Third-person motion sport Slitterhead usually presents a fairly compelling entrance. At first, it feels like an out-there horror sport with an creative strategy to gameplay. You play as a formless spirit that may possess people, searching vicious monsters able to imitating regular individuals. These creatures explode from the heads of their human our bodies to disclose their true kinds when found.
As cool as all these phrases clearly are, Slitterhead by no means reaches the promise of its premise, aside from a number of beautiful cutscenes the place a human twists and mutates right into a disgusting, multi-armed abomination. As an alternative, it is often irritating and repetitive, with its attention-grabbing concepts turning to gimmicks that put on themselves skinny after the primary few hours.
These gimmicks really feel like they’ve potential, at the very least at first. Slitterhead opens with you taking over the position of the Hyoki: a floating spirit that may zip into the brains of random people populating the dense metropolis of Kowlong, briefly taking management of their our bodies. The Hyoki cannot keep in mind something about itself or what it is doing, till it encounters its first slitterhead–which, after consuming the brains of an unsuspecting sufferer, bursts from the cranium of its host and chases you down alleys as you zap from one hapless soul to a different to remain simply forward of it. The idea is bizarre, altering the best way you concentrate on characterization and bodily gameplay area, and slitterheads are scary–it’s a good way to begin the sport.
However that is the one time you are on the again foot or that Slitterhead makes use of the horror features of its premise. For the period, you are searching the parasites with the motive of exterminating them, and it is the monsters that run from you. As you leap into people, you need to use their blood to briefly create strong weapons like golf equipment and spears, permitting you to go toe-to-toe with the enormous octopuses and praying mantises that erupt out of the necks of their unlucky hosts. People are bodily weaker than slitterheads, however every new physique you’re taking over provides you a brand new well being bar to run down, in addition to the component of shock to go after a creature whereas it is slashing up the poor meatbag you simply deserted. As a fight system, the thought of creating use of a crowd to always confuse and overpower your enemy with an countless sequence of ambushes is a enjoyable one.
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Slitterhead provides to the thought once you begin discovering Rarities–humans who kind nearer bonds with the Hyoki to make their possession slightly extra of a partnership, and who sport particular skills because of this. These skills are inclined to replicate every of their personalities and vocations. You would possibly heal close by allies or summon extra people to a battle, energy up your melee weapons to set enemies on hearth, throw exploding weapons, and even flip people you possess into kamikaze time bombs. And all people can dodge away from assaults and block or parry some blows, which may give you alternatives for giant counterattacks–deflect sufficient strikes and you may set off a short interval of slowed time in which you’ll be able to wail on an opponent with every part you’ve got obtained.
The elements of Slitterhead’s fight ought to come back collectively to make for one thing sudden and entertaining, however fights are hardly ever all that partaking in apply. Whereas there are a number of totally different sorts of Slitterheads and so they generally carry totally different assaults to bear in opposition to you, for essentially the most half, all of them struggle the identical approach. Even nonetheless, I by no means fairly felt like I may get the cling of the parry system due to the pace and angles at which assaults come at you. The system lacks the sensation of being tight and dependable, and I used to be regularly oscillating between having the ability to completely parry one slitterhead to make a struggle utterly trivial, just for the subsequent one to physique me time and again.
Standing your floor is a worse method to struggle, although, when you’ll be able to simply constantly zap into one other physique and hit a slitterhead of their vestigial, dangling human physique, the place they’re most weak. Every time you soar into a brand new host, you achieve a lift to your melee injury, in addition to what kind of quantities to a few or 4 free hits for the reason that enemy AI will assault the physique you have been beforehand in for some time earlier than it realizes you’ve got moved into a brand new one. Even that’s extra irritating than enjoyable, although. The fight system is free and clumsy, inflicting you to swing previous an enemy as usually as into them, even once you use the lock-on system. And that is if the lock manages to outlive between our bodies. Typically, it’s going to disengage, requiring you to swing the digital camera round madly as you reorient your self simply to get a few fast, boring hits in, earlier than you repeat the method.
