having no effect.

The newest glaringly non-woke game to hit the streets is Lollipop Chainsaw RePop, a remaster of Lollipop Chainsaw, an action-horror game from 2012 (partially written by James Gunn) about a sexy cheerleader fighting zombies with a chainsaw. Lollipop Chainsaw RePop was almost a remake, but when fans of the original Lollipop Chainsaw voiced their preference, developer Dragami Games changed their minds. I’m sure a bunch of things about this project strike you as non-starters with woke games journalists – things like “sexy cheerleader,” for example, or the developer listening to fans and doing whatever they can to make them happy rather than appealing to the “modern audience” that didn’t buy any of the failed games the media championed. In fact, Dragami Games’ CEO, Yoshimi Yashuda, celebrated the fact that Lollipop Chainsaw RePop will be uncensored:

We have finally been able to release LOLLIPOP CHAINSAW RePOP uncensored.
I am proud that we have been able to revive LOLLIPOP　CHAINSAW, a cult game that had been lying dormant　due to copyright issues, as a modern action game.
The core content of RePOP is an original mode that… pic.twitter.com/h2Zq5DNtTi
— 安田善巳 Yoshimi Yasuda (@yasudaD5) September 12, 2024

Needless to say, games journalists have already got it in for Lollipop Chainsaw RePop, which was released yesterday in America and Europe, and they’re going to fight it by ignoring it. On Metacritic, the game has only four reviews, none of them from mainstream outlets, which is unusual for the day after the release of a popular game’s remaster. After observing that IGN seems not to be reviewing the game, Learning the Law posted an image from an article about Lollipop Chainsaw RePop’s release date in which they refer to their score for the original game, which was a 5/10, which he says is unfair. And, if they don’t review the game, he’s right; it feels like they’re trying to discredit Lollipop Chainsaw RePop without actually reviewing it, reminding anyone who reads their site that they didn’t like the old one. The implication is that the new one will probably suck too.

IGN is unwilling to review Lollipop Chainsaw REPOP, probably because it might trigger some of the They/Them staff. Instead, they published an article announcing the launch but reminded the audience that they gave the game a 5/10, which is unfair. How are they still in business? pic.twitter.com/1w2xT7ymk3
— LearningTheLaw (@Mangalawyer) September 12, 2024

If this holds, and none of the mainstream outlets review Lollipop Chainsaw RePop, it has to be a coordinated effort to hurt the game. The immediate impression is that they’re folding their arms and harrumphing over yet another game they dislike for its focus on the male gaze and other yucky stuff, like having fun. But there’s another possibility, and this one is really nasty. Did you ever see Star Trek: First Contact? (If you haven’t, it’s awesome.) In that movie, the Borg are the villains, and the Next Generation crew has to fight them when they take over the Enterprise. One of the Borg’s abilities is that they adapt to different forms of attack and build up an immunity to it. For example, you can kill two or three of them with a phaser, but after that, they adapt, and a phaser is useless against them. I wonder if this strategy is the media’s form of adapting to failed strategies. Look at Stellar Blade and Black Myth: Wukong; games journalists went all-out trying to sabotage those games, and it backfired spectacularly. Perhaps they’ve learned that nobody trusts them and everybody hates them, and their negative reviews and bad press become a boon for the games they want to fail, so they’re just ignoring Lollipop Chainsaw RePop in the hopes that they can keep playing it from becoming a counter-cultural protest move. If they’re doing this, they’re essentially using gamers’ hatred for them to their advantage. To their credit, it’s a smart move, but I still hope it fails – if Lollipop Chainsaw RePop is good, at least.