Slitterhead is cool, at times, and it is the most infuriating game I’ve played through, maybe ever. A time-traveling spirit uses human bodies to fight brain-sucking monsters. Some humans are special and get cool A.F. powers. Over roughly 13 hours you’ll fight the same few enemy types thousands of times. Rip your hair out as you see the same levels from mostly the same perspective 3, 4, no let’s do 5 times! Slitterhead has some cool-as-hell sections, wasted by gameplay and level design out of the early 2000s. I wanted to like this title early on, but this is not going to be a positive review.
The Setting
Without spoiling too much, Slitterhead takes place in a world besieged by brain-sucking monsters. You’ll awaken as a spirit that has lost its memories. Quickly you’ll start possessing dogs and people as you start to put the pieces back together. Slitterhead isn’t a bad-looking game. The character models look like an OG Xbox or PS2 title that has been emulated and is running at 4k/60.
Most of the game takes place in back alleys with small obstructions that your blood-powered acrobatic characters can’t mantle over. Oh, I forgot, when the spirit possesses a body they get blood powers, which are cool as shit. There are several special humans that you’ll come across throughout the campaign who are your main characters.
You can bring two of them out at a time. You’ll still find yourself jumping between bodies non-stop during most missions. These missions find you use incredibly basic mechanics to follow specific paths on how to reach your goals. There are basic, easy stealth sections. Many chase ones, literally in the 50s or higher. As well as hundreds of the same few fights to do over, and over, and over.
Slitterhead is a $50 title. The time loop mechanic is used to extend what could have been a 5 or 6-hour-long title. They don’t want us to spoil the plot, so I can’t say much about the setting other than it’s in a version of *Hong Kong. One that has a ton of sex workers and mafia members. This is a horror-focused title, with body horror being the name of that game. Lots of incredibly long necks that sprout gross arms and chomped-off noggins can be found.
The Gameplay
Slitterhead is a 3rd person combat platformer. You’ll press the X button a few million times as you fight the same 3 or 4 main enemy types. You’ll get 3 unique special moves tied to the right trigger per special character. Even basic pedestrians have a few moves they can pull off. These moves require blood, your main HP source, and hitting enemies makes pools of it land on the ground.
Holding the right bumper sucks up the yummy red juice off the ground to heal you back up. You’ll hold the left trigger or click in the right stick to lock on to characters. Though I mostly used that during boss fights. It got in the way during fights featuring multiple foes. A jumps and B is a powerful dodge. You’ll use the right stick in UI-indicated directions to parry.
None of it feels great, some of it feels good, and parts of it feel terrible. It is a stiff game, that wants specific moves to get through specific areas. It’s highly limiting in a way games used to be. There is tight corridor-level design used to mask how tiny play spaces actually are. You’ll use the Y button to do “blood jumps” to specific anchor points. These let you jump 50+ feet in the air which feels pretty darned good. It’s the only time the platforming does.
The Repetition
Exploration, gameplay, and storytelling are all a mix of OK to terrible. In between each mission in the inter-mission window, you’ll have conversations with your main characters. 99% of the game is not voiced, instead having random “ohhs” and “hmmms” yelled out hundreds of times as you see disembodied heads floating on the sides of the screen. I like the overall look of the UI, even if it isn’t the snappiest.
There are upgrades for all of your main characters, and everything has just enough lag to it that it was immediately frustrating. You’ll get skill points for completing missions or finding your spirit’s memories floating in various levels. There are old grannies to talk to, and more characters to find, and none of that is optional.
Where it fell apart
It took me hours to figure out exactly how to unlock all of the characters so that I could continue the story. The old lady conversations are a must, and finding the last few main characters felt more like luck on my 10th run through their levels than it did skill. One character just randomly unlocked for me. I have no clue why he did or who he was, and by the time I rolled credits, I still had no clue what had happened. It wasn’t the worst type of bug, but it wasn’t a good one.
Worst of all though, were the last 4 or so hours of the game. It had already been repeating the same types of missions in the same few levels. Those last hours of time loops were the same fights, with the same characters, in the same levels for nearly five hours straight.
Whenever you complete a mission it says, “to be continued” and it happened 4 times in a row where I was shocked it wasn’t the end of the game. The game lost a full two points for me throughout its second half, as the already thin amount of content on offer felt like an inch of peanut butter spread over a mile. To end on something positive, the soundtrack had a few great tracks to it. Voice acting, when it happened, wasn’t bad.
Wrapping Things Up
Slitterhead has a weirdly intriguing plot and cool art design wasted by endless repetition and outdated game design. There’s something here, and I found Slitterhead pulling me in during the first few hours. It was the last 80% of the game that was a dreadful experience. At $50, if you truly love horror then it might be worth checking out on a deep sale.
Slitterhead
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Solid art design
- A few bangers on the OST
CONS
- Controls poorly
- Over the top repetition
- Feels straight out of 2003
- Wastes an interesting premise
- Ending makes no sense
