I used to be excited for Slitterhead, an motion journey sport by Bokeh Studio, a studio based by none apart from your boy Keiichiro Toyama: the creator of Silent Hill, Gravity Rush, and the Siren sequence. And inside that first hour, Slitterhead’s body-possessing and Hong Kong-inspired streets had me considering, “Is that this it, the sleeper hit of 2024?!”
No, sadly not. It is little doubt constructed a compelling universe stuffed with brain-sucking aliens that masquerade as people, and it makes an attempt a lot else in addition to: bouncing between our bodies as you stealth round dingy house blocks, combating with blood katanas, and gorging on swimming pools of crimson plasma to refuel abilities, lots of which require extra body-flitting. Factor is, they’re finally simply makes an attempt, makes an attempt that fall sufferer to an vacancy and jitteriness that rapidly reveals Slitterhead’s true, irritating kind.
I actually dig Slitterhead’s premise, which is kind of like The Factor vs The Factor however set within the densely packed streets of Kowlong: a slum metropolis primarily based on Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled Metropolis. Amidst the hubbub, there are googly, slithery beings referred to as slitterheads, who’ve been disguising themselves as people as they skulk round slurping the brains out of unsuspecting victims. You are Hyoki, a spirit entity that is taken the type of an ethereal wiggly worm, and whilst you’ve misplaced your reminiscence, a singular objective stays: kill the slitterheads. Rapidly you be taught that to take action, you have to use their ways in opposition to them, whizzing into the skulls of civilians to own them, mix in, and hunt.
Cool, eh? And initially, sure, zipping into and assuming management of individuals prefer it’s an city fantasy Watch Canines Legion is splendidly releasing. It is intelligent, too, in the way you’re capable of go via blocked pathways (grates or giant crowds, for instance) by hopping from one cranium to a different, such as you’re Casper the Pleasant Ghost being pitched by Shohei Ohtani. Very early on, you are launched to different particulars that trace at a dynamic mix of noir, horror, and bonkers. You observe the scent of a slitterhead posing as a human and might “sightjack” them, letting you see via their eyes to higher find your prey. Lastly hunt them down and there is a chase sequence the place you leg after an unmasked slitterhead via the streets, whipping out your newfound blood powers to Spider-Man up onto rooftops and quickly skipping between totally different our bodies to catch up.
A bit later, you battle the slippery bastards head-on. As an everyday civilian you may wield a blood mace and pelt slitterheads with primary combos, possibly chuck within the odd capacity like a blood bomb to dazzle them. Blue flashes from proper to left spotlight a short parry window, the place you have to match the path with a thumbstick flick. Since you are a puny civ, you are inspired to bounce between different close by people (they conveniently spawn everytime you battle), providing you with a brief enhance to your defences and primarily refreshing your well being pool. This frantic sprint between fleshy vessels makes the slitterheads seem to be terrifying apex predators, as you desperately keep away from their highly effective lashes.
Later, you may possess “Rarities”, all of that are important characters with upgradeable abilities and a little bit of backstory you may discover between missions (I am going to get onto this in a sec). Julee is the primary of the bunch, and in contrast to a standard civvie, she’s obtained tremendous highly effective blood claws, higher stats, and particular skills, together with a robust blast and a few shuriken… issues. These are all helpful, contemplating the slitterheads start evolving into their full varieties, springing out of their human host like somebody’s stamped on a Frube. They tackle significantly freakish guises, all octopus or praying mantis-like, with a limby dose of completely fucked.
There’s something of a honeymoon section to Slitterhead’s early moments, as you admire Kowlown’s murkiness and the overall grossness of the yoghurt monsters. Sadly, this haze additionally rapidly begins to dissipate, changed by a thick fog of jank. Like its namesake enemies bursting forth from an unlucky meat puppet, Slitterhead finally reveals its true nature, and reader, it isn’t good.
