Fillerhead.
Everything leading into Slitterhead looked incredibly promising. Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama was at the helm, Akira Yamaoka was brought in as its composer, and the pair would collaborate on a new horror game under his new studio, Bokeh Game Studio. The initial trailer had a great deal of action to it, but also a level of horror and atmosphere that looked incredibly compelling. While some of those elements exist here, Slitterhead often relies on unnecessary filler between its action and horror elements that cause the whole package to feel incredibly lacking and unfortunately, not even remotely scary.
The premise of Slitterhead is a solid one. You play as a Hyoki, a spirit that can embody various hosts as it pilots its way through a 90s-inspired Hong Kong. You are tasked with hunting down preying mantis-like monsters called Slitterheads that take on the forms of the general public. These creatures could be anywhere, anyone, and you’ll ally yourself with a small group of people who are gifted tremendous power as you save them from death.
While this all sounds intriguing, especially as the Slitterheads are often these grotesque creatures that have transformations that will make your skin crawl, the premise only goes so far. Slitterhead clearly has a small budget, and this is felt in its visuals, its voice work, and especially the trivial moments that break up its gameplay. Add that on top of revisiting the same four or five locations over and over, caught up in a time travel narrative, and you start to feel the repetition sink in even as little as two or three hours in. Eventually, you are doing the same basic missions over and over, constantly killing the same villains, and its cast never feels fleshed out to have them matter in the moment. In fact, half of its main cast doesn’t factor in the story at all.
Slitterhead’s main gimmick is being able to bounce around from host to host. This is something you’ll engage with throughout the entire game. From its chase sequences to its stealth scenarios to general combat and exploration. It’s a system that works well and is used to pretty decent effect. It’s not revolutionary as that sort of mechanic has been touched upon before, but its use throughout the story reminded me of Watch Dogs: Legion, where you would rely on regular folk to do the dirty work, such as having someone’s grandma taking out countless opposing forces.
In fact, it’s not an odd comparison really as while the Hyoki cannot attack on its own and requires a host in order to use its power, they will have to rely on the common citizen to do the deed. While you can jump around to nearly anyone, you’ll have a group of eight individuals who are far more compatible hosts for this spirit, and all but two of them are rescued from the brink of death. In fact, one of them just shows up and is aware of this spirit. It’s strangely not even touched upon and they are just there. It honestly feels like there is a whole mission or cutscene that was cut that would have introduced how they are suddenly part of the team. Sure, I could have missed something, but after doing a bit of research, nah.. he just appears and is part of the team; it’s very weird. However, to even call this a team means they hang out or work together, but the interactions between them all are barely present. Sure, we get moments that reference that they have had interactions, but we rarely see these.
Controlling these special hosts, which are called Rarities, as well as your common folk, requires that you use their blood to pull off special attacks. The standard bystander will have a smaller pool of lifeforce, whereas your rarities will have significantly more as well as better weapons, stats, and more fleshed-out skills. Each host has the ability to pull from the spilled blood on the ground to heal, so you are always within reach of gaining some back. However, the most beneficial way to survive is to simply just swap to a new host and continue on with whatever is you were doing.
For the most part, you are usually the only one attacking your target. While you can pick up to two rarities per mission, the second choice often holds back to revive fallen victims instead of getting involved. Anita, a sex worker you’ll recruit as a rarity, has a skill that can not only summon more humans to appear, but she can command a small force of them to attack as a group. Now, while that can be beneficial, your own strikes can damage the humans just as much as the threats that lurk around and the Slitterheads that you’ll generally summon that army for. So, it’s wise to let them do their thing and take advantage of the Slitterhead when they are not focused on you. That said, having a low casualty rate will aid in unlocking the game’s true ending.
Each rarity has their own unique skills, allowing you to make a dream team of two characters, even if there are no team up attacks or anything to really create a team dynamic. I usually rocked Anita and Julee as I liked their overall skills and felt they have a good synergy to those skills. I can use Anita to summon a bunch of humans to send after the Slitterheads and then use Julee to revive them as they die. While you’ll have eight rarities to choose from, I rarely found a need to bring some of the others unless the mission depended on it. In fact, Julee, Anita, and Alex, are the only characters that have anything to do with the story as Edo, Tri, Doni, and the others felt like padding to give us a bigger cast. Ultimately, while Betty is pretty decent to use, I found Blake to be a worse Alex and barely present in the story. In fact, I don’t know of a single moment in the story that really featured him.
While there is variety amongst the rarities, the Slitterheads and the leg worms they summon all function about the same. The Slitterheads are the star of the show and many of them look incredibly cool, but functionally, they all pretty much do the same thing. Each has more or less the same attacks, and you can often abuse the parry system and host jumping to rarely let them touch you. Honestly, the only times I really was hit hard or close to death was due to the camera and the inconsistent (and largely unreadable) target system, which resets upon each host jump. If anything was the true villain of the piece, it would be the camera. It’s a shame that you cannot pull it back a tad as it can really feel far too close to you.
The combat system is pretty loose and can feel clumsy at times, especially given the limited moves and attacks each character has. The parry system, which I mentioned previously, has you timing a parry attack to build up a slowdown meter to freely attack your foe. It works well and the indicators seem fair and well handled. While each rarity has their own weapon, from claws, spears, and swords, I did find that Edo and Tri basically had the same overall style, with Blake and Alex sharing some similarities as well. Regardless, the skills that each character has further define them and offer at least one tool that is fairly good to have in most situations. That said, I still found my favorite characters in Anita, Julee, and Alex, with Doni and Betty being stand-in’s when needed.
