Right from its initial announcement, Slitterhead was promising to be something special. The first title from a new studio formed by some of the key personnel who previously headed the original Silent Hill, the Siren series and Gravity Rush series had very little chance of being a “typical” game. I expected it to be at least a little bit jank and sometimes frustrating – and it is, – but I also expected to be amazed and excited. And I was. So while I can safely assume, Slitterhead might not “click” with a large amount of players, it is something to be experienced nonetheless.
Set in alternate reality early to mid 90s in “Kowlong”, that’s clearly inspired by the Kowloon City in Hong-Kong and the infamous Kowloon Walled City, Slitterhead gives the players a role of a strange disembodied entity that has the ability to possess many living creatures, but has forgotten what it is. The only thing the entity vaguely remembers is the danger of the titular “Slitterhead” monsters – strange creatures that can blend in with normal humans, but in secret have horrible monster heads and eat brains. Very quickly, the entity meets the first “rarity” – a human who can resonate with the entity in a special way, becoming much more powerful when possesses and also being able to retain some of their will. And as the story will slowly unfold, the players will meet more of these characters, learn more about the mystery of the monsters and the entity and should expect quite a lot of surprising twists along the way. If you’ve played Siren before, you will find some familiar story beats and ideas, but nonetheless – storytelling is really engaging.
While the initial reveals didn’t tell much about how the game will play, now it’s possible to describe it as a “mission based horror themed hack and slash action adventure”, which is succinct, but doesn’t quite explain the surprising mix of ideas and mechanics in play. Slitterhead is a strange combination of ideas that you might’ve previously seen in Siren, The 3rd Birthday (the second Parasite Eve sequel) and [PROTOTYPE]. Just like in the Siren series, you get a large cast of playable characters with unique abilities and personalities, separate missions, story that eventually becomes non-sequential, ability to “sightjack” and hidden goals you must complete in missions. Just like in The 3rd Birthday and Prototype, the main idea for combat and movement is about constantly jumping from body to body. And in many ways, this game does these ideas better than it was ever done before.
The missions in the game are longer than a typical Siren mission, but they are also much more forgiving in their design, have auto-saves and aren’t a complicated stealth puzzle you must unravel by failing a lot. In fact – there’s very little stealth in this game, though when it’s here, it isn’t very good. Instead, most of the time the game requires you to follow simple goals that breadcrumb you towards the monsters you want to find and kill. Interestingly, the above mentioned ability to see through enemy eyes (sightjacking), is now used for hunting the monsters instead of hiding from them. When you do get into a fight, they allow you taking several distinct strategies based on your character, unlocked abilities, type of the enemy and their number and if there are humans in the arena or not. Some fights are designed to be a more one-on-one affair, in which case you have to counter enemy attacks or avoid them and figure out the best time to attack them instead. While most of the fights are designed entirely around the fact that at a click of a button you can transfer your consciousness to any other human in the arena to constantly keep enemies confused about whom they should focus on.
That last part is implemented fantastically and you will be using the possession all the time, for combat, for exploration, for puzzle solving, for chasing enemies – it’s the most overpowered tool you always have at hand. The game knows it well and being a good horror story, immediately makes you consider if you really want to throw confused and otherwise completely innocent humans on a sidewalk into combat or off the roofs, because that’s just more convenient for you.
Still, I wish the game held you hand less and its story beats during missions were treated less as required “do this first, then this second, then this third” to do list goals. I get how Siren was often (and rightfully) criticised for being too open-ended and obtuse and expecting too much of players. And it is true that modern audiences got even lazier. But the game would’ve benefitted from trusting the players more. Although, the secret goals/collectibles are more hidden (but without being completely unintuitive and frustrating as in Siren) and there’s an even entire layer of storytelling that requires you to pen and paper the cipher on your own, like what Dead Space used to do.
Being a self-published game from a new developer, now without backing of huge corporations like Sony or Konami, Slitterhead does show its budget in a lot of ways. But, they do the cuts in all the right ways – simplifying some, but not all cutscenes, removing voice lines from most of the dialogue in favor of simple grunts, focusing on several reusable areas instead of creating a huge amount of levels. Because despite the clearly lower budget, the game oozes so much style and charm it’s hard to care that it’s rough around the edges. The soundtrack from Akira Yamaoka is fantastic and his best in years. Visual presentation of the game is awesome. Yeah, the settings menu is lacking and not that well organized and some of the fights are very unbalanced, but who cares – it’s so cool!
Well… A lot of people will care. I’m fine with all the jank and the repeating locations from mission to mission and the somewhat rough combat (that got improved with a patch while I was in the middle of the playthrough). Because I loved what the end result was and how the game has a vision, a voice. But some will not be able to look past the inconveniences or some of the stranger design decisions of the game and will bounce off. Which is understandable, but also a real shame. This isn’t a new Siren or new Silent Hill and it wasn’t meant to be. Nor can it even compete with a “lower budget” title like Kunitsu-Gami that’s made by Capcom in terms of user friendliness and technical quality. But it doesn’t have to – Slitterhead is a really awesome and unique game that I wish more people would check. And I can only hope the future for Bokeh Game Studio is bright.