For starters, there is a full lack of pleasure to venturing out into the sector. Kowlong is not an open world sandbox, however small explorable areas you may head to throughout a sequence of missions, all of which you may unlock after the primary mandated dialog with Julee (as you collect extra rarities, you could have extra chats, and unlock extra missions you may sort out in any order). All of those conversations, nonetheless, are simply blurry vignettes of Julee speaking to you in her head, via a sequence of grunts and “ahs” and “uhs”. And then you definately go off in your mission, taking with you a important rarity and a companion who provides no story worth in addition to being one other highly effective physique to modify into when the inevitable occurs (just like the civvies, they conveniently warp close by every time a battle breaks out).
What’s irritating about this framing that Kowlong is, for probably the most half, a splendidly realised area. It is a dense community of grime and neon, with believably mundane electrical cables hanging off of balconies, the place an outdated fella together with his nips out may puff on a ciggy. I significantly just like the boring hallways and typical flat furnishings, with occasional bursts of color from nook store soda cans or finery displayed at markets. The issue is that all of it feels so lifeless on the similar time.
Largely everybody being possessable signifies that everyone seems to be uniform, all actually resembling expressionless porcelain mannequins. This lends the streets a awkward quietness, too, as they wander with all of the vitality of Roombas tending to their programmed carpet patches. All of this stiffness permeates principally every thing you do, which turns a whole lot of eventualities that might’ve been good into simplistic, jilted guff.
I am speaking a stiffness in relation to infiltration missions, the place possessing folks might’ve in any other case offered Hitman-esque thrills. Sure, you may mix into accommodations as staff or use rooftop vessels to bridge gaps and slip in from the rooftops. However none of it feels such as you’ve cracked a seedy ecosystem your self, as a substitute you observe markers and infrequently chat to uninteresting folks to assemble data. That is subterfuge, if the subterfuge was as straightforward as cracking open Citymapper and getting the correct tube line to your offender.
The motion sequences, too, find yourself eliciting little greater than sighs and head-shaking. These chases? Fall behind and you will realise that the slitterhead simply waits for you, awkwardly stopping to allow you to catch up. Generally the pursuit will not finish till you have dealt sufficient harm to them, which is completely the equal of throwing out a spike strip made from balloons each time you body-hop shut sufficient for a melee strike. And even while you do take a swing, it both connects and does piddling harm, or misses totally. It is genuinely probably the most agonising factor.
The battles with absolutely developed slitterheads finally develop into an everyday fixture (some missions are principally a string of fights), with just a few additions to combine issues up: phallic worms, authorities forces, unevolved slitterheads. Besides that every battle performs out largely the identical, even when your rarity’s skills all play into one another fairly splendidly. My favorite is Alex, a shotgun toting fella who can chuck an orb that sucks every thing into its centre, which makes the following rabble a straightforward boshing together with his boomstick. Every blast hits his well being bar, although, so you have to suck any swimming pools left on the concrete again into your veins to recoup your misplaced haemoglobins.
Sadly, swapping skills is fussy. Enemy assaults are jagged and awkward to foretell. And all of the slitterheads appear to have the identical movesets. Very, very hardly ever does a battle really feel like a fluid, body-hopping duel and as a substitute extra of wrestle with the controls as you fumble in direction of an unrewarding end. The extra you battle, the extra the story begins to devolve into typical motion cliché fare, too, turning the slitterheads from sinister threats into irritating pests. All that early rigidity, all that real worry of the slitterheads being highly effective and conniving – poof! Pissed into the wind.
Moreover slitterheads, the largest enemy was actually Bokeh Studios’ mistrust in you, the participant. You are perpetually instructed tips on how to go about every problem as a result of the world is not malleable sufficient to entertain your investigative spirit. That is with all of the vacancy and the irritants on prime, which come collectively to kind a deeply unlikeable sport. That is unlucky, as a result of I do suppose it has some genuinely spectacular concepts and delivers, every now and then, some transient bursts of attention-grabbing fight and the occasional good wander. They’re simply too few and much between for me to advocate it.
