I used to be excited for Slitterhead, an motion journey sport by Bokeh Studio, a studio based by none aside 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 considering, “Is that this it, the sleeper hit of 2024?!”
No, sadly not. It is little doubt constructed a compelling universe full of brain-sucking aliens that masquerade as people, and it makes an attempt lots else moreover: bouncing between our bodies as you stealth round dingy house blocks, preventing 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 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 based mostly 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 goal stays: kill the slitterheads. Rapidly you study that to take action, it’s essential to use their techniques 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 in a position to move by means 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 comply with the scent of a slitterhead posing as a human and may “sightjack” them, letting you see by means of their eyes to raised find your prey. Lastly hunt them down and there is a chase sequence the place you leg after an unmasked slitterhead by means 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.
A little bit later, you combat the slippery bastards head-on. As a daily civilian you’ll be able to 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 quick parry window, the place it’s essential 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 combat), supplying you with a short lived enhance to your defences and primarily refreshing your well being pool. This frantic sprint between fleshy vessels makes the slitterheads appear to be terrifying apex predators, as you desperately keep away from their highly effective lashes.
Later, you may possess “Rarities”, all of that are essential 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 traditional civvie, she’s acquired tremendous highly effective blood claws, higher stats, and particular talents, together with a robust blast and a few shuriken… issues. These are all useful, contemplating the slitterheads start evolving into their full types, springing out of their human host like somebody’s stamped on a Frube. They tackle critically 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 sector. 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 could have extra chats, and unlock extra missions you’ll be able to deal with in any order). All of those conversations, nevertheless, are simply blurry vignettes of Julee speaking to you in her head, by means of a collection of grunts and “ahs” and “uhs”. And then you definitely go off in your mission, taking with you a essential rarity and a companion who provides no story worth moreover 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 combat 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 previous fella along 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 all the pieces you do, which turns quite a lot of situations that might’ve been good into simplistic, jilted guff.
I am speaking a stiffness relating to infiltration missions, the place possessing individuals may’ve in any other case supplied Hitman-esque thrills. Sure, you may mix into lodges 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 comply with markers and sometimes chat to uninteresting individuals to assemble info. That is subterfuge, if the subterfuge was as simple as cracking open Citymapper and getting the appropriate tube line to your perpetrator.
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. Typically the pursuit will not finish till you’ve got dealt sufficient harm to them, which is completely the equal of throwing out a spike strip product of balloons each time you body-hop shut sufficient for a melee strike. And even whenever you do take a swing, it both connects and does piddling harm, or misses completely. It is genuinely probably the most agonising factor.
The battles with totally developed slitterheads finally change into a daily 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 combat performs out largely the identical, even when your rarity’s talents all play into one another somewhat splendidly. My favorite is Alex, a shotgun toting fella who can chuck an orb that sucks all the pieces 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 talents 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 combat 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 combat, 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 stress, 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 endlessly informed find out 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 high, which come collectively to type a deeply unlikeable sport. That is unlucky, as a result of I do suppose it has some genuinely spectacular concepts and delivers, occasionally, 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.
