While it can be both odd and intriguing, Slitterhead ultimately feels hollow due to lackluster combat and monotonous missions.
Phil Hornshaw
on November 5, 2024 at 5:40PM PST
Third-person action game Slitterhead often offers an enticing facade. Initially, it seems like a unique horror experience with a creative gameplay twist. You embody a formless spirit that can take over humans, pursuing vicious monsters that can mimic regular people. These creatures burst from the heads of their human hosts to unveil their true forms when detected.
As intriguing as that sounds, Slitterhead never truly lives up to its bold concept, aside from a handful of stunning cutscenes displaying a human twisting and transforming into a grotesque, multi-armed horror. Instead, it tends to be frustrating and monotonous, with its novel ideas quickly devolving into gimmicks that lose their charm after just a few hours.
Initially, the gimmicks seem promising. In Slitterhead, you step into the shoes of the Hyoki, a spectral entity capable of darting into the minds of random individuals in the bustling city of Kowlong, gaining temporary control over their actions. The Hyoki is shrouded in mystery, unaware of its origin or purpose, until it encounters its first slitterhead. After feasting on the brain of an unsuspecting victim, the slitterhead bursts forth from its host’s skull and relentlessly pursues you through narrow alleyways, compelling you to switch between various helpless souls to stay ahead. The premise is unusual, offering a fresh perspective on character engagement and game mechanics, with the slitterheads providing a chilling introduction to the experience.
However, this moment of vulnerability is fleeting, as the balance shifts and you become the predator hunting down the slitterheads, turning the horror elements on their head. Throughout the game, you seek to eliminate these parasites. As you take over humans, you can utilize their blood to forge temporary solid weapons like clubs and spears, equipping you to confront giant octopuses and praying mantises that emerge from the necks of their unfortunate hosts. Although humans are physically disadvantaged compared to slitterheads, each new body grants you additional health and the surprise element to launch attacks while the creature is preoccupied with the human you just left behind. The combat system’s approach of utilizing a crowd to create confusion and deliver a stream of ambushes proves to be an enjoyable mechanic.
The game expands on this concept as you encounter Rarities—humans that form unique bonds with the Hyoki, enhancing the possession experience into a collaborative one while also bestowing special abilities. These abilities often reflect their personalities and professions. You might find yourself healing allies, summoning additional humans to aid in combat, strengthening melee weapons for fiery attacks, tossing explosive devices, or even transforming possessed humans into kamikaze bombs. All humans possess the ability to dodge attacks and can block or parry certain strikes, giving you opportunities for significant counterattacks. Successfully deflect enough blows can trigger a short period of slowed time, allowing you to unleash your full assault on an opponent.
While the elements of Slitterhead’s combat seem designed to create an engaging gameplay experience, the reality is that battles seldom capture that excitement. Although various types of slitterheads exist, each boasting different attacks, most exhibit similar fighting patterns. Additionally, mastering the parry system proves challenging due to the swift and unpredictable angles of incoming attacks. The combat system lacks a sense of precision and reliability, leaving you caught in a cycle of successfully parrying one slitterhead with ease, only to be overwhelmed by another repeatedly.
Defending your position can be a less effective strategy, particularly when you have the option to seamlessly transfer into another body and strike at the slitterhead’s weak point—the vestigial, vulnerable part of their human form. Each time you switch to a new host, you not only enhance your melee damage but also get an opportunity for three or four free hits, as the enemy AI continues to attack the previous body for a short while before recognizing your movement. However, this experience becomes more frustrating than enjoyable. The combat system feels loose and unrefined, often resulting in you swinging past your opponents instead of striking them, even with the lock-on feature. And even when the lock-on does engage, it frequently disengages, forcing you to frantically adjust the camera just to land a few quick, monotonous hits before starting all over again.
While incorporating various Rarities into your missions may seem like a clever strategy to blend different abilities, the reality is that it lacks depth. All the Rarities perform adequately, yet many of their unique abilities don’t significantly impact the combat dynamics. Whether it’s throwing bombs, poisoning foes, or setting traps, the combat primarily boils down to repeatedly pressing the melee button, then switching bodies, and repeating the sequence. A number of special moves depend on blood, which is also a resource for maintaining health. If you endure critical damage in a host three times, it’s game over. Moreover, staying outside of a body for more than a few seconds means instant defeat. Therefore, utilizing these special abilities can leave you in a precarious position. With slitterheads delivering powerful blows that can send your hosts reeling, and the parry timings feeling unreliable, many special moves become a risk not worth taking.
That said, some abilities do prove useful—like summoning additional humans, which is generally a solid trade, or wielding a magical chaingun that allows you to exchange your Rarity’s health for damage. It’s relatively easy to recharge as long as you can evade your opponent for a brief moment. However, most abilities lack strategic depth. I often found myself disappointed when summoning the weak turret that fires at enemies intermittently, and charging your weapon into an explosive bolt took far too long during actual combat scenarios.
Not every encounter involves fighting slitterheads. There are times when stealth becomes necessary to navigate certain areas, presenting a chance to explore familiar themes in a new light, but this often ends up feeling overly simplistic. You can briefly exit bodies and become invisible, allowing you to scout for threats. There are occasions when you can’t move a body past a guard without detection, forcing you to switch hosts mid-way. However, guards follow predictable paths and seldom act unexpectedly. As a result, the stealth segments can become tedious, devolving into slow, straightforward journeys. Whenever the path isn’t clear, the Hyoki conveniently outlines exactly what you should do next.
