Slitterhead review

Slitterhead is the first title to come out of Bokeh Game Studio, a development team founded by Keiichiro Toyama, known for creating Silent Hill and Siren series. I expected it coming from the man responsible for one of the most iconic horror franchises ever Slitterhead to be at least one of two things: 1) really scary or 2) have a really messy and compelling story – neither of which is present. After spending nearly 20 hours in the game, I unfortunately walked away feeling disappointed, bored, frustrated, and genuinely unengaged with the package that was laid out in front of me.

Slitterhead puts you in a disembodied spirit that can possess almost any NPC during the semi-linear story missions in a fictional Chinese city called Kowlong. You can float, float around and then jump into most bodies, which can be used as puppets to fend off the enemies known as Slitterheads. These are monsters that you fight throughout the game, and they don't have much variety.

You fight either worm-like Slitterheads, baby forms that can be taken down in one hit, regular Slitterheads that are pretty hard to take down, and then Slitterheads will sometimes turn into boss-like, Resident Evil-like monstrosities that require more effort to kill. And when you fight these enemies, you can bounce around from NPC to NPC and use blood weapons. All NPCs will have the same type of moves to use, but if you switch to another NPC during battle, that character will receive a small health and damage bonus.

For a large part of the game you spend time using these NPCs in battle, but they are not fun to play. Instead of the melee punches feeling and sounding satisfying, it feels like you're fighting a wet sponge. The attacks are slow, the moves can be wonky and stilted, the NPCs don't look good, and worst of all, you don't get any opportunities to learn new moves.

What makes the fight feel a little better though are the rarities. The Rarities are the main cast of playable characters in the Slitterhead. You start with a young girl named Julee, who essentially has Wolverine blades, and then, as you progress through the story, you unlock the rest. Each one not only has different melee weapons, but they also have special skills and effects. You can usually choose two different rarities per quest (sometimes a quest will have a mandatory rarity, but only if the story has something to do with a certain rarity).

Most of them have unique and fun powers to check out – one is an old lady who fights with a stick and another, a man named Edo, has a paper bag over his head and fights like a Street Fighter character. Unfortunately, while Rarities are cool in concept, they don't make combat encounters better. Since you get them throughout the story, the last ones to join your team rarely get any screen time, making them feel less memorable than the first batch. They also don't feel special or add much to the overall story except for two or three of them (that's eight in total). The main story has no focus on the others, and it seems like the game could have cut 75% of them.

And for some strange reason, one of the Rarities joins your party halfway through the game without explanation. He's a military guy, but the game doesn't explain why he can fuse with the spirit and why he's there in the first place. And there will be two or three times throughout the story where you won't be able to get any new quests until a new Rarity is found.

Previous quests you've completed will show if there's evidence of a rarity to be found, so you'll have to replay stages until you figure out where to find the rarity in question. And the worst part is that the game doesn't telegraph that to the player. It barely gives any hints on how to get past the progression block, so I had to replay levels multiple times with different characters and try different things to find the rarity. There are also some when you need the final Rarity towards the end of the game, but none of the levels have a Rarity for you to find. Turns out there's a certain collectible you need to find to unlock the final Rarity and beat the game.

The assignment structure i Slitterhead is pretty linear, you fall into a different part of this fictional version of 80s/90s China for each one. Without spoiling anything, you get the power to travel through different parts of the story, leading to some episodes being repeated.

While each mission mostly takes part in different neighborhoods, by the time you get to the middle of the game, you've seen it all. You go through the same alleyways over and over, chase Slitterheads on the same rooftops over and over, and there's not much that makes the settings stand out. There's not much to look at, and apart from a few hidden Slitterhead battles and the odd currency patch, there's no reason to jump back into the game after the credits roll.

The body-swapping mechanic of Slitterhead and being able to control these completely different characters in an Asian city full of scary monsters sounds appealing, but unfortunately this horror/action doesn't raise any ghosts at all and, frankly, it's not fun to play. If you're someone who likes a slightly cheesy brawler that feels like it came out of the PS2/360 era, there might be some value here, but otherwise it's hard to recommend this one.

Slitterhead launches on November 8 for PC, PS4, PS5 and XSX/S. Game Rant was provided with a PC code for this review.