As a seasoned gamer with over three decades under my belt, I’ve seen a lot of games that promised much but delivered little. Slitterhead, dear reader, is one such game. It had potential, oh boy did it have potential! The idea of body-swapping and monster hunting was as intriguing as a freshly caught slitherhead itself. But alas, the execution left me longing for the days of my old Atari 2600.
In simpler terms, the third-person action game Slitterhead frequently gives an intriguing impression. Initially, it might seem like a unique horror game with a creative twist in its mechanics. You take on the role of a shapeless entity that can inhabit humans, with the objective of tracking down and vanquishing grotesque monsters that disguise themselves as ordinary people. When these creatures are discovered, they transform dramatically from their human hosts, revealing their terrifying true forms.
Despite the intriguing nature of the phrases, Slitterhead ultimately fails to live up to its initial potential beyond some visually stunning transition scenes depicting a human transforming into a grotesque, many-armed monster. More often than not, it becomes irritating and monotonous, as its innovative concepts devolve into worn-out gimmicks that lose their charm after the initial few hours of gameplay.
As a passionate gamer, I must say, Slitterhead’s initial premise leaves me intrigued from the get-go. Stepping into the shoes of the enigmatic Hyoki, a wandering spirit that can swiftly invade the minds of the city’s inhabitants in bustling Kowlong, is an exhilarating experience. The Hyoki finds itself in a state of amnesia regarding its identity and mission until it encounters its first slitterhead – a terrifying creature that feasts on human brains, transforming into a relentless pursuer once birthed from the skull of its host, hot on the heels of the Hyoki as it leaps from one unlucky soul to another in a desperate bid for survival.
In this scenario, you’re usually the hunter, pursuing and aiming to eliminate parasitic creatures. The roles are reversed, as these monstrous slitterheads flee from you. By leaping into humans, you can utilize their blood momentarily to craft makeshift weapons such as clubs or spears, enabling you to stand your ground against the colossal octopuses and praying mantises that burst forth from their victims’ necks. Humans lack the strength of slitterheads, but each new body you inhabit grants you a fresh health bar to deplete, along with the advantage of surprise when attacking a creature while it’s tearing apart the human you’ve just vacated. The combat system is intriguing because it involves using a mob to continuously disorient and overpower your foe through relentless ambushes.
With Slitterhead, the concept deepens as you encounter Rarities – humans who foster stronger ties with the Hyoki, turning possession into more of a collaboration. These individuals exhibit unique abilities that mirror their individual personalities and professions. For instance, some can heal nearby allies, summon additional combatants, enhance melee weapons to ignite foes, throw explosive projectiles, or even transform possessed humans into self-destructing time bombs. Furthermore, all humans can evade attacks, shield themselves from certain blows, or counterattack after parrying multiple strikes, potentially slowing down time momentarily for a powerful onslaught against an enemy.
The components of Slitterhead’s combat ought to come together to make for something unexpected and entertaining, but fights are rarely all that engaging in practice. While there are a few different kinds of Slitterheads and they sometimes bring different attacks to bear against you, for the most part, they all fight the same way. Even still, I never quite felt like I could get the hang of the parry system thanks to the speed and angles at which attacks come at you. The system lacks the feeling of being tight and reliable, and I was frequently oscillating between being able to perfectly parry one slitterhead to make a fight completely trivial, only for the next one to body me over and over.
Instead of holding your ground and engaging in direct combat, it’s more advantageous to keep shifting into different bodies, striking the slitterhead where they are weakest. Each transition grants an enhancement to melee damage and essentially offers several free attacks, as the enemy AI continues to attack the previous body for a while before realizing the change. However, this method is more aggravating than entertaining. The combat system lacks precision, causing you to miss enemies almost as often as hitting them, even with the lock-on feature. And if the lock survives the transition, it’s a struggle. Frequently, it disengages, forcing you to quickly adjust the camera and reorient yourself just to land a few monotonous hits before repeating the process.
In essence, incorporating various Rarities into a mission might seem like an intricate tactical approach, blending unique skills together. However, in reality, it’s not as dynamic as one might expect. Each Rarity is effective, but their special moves lack the impact necessary to significantly alter the course of a battle. Battles mainly consist of repeatedly striking with melee attacks, followed by a swap to another body for more strikes. Many special moves drain your health, which is also used for recovery. If a body sustains critical damage three times while you’re inside it, you die, and being outside of a body for too long results in game over. Therefore, utilizing these abilities can make you extremely vulnerable. With slitterheads dealing heavy blows that often knock your hosts off balance and the parry timings and directions rarely feeling dependable, it results in a situation where most special abilities are not worth the risk.
Some talents can be quite beneficial – for example, calling additional humans can often be a smart move, and using a magical machine gun-like ability to trade your Rarity’s health for enemy damage is generally a good choice. Plus, it’s not tough to recharge if you manage to evade an adversary for a brief moment. However, many of the talents are much less tactical. I rarely felt pleased when I summoned the feeble, stationary turret that occasionally fired at enemies, and the ability to charge up your weapon into an explosive bolt usually took too long to activate in real combat scenarios.