And whereas bringing totally different Rarities right into a mission would possibly counsel a strategic plan of blending particular skills collectively, in apply, there’s simply not quite a bit occurring there. All of the Rarities are fairly efficient, however a lot of their particular strikes do not carry sufficient to a battle to alter its stream. Throwing bombs, zapping enemies with poison, setting traps across the battlefield–none of them change the truth that fight principally entails simply hammering the melee button earlier than swapping to a brand new physique and hammering it once more. Many particular strikes require blood, which you additionally use for well being. If a physique takes vital injury with you in it on three separate events, you die, and you’ll’t be exterior of a physique for various seconds or it is sport over, so utilizing these skills could make you very weak. With slitterheads usually hitting like a truck to ship your hosts flying and the parry timings and instructions hardly ever feeling like you’ll be able to depend on them, you get a state of affairs the place most particular skills simply aren’t definitely worth the danger.
Some skills do have their uses–summoning extra people, for example, is often a worthy tradeoff, and an assault with a magical chaingun helps you to mainly swap your Rarity’s well being for injury in opposition to an enemy, and it isn’t too tough to recharge when you can slip away from a foe for a pair seconds. However many of the skills are quite a bit much less strategic. I by no means discovered myself blissful after I summoned the weak stationary turret that shot intermittently at enemies, and the flexibility to cost up your weapon into an explosive bolt all the time took too lengthy to execute in any precise fight conditions.
You are not all the time combating slitterheads, although. Typically you need to use stealth to make your approach by way of an space, which has the potential to be a recent tackle acquainted tropes however winds up being far too simplistic. You may briefly come out of our bodies and float invisibly round an space, permitting you to peek round corners to keep away from threats, and generally you’ll be able to’t get a physique previous a guard with out being detected, forcing you to desert one host for an additional additional alongside. However guards stroll quick, apparent prescribed paths and by no means do something sudden. The stealth parts turn out to be extraordinarily tedious and gradual digressions the place you make your approach alongside an apparent path, and if it is ever not apparent, the Hyoki explains precisely what you must do and the way.
And generally you are looking for slitterheads, utilizing your particular powers that direct you to their places and even allow you to quickly “sight jack” them to see what they’re seeing. These scenes characterize one other thrilling thought that will be nice in the event that they required any mind energy in any respect, like when you had to make use of your information of Kowlong’s locales and landmarks to determine the place a slitterhead was heading or what it was planning, however you by no means do. As an alternative, you simply comply with a glowing path to the enemy and assault them. Different occasions, you will get right into a chase scene with a slitterhead because it flees by way of the streets, and never solely are these all the time precisely the identical, but in addition all the time annoying. They principally quantity to zapping from human to human to take a random swing within the route of the working slitterhead because it passes till you lastly whittle down its well being sufficient to set off the true struggle, otherwise you attain the top of no matter prescribed path it was working, and set off in the true struggle. Regardless, chases aren’t enjoyable; they require no explicit ability, they provide no problem, and so they carry no stakes.
The narrative is the place the sport may make up floor by way of its imaginative premise, however right here too, Slitterhead appears deeper than it ever truly is. At first, you are simply killing no matter monsters you come throughout, however you quickly begin to notice that hidden slitterheads are doing extra than simply snacking on the brains of whoever they will coax right into a darkish alley. They’ve taken over organized crime in Kowlong’s slums, utilizing intercourse staff as a method of luring in victims.
That early component of the mystery–the revelation that the head-popping, brain-slurping monster mimics had determined to do common crime stuff whereas additionally often consuming their customers–was fairly disappointing. As creative because it may be to have these fiends roaming town, their targets and motivations cannot match their often-inventive creature designs. And whereas the sport means that it means to flesh out the slitterheads themselves because the narrative unfolds, that component of the story finally would not actually go wherever. It is by no means clear precisely how the slitterheads work, what they assume or really feel, or what they’re all as much as. They’re evil and you must kill them; the rest is wheel-spinning.
