I used to be excited for Slitterhead, an motion journey recreation by Bokeh Studio, a studio based by none apart from your boy Keiichiro Toyama: the creator of Silent Hill, Gravity Rush, and the Siren collection. And inside that first hour, Slitterhead’s body-possessing and Hong Kong-inspired streets had me pondering, “Is that this it, the sleeper hit of 2024?!”
No, sadly not. It is little question constructed a compelling universe stuffed with brain-sucking aliens that masquerade as people, and it makes an attempt loads else apart from: bouncing between our bodies as you stealth round dingy condo blocks, preventing with blood katanas, and gorging on swimming pools of purple plasma to refuel expertise, a lot of which require extra body-flitting. Factor is, they’re in the end simply makes an attempt, makes an attempt that fall sufferer to an vacancy and jitteriness that shortly reveals Slitterhead’s true, irritating type.
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 study that to take action, you will need to use their ways towards 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 Canine Legion is splendidly liberating. It is intelligent, too, in the way you’re in a position to move by way of 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 by way of 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 by way of the streets, whipping out your newfound blood powers to Spider-Man up onto rooftops and quickly skipping between completely different our bodies to catch up.
Just a little later, you struggle the slippery bastards head-on. As an everyday civilian you possibly can wield a blood mace and pelt slitterheads with fundamental combos, possibly chuck within the odd potential like a blood bomb to dazzle them. Blue flashes from proper to left spotlight a short parry window, the place you will need to match the course 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 struggle), providing you with a short lived enhance to your defences and basically refreshing your well being pool. This frantic sprint between fleshy vessels makes the slitterheads look like terrifying apex predators, as you desperately keep away from their highly effective lashes.
Later, you may possess “Rarities”, all of that are major characters with upgradeable expertise 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 traditional civvie, she’s bought tremendous highly effective blood claws, higher stats, and particular skills, together with a strong 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 part to Slitterhead’s early moments, as you admire Kowlown’s murkiness and the final grossness of the yoghurt monsters. Sadly, this haze additionally shortly 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 sphere. Kowlong is not an open world sandbox, however small explorable areas you may head to throughout a collection of missions, all of which you may unlock after the primary mandated dialog with Julee (as you collect extra rarities, you might have extra chats, and unlock extra missions you possibly can sort out in any order). All of those conversations, nevertheless, are simply blurry vignettes of Julee speaking to you in her head, by way of a collection of grunts and “ahs” and “uhs”. And then you definately go off in your mission, taking with you a major rarity and a companion who provides no story worth apart from being one other highly effective physique to modify into when the inevitable occurs (just like the civvies, they conveniently warp close by each time a struggle breaks out).
What’s irritating about this framing that Kowlong is, for essentially the most half, a splendidly realised house. It is a dense community of grime and neon, with believably mundane electrical cables hanging off of balconies, the place an previous fella along with his nips out would possibly puff on a ciggy. I notably just like the uninteresting 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 implies 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 all the things you do, which turns a whole lot of eventualities that would’ve been sensible into simplistic, jilted guff.
I am speaking a stiffness in terms of infiltration missions, the place possessing folks might’ve in any other case offered Hitman-esque thrills. Sure, you would possibly mix into motels as workers 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 info. That is subterfuge, if the subterfuge was as straightforward as cracking open Citymapper and getting the best tube line to your wrongdoer.
The motion sequences, too, find yourself eliciting little greater than sighs and head-shaking. These chases? Fall behind and you may 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 injury 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 injury, or misses solely. It is genuinely essentially the most agonising factor.
The battles with absolutely advanced slitterheads finally turn out to be 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 struggle performs out largely the identical, even when your rarity’s skills all play into one another relatively splendidly. My favorite is Alex, a shotgun toting fella who can chuck an orb that sucks all the things into its centre, which makes the following rabble a simple boshing along 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 not often does a struggle 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 struggle, 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 concern of the slitterheads being highly effective and conniving – poof! Pissed into the wind.
Moreover slitterheads, the most important enemy was actually Bokeh Studios’ mistrust in you, the participant. You are ceaselessly informed 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 high, which come collectively to type a deeply unlikeable recreation. That is unlucky, as a result of I do suppose it has some genuinely spectacular concepts and delivers, every so often, some temporary bursts of attention-grabbing fight and the occasional good wander. They’re simply too few and much between for me to suggest it.