Now, while those skills can provide you a particular way to play through Slitterhead, you’ll find that only a few skills actually function well enough to be reliable to what the game actually wants from you. For example, while there are characters that have projectiles, traps, or setting up a turret, they really don’t do much damage as opposed to just running up and smacking them with whatever weapon you are wielding. This causes the gameplay to be more about just wailing away on your foe than relying on the depth presented across the cast. Now, that isn’t always the case as some skills can provide success, but for the bulk of this 10-15 hour jaunt, the majority is just hacking and slashing and host-swapping to continue the hitting.
Apart from combat, you’ll engage in stealth and chases. These happen so often that each mission is either combat, stealth, or chase-focused, and often a mixture of at least two. These moments happen so often in the same places that it starts to feel like I was just playing the same missions over and over. Stealth is underbaked and often in locations solely built for it, and the camera never cooperated with the chases that you’ll lose your target in no time. While there is a scent tracker that is functional, it causes the frantic gameplay to come to a screeching halt as you walk through alleys and try to find your target by following a blue glowing aura that works like a compass. There is a way to see through their eyes to catch a glimpse of where they are, but the tracker makes that pretty much pointless as you can just follow it to the destination. Had the game solely relied on those clues, then playing through the same locations to eventally recognize certain streets and landmarks would have been an essential part of the experience.
If I had to criticize Slitterhead further with its level design it is that most missions have you set to kill a specific Slitterhead and results in a chase, a follower protecting your prey and then you engage in a fight with them, only to defeat them and continue the chase. This sums up nearly every mission that is combat-focused. While you’ll have slight diversions in the military forces, you still follow that same “henchman” sub-boss shtick over and over again.
The story has you navigating a few locations within Hong Kong as you attempt to kill a variety of Slitterheads that show up and start killing a lot of people. You’ll start to build up your cast of rarities as you find them and work through the story that is largely built around Julee, who wonders if there is a way Slitterheads and people can coexist, and Alex, who is on a revenge arc, and wants every single one of them dead, even those who embody the forms of children. This begins to have its toll on the Hyoki who begins to be affected by each other’s influence. While I wasn’t terribly engaged by the story at first, the conflict that arises from this issue does lead to some interesting places, even if the execution is a bit muddled and bit unclear by the game’s initial ending.
Between each mission are a series of visual novel-like moments where the spirit, who has been named Night Owl after a brief conversation with Julee, converses with each character. Some of these conversations are plot-specific, but others are just general chit-chat. Some of these talks will have you making choices, with a few of them revisited once you have more information. Some of these open up after certain conversations have been had meaning you’ll likely spend around four to five minutes engaged with these between missions. Once those are done, you’ll usually unlock a mission unless it states that you need to find a missing rarity and that usually means you have to replay a level to find them. Thankfully, once you unlock them, you can quit that mission and not lose any progress.
Missions and collectibles, which are fragments of Night Owl’s memories, are how you’ll earn skill points. These are spent across the cast as you upgrade their main weapon, skills, and then passive things like more health, weapon durability, or being able to instantly attach a severed limb once it has been lopped off. Each character with have their own passives to level up, but I was disappointed that the weapon and skill upgrades are largely just two basic upgrades. Granted, you are spending points across eight characters, but even by the time of wrapping credits, I had nearly 4 of them maxed out. Had each upgrade visually affected the weapons or even diverse skill trees to further enhance them, would have made the combat deeper than the basic offering we have.
Hidden around each location are shrines. These aid in offering costume pieces, as some missions do as well, but these are basically boss fights that don’t really change up how combat normally occurs. While these are fine enough, one particular shrine has you fighting a fully-grown Slitterhead in a very small room. Given that the camera is so zoomed in and that you rarely have the space to move, this challenge was harder than the game’s final encounter, and all for a new mask for Anita. I do have to say that while the costume pieces are fairly ok, each character has some sort of need to hide their identity, and it usually has them just wearing a scarf, mask, or wrapping a sweater around their head, despite their clothes and colored hair clearly giving them away. It’s a weird narrative add-in that makes no sense at all.
I mentioned before that Slitterhead clearly had a small budget and it shows. While the main cast has slightly better models than the average civilian, they all tend to look like plastic puppets regardless. This is even more apparent when a cutscene triggers and you are still inside the body of a regular dude after defeating a Slitterhead. Most NPCs are rarely more detailed than the fans you see in Madden. Sadly, environments don’t fare any better as they are on par with most of the games we saw last generation. Given this game is on the PS4 as well, I am not surprised as the now decade-plus console can clearly run anything this game throws at it.
While there is a decent amount of voice acting across the game, there are only a few moments that have enough of it to really see the investment they made. Characters have second-long quips to start their dialogue, but only a few characters actually have more than a couple lines recorded. With Akira Yamaoka being involved, I had expected a pretty decent score, but apart from the soothing music that plays during the map screen, which is very good I’ll add, nothing else really stands apart from the game in my mind.
Slitterhead’s issues run pretty deep as it’s a repetitive experience that doesn’t really play around in its horror aspects nearly as much as it should. Slitterheads run from you as opposed to the player being stalked or hunted. The game shows its hand very early and never changes up its combat, exploration, or mission design. There are genuinely maybe four unique missions here that then get repeated countless times in favor of a time travel story of “how do we fix it this time” that doesn’t pay off. There are interesting ideas here that could translate to a more improved sequel, but nothing here indicates that this game will do well enough to even warrant one.
Developer - Bokeh Game Studio.
Publisher - Bokeh Game Studio. Released - November 5th, 2024. Available On - PS4/PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC. Rated - (M) - Blood and Gore, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Language, Partial Nudity, Strong Sexual Content. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X/S. Review Access - Slitterhead was purchased by the reviewer for the purpose of this review.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.