Some features of the story do get higher as the story goes on, at the very least to a point. In between missions, you’ll be able to discuss with every of the Rarities you unlock, studying about them and deepening their reference to the Hyoki. When Slitterhead leans into this concept, it goes to some cool locations. For example, Julee–your first Rarity–isn’t proud of the collateral injury that always outcomes from the slitterhead hunts, encouraging you as a substitute to restrict civilian casualties when doable, and that has a notable impact on the Hyoki, who began the sport by leaping off a roof in a human physique after which zapping out into a brand new one on the final second as a result of it was faster than taking the steps. Alex–another early Rarity who contrasts Julee–is bent on private revenge in opposition to the slitterheads, and he has little regard for anybody who will get in his approach, even when they’re utterly ignorant to what is going on on. Each characters affect the Hyoki as time goes on, and the story begins to tackle some dimension as their totally different viewpoints and ideologies develop and conflict.
Sadly, the opposite Rarities aren’t practically as compelling. There are eight altogether, however just one apart from Julee and Alex has any narrative to talk of, and all are two-dimensional stereotypes. They embrace a intercourse employee with skills associated to her female wiles, a homeless man who needs to spend most of his time ingesting, a high-school nerd, an outdated girl who appears to have dementia, and a housekeeper who relates every part she says to cleansing. General, they’ve little to contribute. They’re by no means written with something apart from surface-level characterization and weak jokes that play off their stereotypes, and aside from a few missions the place you carry alongside a particular Rarity to open a door or present slightly data, they’re incidental to the plot and their conversations are sometimes type of pointless.
And whereas some features of the story develop in attention-grabbing instructions, Slitterhead by no means succeeds in translating that intrigue into gameplay. As an alternative, just like the fight methods, degree design is repetitious and shallow. Time journey turns into a serious component of the story after the opening hours, which brings its personal intriguing concepts to the narrative, however the sensible result’s that you just replay the identical missions, in the identical places, time and again. Typically you must return and search out further Rarities or hunt for collectibles. Typically you will play by way of a mission to a unique final result, or open a door you noticed in a earlier run to entry a brand new small space, however finally it looks like Slitterhead is made up of the identical 4 or 5 ranges, with the identical boring fights and irritating chases, time and again.
It looks like piling on at this level, but it surely additionally should be talked about that Slitterhead is, largely, a fairly ugly sport. Character faces are plastic, shiny, and largely unmoving, and whereas the slitterheads themselves are sometimes cool-looking, because you struggle a number of variations on the theme time and again, they cease being visually compelling in a rush. There’s quite a lot of model within the game–opening title playing cards carry cool graphical results, missions finish with a neat freeze-frame “To Be Continued” message, and there are occasions when the presentation is artfully cinematic or knowingly horrific, hinting at what the entire expertise may have been like. Gameplay, although, appears 15 years outdated, and it is unhealthy sufficient to be distracting, particularly when the sport places heavy emphasis on speaking to characters to advance the story.
Actually, although, most issues about Slitterhead really feel outdated on this approach. The body-swapping fight, RPG-like staff of possessable individuals, the monster-hunting semi-paranormal narrative–they’re all thrilling till you have interaction with them slightly, once they reveal themselves to be shallow and underdeveloped. The precise expertise of enjoying Slitterhead is fixed repetition of methods that are not very partaking even their first time, throughout ranges you will see again and again, telling a narrative that by no means makes a lot sense, with characters that really feel like first-draft lists of stereotypes. Slitterhead has quite a lot of fascinating concepts and compelling gameplay on the floor, however beneath, it is simply boring and banal–a bunch of scary-looking monsters who end up to not be very scary in any respect.
