Third-person motion sport Slitterhead typically presents a fairly compelling entrance. At first, it appears like an out-there horror sport with an creative method to gameplay. You play as a formless spirit that may possess people, looking vicious monsters able to imitating regular individuals. These creatures explode from the heads of their human our bodies to disclose their true varieties 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 a substitute, it is normally 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, no less than at first. Slitterhead opens with you taking up the function 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 bear 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 way in which you consider characterization and bodily gameplay house, and slitterheads are scary–it’s an effective 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 looking the parasites with the motive of exterminating them, and it is the monsters that run from you. As you leap into people, you should utilize 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 are taking over offers 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 concept of creating use of a crowd to consistently confuse and overpower your enemy with an limitless sequence of ambushes is a enjoyable one.
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Slitterhead provides to the concept while you begin discovering Rarities–humans who kind nearer bonds with the Hyoki to make their possession a little bit extra of a partnership, and who sport particular talents in consequence. These talents are inclined to replicate every of their personalities and vocations. You may heal close by allies or summon extra people to a battle, energy up your melee weapons to set enemies on fireplace, 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 will set off a quick interval of slowed time in which you’ll be able to wail on an opponent with every thing you’ve got received.
The parts of Slitterhead’s fight ought to come back collectively to make for one thing sudden and entertaining, however fights are not often all that participating in apply. Whereas there are a number of totally different sorts of Slitterheads they usually typically deliver totally different assaults to bear in opposition to you, for probably the most half, all of them battle the identical means. Even nonetheless, I by no means fairly felt like I may get the dangle of the parry system because of 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 battle utterly trivial, just for the following one to physique me time and again.
Standing your floor is a worse approach to battle, 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 bounce into a brand new host, you acquire a lift to your melee harm, in addition to what roughly quantities to 3 or 4 free hits because the 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 unfastened and clumsy, inflicting you to swing previous an enemy as typically as into them, even while you use the lock-on system. And that is if the lock manages to outlive between our bodies. Usually, 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 may counsel a strategic plan of blending particular talents collectively, in apply, there’s simply not quite a bit occurring there. All of the Rarities are fairly efficient, however lots of their particular strikes do not deliver sufficient to a battle to alter its move. Throwing bombs, zapping enemies with poison, setting traps across the battlefield–none of them change the truth that fight largely 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 essential harm with you in it on three separate events, you die, and you’ll’t be outdoors of a physique for quite a lot of seconds or it is sport over, so utilizing these talents could make you very weak. With slitterheads typically hitting like a truck to ship your hosts flying and the parry timings and instructions not often feeling like you’ll be able to depend on them, you get a state of affairs the place most particular talents simply aren’t definitely worth the danger.
Some talents do have their uses–summoning extra people, for example, is normally a worthy tradeoff, and an assault with a magical chaingun allows you to principally swap your Rarity’s well being for harm in opposition to an enemy, and it is not too tough to recharge should you can slip away from a foe for a pair seconds. However a lot of the talents are quite a bit much less strategic. I by no means discovered myself completely happy after I summoned the weak stationary turret that shot intermittently at enemies, and the flexibility to cost up your weapon into an explosive bolt at all times took too lengthy to execute in any precise fight conditions.
You are not at all times preventing slitterheads, although. Generally you need to use stealth to make your means 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 typically 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 brief, apparent prescribed paths and by no means do something sudden. The stealth parts change into extraordinarily tedious and gradual digressions the place you make your means alongside an apparent path, and if it is ever not apparent, the Hyoki explains precisely what it is best to do and the way.
And typically 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 concept that will be nice in the event that they required any mind energy in any respect, like should 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 a substitute, 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 at all times precisely the identical, but in addition at all times annoying. They largely quantity to zapping from human to human to take a random swing within the course of the working slitterhead because it passes till you lastly whittle down its well being sufficient to set off the actual battle, otherwise you attain the tip of no matter prescribed path it was working, and set off in the actual battle. Regardless, chases aren’t enjoyable; they require no explicit talent, they provide no problem, they usually 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 really is. At first, you are simply killing no matter monsters you come throughout, however you quickly begin to understand that hidden slitterheads are doing extra than simply snacking on the brains of whoever they’ll coax right into a darkish alley. They’ve taken over organized crime in Kowlong’s slums, utilizing intercourse employees 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 sometimes consuming their customers–was fairly disappointing. As creative because it is likely to be to have these fiends roaming the town, their objectives 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 anyplace. 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 it is advisable kill them; the rest is wheel-spinning.
Some features of the story do get higher as the story goes on, no less than to some extent. In between missions, you’ll be able to speak 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. As an example, Julee–your first Rarity–isn’t pleased with the collateral harm that usually outcomes from the slitterhead hunts, encouraging you as an alternative to restrict civilian casualties when potential, 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 means, 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 talents associated to her female wiles, a homeless man who needs to spend most of his time ingesting, a high-school nerd, an previous lady who appears to have dementia, and a housekeeper who relates every thing 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 deliver alongside a selected Rarity to open a door or present a little bit data, they’re incidental to the plot and their conversations are sometimes kind 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 a substitute, just like the fight techniques, 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 simply replay the identical missions, in the identical places, time and again. Generally it is advisable return and hunt down further Rarities or hunt for collectibles. Generally 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 have to 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 battle 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 old-fashioned, and it is dangerous 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 old-fashioned on this means. The body-swapping fight, RPG-like group of possessable individuals, the monster-hunting semi-paranormal narrative–they’re all thrilling till you interact with them a little bit, once they reveal themselves to be shallow and underdeveloped. The precise expertise of taking part in Slitterhead is fixed repetition of techniques that are not very participating 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 prove to not be very scary in any respect.