Let’s get one thing straight: Lollipop Chainsaw is amazing. This seminal, subversive monstrosity from the minds of legendary developer Suda51 and Hollywood big-shot James Gunn (in his PG Porn era, no less) is as amusing today as it was over a decade ago; it’s outrageous, ridiculous, obnoxious, garish – we absolutely love it, and we’d rank it among Grasshopper Manufacture’s best work. Unfortunately, this RePOP remaster isn’t as good as it could be – even if it’s better than nothing at all.

Running in 4K at a slightly inconsistent frame rate, the visual upgrades are adequate – although a lot of the antiquated animations remain. The original game was always a low-budget affair, but the issues stick out like a sore thumb on PS5, as objects evaporate out of existence and zombies inexplicably T-pose on the horizon. Cheerleader heroine Juliet Starling also doesn’t feel quite right; there’s a delay to the controls which makes combat feel swimmy rather than snappy, and some ill-conceived alterations to the speed and flow of the protagonist’s movements don’t really work as intended.

In more positive news, a dramatically rebalanced shop means you can unlock many of the character’s abilities much earlier in this version, and that seems like a smart alteration considering many of the combos in the original were locked behind unfathomable grinds. The chainsaw blaster has also been totally redesigned, and while it feels OP in this version, we kinda appreciate that; Lollipop Chainsaw, while it does have score attack elements, isn’t vying for an esports award, and so the lack of balance is fine from where we’re sitting.

We’re less keen on the eponymous RePOP mode, which tones down the blood and gore from the original release and replaces it with something a little more PG-13. While it’s optional, we reckon the developer could have gone further here, incorporating flowers and other paraphernalia to sell the family friendly presentation. We’re also upset at the lack of licensed music which was a big feature of the original; The Chordettes remain, but many of the other pop and rock songs are gone.

A fresh batch of costumes round out the revisions, but this is a fairly barebones remaster outside of that. Some baffling changes – like the removal of comic book character introductions – don’t make sense to us, but don’t exactly ruin the release. It just feels like this could have been more: the gameplay feels stodgy and needed a lot more TLC – and the watered down soundtrack, no matter how understandable, strips it of some of its soul.

This is still a laugh out loud affair, though; a raucous and utterly ludicrous release that deserves to exist on modern hardware. But when the source material is this brilliant, it deserves an exceptional remaster – rather than one that’s just good enough.