Although you don’t constantly battle slitterheads, there are instances when you need to employ stealth to navigate through certain areas, offering a potential twist on common themes but ultimately feeling oversimplified. You can momentarily emerge from bodies and glide invisibly around the environment, enabling you to peer around corners to dodge threats, and at times, you can’t move a body past a guard without being spotted, causing you to switch hosts for one further along. However, guards follow predictable, straightforward routes and never exhibit any unpredictable behavior. The stealth segments transform into lengthy, tiresome detours where you traverse an evident path, and if it’s not obvious, the Hyoki provides clear instructions on how to proceed.
As a gamer, I often find myself on the hunt for these elusive slitterheads, relying on my unique abilities to guide me towards their whereabouts. Sometimes, I can even momentarily take control of their vision, providing an intriguing perspective that could potentially enhance the gameplay experience if it required some brainpower. However, that’s not the case here. Instead, a luminous path illuminates my way to the enemy, and I simply follow this trail before engaging them in combat.
In the storyline, it’s the creative concept that should help the game gain an edge, however, Slitterhead fails to delve as deeply as promised. At first glance, you’re merely eliminating monstrous creatures, but eventually, you uncover a more sinister truth. Concealed Slitterheads aren’t just feeding on the brains of unsuspecting victims in dark alleys; they have infiltrated and manipulated the criminal underworld of Kowlong’s slums. They use sex workers as bait to trap their prey.
That early element of the mystery–the revelation that the head-popping, brain-slurping monster mimics had decided to do regular crime stuff while also occasionally eating their customers–was pretty disappointing. As inventive as it might be to have these fiends roaming the city, their goals and motivations can’t match their often-inventive creature designs. And while the game suggests that it means to flesh out the slitterheads themselves as the narrative unfolds, that element of the story ultimately doesn’t really go anywhere. It’s never clear exactly how the slitterheads work, what they think or feel, or what they’re all up to. They’re evil and you need to kill them; anything else is wheel-spinning.
As the narrative progresses, certain elements become more engaging, showing improvement to a certain extent. During downtime between missions, you can interact with each newly unlocked Rarity, gaining insights into them and strengthening their bond with Hyoki. When Slitterhead delves into this concept, it leads to some intriguing developments. For example, Julee, your initial Rarity, expresses discomfort about the casualties from slitherhead hunts, urging you to minimize civilian harm when feasible. This has a significant impact on Hyoki, who initially leaped off a building in human form and transformed at the last moment to avoid using stairs. In contrast, Alex, another early Rarity, is driven by personal revenge against slitherheads, disregarding anyone who gets in his way, regardless of their understanding of the situation. Over time, these characters shape Hyoki’s journey, and the story gains depth as their contrasting perspectives and ideologies collide.
Regrettably, the other seven characters lack the depth and intrigue found in Julee and Alex. While there are eight characters in total, only one beyond these two has any substantial storyline, and all others fall into stereotypical roles. These characters include a woman with skills tied to her seductive charm, a homeless man who prefers drinking over other activities, a high school nerd, an elderly lady exhibiting signs of dementia, a housekeeper whose speech often revolves around cleaning, and more. Essentially, they don’t add much value to the story. They are usually portrayed with shallow character development and uninspiring jokes that rely on their stereotypes. Apart from a few missions where they help open doors or provide minor information, they are mostly irrelevant to the plot, and their dialogues often seem aimless.
Although certain parts of the story offer intriguing developments, Slitterhead fails to convert that curiosity into an engaging gameplay experience. In contrast to its promising start, both the combat systems and level design follow a monotonous and superficial pattern. Time travel is introduced as a significant plot device early on, introducing fresh narrative concepts; however, it results in repeating the same missions, within the same locations, multiple times. Occasionally, you may be required to retrace your steps to find hidden Rarities or collectibles, or experience alternate mission outcomes, or discover new small areas by opening doors from previous runs. Nevertheless, it seems as though Slitterhead consists of only a handful of levels, offering the same dull battles and aggravating chases repetitively.
It feels like piling on at this point, but it also must be mentioned that Slitterhead is, largely, a pretty ugly game. Character faces are plastic, glossy, and largely unmoving, and while the slitterheads themselves are often cool-looking, since you fight a few variations on the theme over and over, they stop being visually compelling in a hurry. There’s a lot of style in the game–opening title cards carry cool graphical effects, missions end with a neat freeze-frame “To Be Continued” message, and there are times when the presentation is artfully cinematic or knowingly horrific, hinting at what the whole experience could have been like. Gameplay, though, looks 15 years out of date, and it’s bad enough to be distracting, especially when the game puts heavy emphasis on talking to characters to advance the story.
To put it simply, despite its initial appeal, Slitterhead seems quite antiquated upon closer inspection. The body-swapping combat, the RPG-style team of characters you can possess, and the monster-hunting semi-paranormal storyline are intriguing at first glance, but they quickly reveal themselves as shallow and underdeveloped. The gameplay experience often feels like a monotonous repetition of unengaging systems, set against levels that are remarkably similar, telling a story that remains confusing, with characters that feel like stereotypes straight out of a first draft. Beneath its intriguing surface, Slitterhead is unfortunately just dull and predictable – a collection of frightening-looking creatures who fail to live up to their intimidating appearance.
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2024-11-06 05:09