At times, you’re on the hunt for slitterheads, utilizing your unique abilities to track their positions and enabling you to “sight jack” them temporarily, revealing their perspectives. These scenarios introduce an intriguing concept that would be even more engaging if they challenged your intellect, perhaps by incorporating your familiarity with Kowlong’s neighborhoods and landmarks to deduce a slitterhead’s destination or intentions. Unfortunately, this is never the case. Instead, you simply follow a glowing trail directly to the adversary before confronting them. Occasionally, you’ll find yourself in a chase scene with a slitterhead as it makes its escape through the city. These encounters are not only monotonous but also quite frustrating. They predominantly consist of switching from one human to another, randomly swinging at the fleeing slitterhead as it speeds by until you finally deplete its health enough to initiate the actual confrontation or reach the end of its designated path to trigger the real fight. Overall, these chases aren’t enjoyable; they lack skill requirements, provide no real challenges, and involve no meaningful consequences.
The story is where the game could potentially excel with its creative premise; however, even here, Slitterhead seems to lack depth. Initially, you find yourself eliminating any monsters that cross your path, but soon you discover that hidden slitterheads are engaging in more than just snatching brains. They have infiltrated organized crime in Kowlong’s impoverished areas, using sex workers to entice unsuspecting victims.
This early twist in the narrative—the realization that the terrifying, brain-eating monsters are also involved in petty crime while occasionally devouring their prey—was rather disheartening. As innovative as it may be to have these creatures roaming the streets, their objectives and motivations fail to measure up to their often-creative designs. Although the game hints at elaborating on the slitterheads’ nature throughout the storyline, this aspect ultimately falls flat. The specifics of how slitterheads operate, what they think or feel, or their overall goals remain shrouded in mystery. They are simply portrayed as malevolent beings you must eliminate; anything beyond that feels redundant.
Some elements of the narrative improve as you progress, at least to a certain extent. Between missions, you have the opportunity to interact with each of the Rarities you unlock, gaining insights into their backgrounds and strengthening their bond with the Hyoki. When Slitterhead embraces this concept, it leads to compelling moments. For example, Julee—your first Rarity—expresses dissatisfaction with the collateral damage that often accompanies slitterhead hunts, urging you to minimize civilian casualties whenever possible. This perspective has a significant influence on the Hyoki, who initially begins the game by jumping off a building in a human form and transforming into another at the last moment for the sake of speed. In contrast, Alex—another early Rarity—harbors a strong desire for vengeance against the slitterheads and shows little concern for anyone who obstructs his path, even if they are clueless about the situation. As time passes, both characters leave their mark on the Hyoki, and the narrative begins to gain complexity as their differing philosophies challenge and clash with one another.
Regrettably, the other Rarities do not hold up as well. While there are eight in total, only one aside from Julee and Alex has any depth, and they predominantly come off as flat stereotypes. This group includes a sex worker who relies on her allure, a homeless individual intent on spending his days inebriated, a nerd from high school, an elderly woman showing signs of dementia, and a housekeeper who centers her dialogue around cleaning. Overall, they contribute little to the narrative. Their characterizations remain superficial, relying on weak humor that plays off their stereotypes. Aside from a few missions where a specific Rarity is needed to access a door or provide sparse details, they remain tangential to the plot, with conversations that often feel futile.
Despite some story elements evolving in intriguing ways, Slitterhead fails to translate this intrigue into gameplay effectively. The mechanics, much like the combat systems and level designs, tend to be repetitive and lacking depth. Time travel emerges as a significant narrative element after the introductory hours, bringing along some interesting concepts, but the practical outcome is a cycle of replaying the same missions in identical locations repeatedly. Occasionally, you might return to locate additional Rarities or hunt for collectibles. There are moments where you’ll replay a mission to achieve a different outcome or unlock a previously inaccessible small area, yet the experience ultimately feels like a rotation of the same four or five levels, featuring mundane combat encounters and exasperating chases.
While it’s almost excessive to pile on, it should be noted that Slitterhead predominantly suffers from a visual decline. Character faces appear plastic, shiny, and largely expressionless; while the slitterheads can look intriguing, the repetition of their variations quickly diminishes their visual appeal. The game does feature a fair amount of flair—opening title cards include stylish graphical effects, missions conclude with a striking freeze-frame “To Be Continued” message, and there are instances where the presentation borders on artfully cinematic or delightfully horrific, suggesting what the experience could have aspired to be. However, the gameplay visuals appear outdated, reminiscent of designs from 15 years prior, and this detracts significantly, especially given the game’s reliance on character interactions to drive the story forward.
Overall, many aspects of Slitterhead come across as antiquated. The body-swapping combat, the RPG-like ensemble of possessable characters, and the monster-hunting semi-paranormal storyline initially seem engaging until further exploration reveals their shallow and underdeveloped nature. The experience of playing Slitterhead primarily consists of repetitive mechanics that lack engagement, played out across familiar levels yet again, all while conveying a storyline that fails to cohere, populated with characters resembling a first draft of stereotypes. Slitterhead teases a wealth of intriguing concepts and gameplay at first glance, but underneath, it amounts to little more than dull and unremarkable—populated by menacing creatures that ultimately prove not very frightening at all.
