Third-person motion sport Slitterhead usually presents a reasonably compelling entrance. At first, it feels like an out-there horror sport with an ingenious 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 kinds when found.As cool as all these phrases clearly are, Slitterhead by no means reaches the promise of its premise, other than just a few 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, a minimum of 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 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 way in which you concentrate on characterization and bodily gameplay area, and slitterheads are scary–it’s an effective way to start out the sport.However that is the one time you are on the again foot or that Slitterhead makes use of the horror facets of its premise. For the length, 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 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 offers you a brand new well being bar to run down, in addition to the aspect 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 continually confuse and overpower your enemy with an limitless collection of ambushes is a enjoyable one.The idea of brain-sucking monsters that mimic people and burst out of individuals’s necks is a cool one, however Slitterhead manages to make it mundane in a short time.Gallery Slitterhead provides to the concept once you begin discovering Rarities–humans who type nearer bonds with the Hyoki to make their possession a little bit 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 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 short interval of slowed time in which you’ll 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 just a few totally different sorts of Slitterheads and so they generally deliver totally different assaults to bear towards you, for essentially the most half, all of them combat the identical manner. Even nonetheless, I by no means fairly felt like I might get the grasp 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 ceaselessly oscillating between having the ability to completely parry one slitterhead to make a combat fully trivial, just for the subsequent one to physique me time and again.Standing your floor is a worse method to combat, although, when you may simply persistently zap into one other physique and hit a slitterhead of their vestigial, dangling human physique, the place they’re most susceptible. Every time you soar into a brand new host, you achieve a lift to your melee harm, in addition to what kind of quantities to 3 or 4 free hits for the reason that enemy AI will assault the physique you had 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 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 digicam round madly as you reorient your self simply to get a few fast, boring hits in, earlier than you repeat the method.Even with a number of totally different characters who sport their very own particular skills, fight is repetitive.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 so much 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 stream. 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 important harm with you in it on three separate events, you die, and you’ll’t be outdoors of a physique for various seconds or it is sport over, so utilizing these skills could make you very susceptible. With slitterheads usually hitting like a truck to ship your hosts flying and the parry timings and instructions not often feeling like you may depend on them, you get a state of affairs the place most particular skills simply aren’t well worth the threat.Some skills do have their uses–summoning extra people, as an illustration, is normally a worthy tradeoff, and an assault with a magical chaingun permits you to principally swap your Rarity’s well being for harm towards an enemy, and it isn’t too troublesome to recharge for those who can slip away from a foe for a pair seconds. However a lot of the skills are so much much less strategic. I by no means discovered myself glad once I summoned the weak stationary turret that shot intermittently at enemies, and the power 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 preventing slitterheads, although. Generally you need to use stealth to make your manner via 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 may’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 develop into extraordinarily tedious and gradual digressions the place you make your manner alongside an apparent path, and if it is ever not apparent, the Hyoki explains precisely what you need to do and the way.Stealth sections really feel notably undercooked, failing to do a lot with the self-esteem that you just’re an invisible disembodied spirit that may possess nearly anybody.And generally you are trying to find slitterheads, utilizing your particular powers that direct you to their areas and even allow you to quickly “sight jack” them to see what they’re seeing. These scenes symbolize one other thrilling thought that may be nice in the event that they required any mind energy in any respect, like for those who 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 observe a glowing path to the enemy and assault them. Different instances, you will get right into a chase scene with a slitterhead because it flees via the streets, and never solely are these all the time precisely the identical, but additionally all the time annoying. They largely quantity to zapping from human to human to take a random swing within the course of the operating slitterhead because it passes till you lastly whittle down its well being sufficient to set off the actual combat, otherwise you attain the top of no matter prescribed path it was operating, and set off in the actual combat. Regardless, chases aren’t enjoyable; they require no explicit talent, they provide no problem, and so they carry no stakes.The narrative is the place the sport might make up floor via its imaginative premise, however right here too, Slitterhead seems to be 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 will 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 aspect 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 ingenious because it is perhaps to have these fiends roaming 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 aspect of the story in the end does 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 you must kill them; anything is wheel-spinning.Partying is hit-or-miss, and its unreliability means standing your floor is rarely pretty much as good an choice as continually transferring between our bodies to assault enemies.Some facets of the story do get higher as the story goes on, a minimum of to a point. In between missions, you may 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. As an example, Julee–your first Rarity–isn’t pleased with the collateral harm that usually outcomes from the slitterhead hunts, encouraging you as a substitute to restrict civilian casualties when attainable, 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 towards the slitterheads, and he has little regard for anybody who will get in his manner, even when they’re fully 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 broaden 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 embody a intercourse employee with skills associated to her female wiles, a homeless man who needs to spend most of his time consuming, a high-school nerd, an outdated 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 other than a few missions the place you deliver alongside a particular Rarity to open a door or present a little bit data, they’re incidental to the plot and their conversations are sometimes form of pointless.And whereas some facets 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 methods, degree design is repetitious and shallow. Time journey turns into a serious aspect 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 areas, time and again. Generally you must return and hunt down further Rarities or hunt for collectibles. Generally you will play via a mission to a distinct consequence, or open a door you noticed in a earlier run to entry a brand new small space, however in the end it appears like Slitterhead is made up of the identical 4 or 5 ranges, with the identical boring fights and irritating chases, time and again.Conversations between the Hyoki and the characters you meet supply potential to broaden the narrative, however a lot of the characters are thinly drawn stereotypes.It appears like piling on at this level, however it additionally have to be talked about that Slitterhead is, largely, a reasonably ugly sport. Character faces are plastic, shiny, and largely unmoving, and whereas the slitterheads themselves are sometimes cool-looking, because you combat just a few variations on the theme time and again, they cease being visually compelling in a rush. There’s plenty 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 might have been like. Gameplay, although, seems to be 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 manner. The body-swapping fight, RPG-like crew 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 methods 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 plenty 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.
