Slitterhead
Review
Creepy Crawlies
by Samuel Corey
reviewed on PC
Nightmare Kowloon City
Unseen predators stalk the neon-drenched streets and grimy back alleyways of Kowloon City. The monsters are driven on by their unrelenting hunger for human brains. These horrible creatures wear human skin and faces like a costume, and walk among us unseen, until it's time to strike at which point they slip out of their human disguises and reveal the shambling mass of tentacles and claws beneath. These are the Slitterheads, the eponymous monsters of the latest game from Silent Hill and Siren creator Keiichiro Toyama.
Despite being a brilliant premise for a horror game and being created by one of the all-time greats of the genre, Slitterhead makes no attempt whatsoever at being scary. Instead, it opts to be an ultra-violent action game with grotesque monsters, making its tone similar to movies like Tokyo Gore Police and anime like Parasyte.
This is a sound move, as any attempt at making Slitterhead into a compelling survival horror game would have been torpedoed by its unique protagonist: Night Owl the Hyoki. Rather than a typical protagonist, Night Owl is a disembodied spirit who can float around and possess almost any person (or dog though this doesn't come up very often). So if a nasty Slitterhead cuts your current host in half you can just jump to another body and keep up the fight. This makes fights thrilling and dynamic as you manage your, ahem Human Resources, but it makes feeling any dread or menace at the prospect of death impossible. Death is just a chance to switch out your current host.
Of course, you're not just controlling randomly generated NPCs, you also get access to several named characters with special abilities and weapons who partner with Night Owl as you progress through the story. In between missions, you have optional dialogue scenes with each of the characters to learn a bit more about their backstory and personality. The presence of these recurring characters adds a much-needed human hook, as the disembodied, animistic Night Owl is not a relatable protagonist but the vengeance-driven back-alley doctor Alex is.
These characters are pleasant in personality and design as well as mechanics. You have a special forces operator whose organization is hunting Night Owl but who is personally sympathetic to the spirit, a wimpy school boy who gives the impression he would much rather be at home playing video games than chasing down monsters, and a drunken hobo who (true to kung-fu movie tropes) is a martial arts master. There's even a fat woman in a hijab, who doesn't feel like forced-DEI here thanks to the presence of the cute Tomboy Julee and the sexy femme-fatale Anita. As it turns out, diversity of characters is the best way to make a game feel diverse, rather than casting everyone in the same unappealing, sexless mould.
Battling Monsters
Slitterhead feels less like a new release from 2024, and more like an obscure PS2 game whose ROM I found linked on a sketchy forum post. It shuns modern video game design philosophies, that mandate a huge empty world with nothing to do and instead favours small, compact levels. And aside from some ill-conceived stealth sections it focuses entirely on the primary gameplay loop of tracking down and battling various Slitterheads.
The combat feels very in-depth and polished, especially compared to the rest of the game which has a haphazard and amateurish vibe. The focus here is on moving the analog stick to parry enemy attacks to create openings to unleash standard combos and special attacks. Interestingly, all special attacks consume health (with some consuming a great deal of health) so they need to be carefully deployed as most of the more aggressive enemies make it difficult to heal.
While combat is undeniably fun, there is a distinct lack of variety in the enemies. Different Slitterheads have different attacks and aggression levels but their designs all look more or less the same. This isn't helped by the fact that you will sometimes need to replay missions in order to find new characters or progress in the storyline. It's only occasionally that the game will throw a curveball and give you a unique boss encounter with radically different attack patterns and abilities. The first time this happened I was genuinely shocked. I wish there had been more like this and more to differentiate the different Slitterheads visually.
A Nonreactive World
The biggest issue with Slitterhead is that the world does not feel alive. Outside of the main streets, NPCs don't move around, they remain rooted to the ground locked in an endless loop of smoking cigarettes reading magazines, or just idling. They also do not react when the player possesses someone right next to them and runs off suddenly. A simple "Hey man, where you off to?" would add a tremendous amount of immersion. It also seems odd that even on ostensibly busy streets there are never any cars driving (though plenty of cars parked on the side of the road). However, I suppose the bigger issue is how nonplussed the population is when the player character leaps from street sign to street sign and rooftop to rooftop, often while pursuing monsters.
Indeed, the people of Kowloon City seem to be not very interested in the events unfolding around them. In some missions, sections of the city have erupted into open warfare as government special forces battle Slitterheads in the street. Yet a few blocks away nobody seems distressed by the cries of agony and deafening gunshots. I understand Kowloon City is supposed to be one mean beat at the best of times but this is ridiculous. Still, at least they have a survival instinct, I can't say the same for all the random NPCs who hang around when a boss monster spawns so you'll have someone to possess if your health gets too low.
It's more than just an issue with immersion though, as in several cases NPCs not behaving logically affects the game-play. The worst is the forced stealth sections where you can possess people who should logically be in the place that you're trying to infiltrate but once you do so the guards simply start looking for your new host. The stealth in general is quite shallow and it could be greatly improved if the people you possessed panicked and caused a scene allowing you to sneak past guards in a new body. As it stands it's just tedious and dull.
That said, gripes aside there is more than enough in Slitterhead to warrant a recommendation, even at a (frankly ridiculous) price of $50.
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8.8
fun score
Pros
Intriguing atmosphere, Nice variety of characters and abilities, Unique combat mechanics
Cons
Poor stealth sections, Repeated missions and monsters can become tedious, Lacklustre AI
