Slitterhead turns players into pawns in a parasitic proxy war

Keiichirō Toyama is a developer’s developer. He may not be a name you immediately recognize, like Shigeru Miyamoto or Hideo Kojima, but you probably know one of the many games he directed, such as silent Hill, sirenor Gravity rush. His latest game, Slitterheadfeels like the culmination of his nearly 30-year career so far: an action-horror stealth thriller about two warring factions of parasitic creatures vying for control of humanity’s fate. Furthermore, it’s a game where the truth is really just a matter of perspective, as you jump back and forth between several different characters in search of understanding and resolution to the game’s ongoing conflict.

In SlitterheadPlayers take on the role of a Hyoki, a nameless, disembodied being with the power to possess unsuspecting living beings and control their bodies at will. At the start of the game, you find yourself in the body of a stray dog ​​wandering the backyards of Kowlong, a fictional metropolis bathed in neon lights inspired by 90s Hong Kong, more specifically the densely populated enclave called The Walled City of Kowloon. You have no memory of who you are, what you are and how you got here.

Despite all the things you don’t know, there’s still one fact that’s sure to be etched in your mind: humanity has been infiltrated by a parasitic species of body-snatching creatures called “Slitterheads” who devour the brains of their victims before accepting them their identities. The Slitterheads are your natural enemy, so it’s up to you to hunt down and kill everyone you can find throughout the city until humanity is saved.

In order to successfully navigate the city and track down the Slitterheads, who camouflage themselves with the bodies of their prey, the player must jump between different people, possessing their bodies and suppressing their consciousness in the process. In combat, you can manipulate the blood and bones of your human hosts to create weapons to destroy your enemies and fend off oncoming attacks. If you manage to block an attack as soon as an icon appears on the screen, you will be able to block the attack and your weapon will regain its durability. If you fail to block an attack in time, or if you take too many consecutive hits while blocking, you will also lose health and your weapon may shatter, leaving you unable to counterattack for a moment.

However, you are not alone in your fight against the Slitterheads. As the game progresses, you gain allies known as “Rarities” – people who are not only able to retain their consciousness and personality while possessed by the player, but who also have special blood-based abilities, who can help them in the fight against a Slitterhead. The first rarity you encounter and recruit in the game, an aspiring actress named Julee who works at a supermarket, bears a striking resemblance to Faye Wong’s character in Wong Kar-wai’s 1994 film Chungking Express; Toyama has cited Wong’s films as one of the main inspirations for Slitterhead‘s attitude. Hyoki’s abilities when possessing Julee range from offensive powers, such as bloody claw-like claws or hurling daggers made of blood, to defensive abilities, such as restoring health or luring nearby people, to give the player the opportunity to outnumber and overwhelm his opponents. Later in the game, you’ll be given the option to assign two rarities to the same mission instead of just one, forcing you to think strategically about how you want to complement each skill in combat.

All combat encounters in Slitterhead are more or less similar: you encounter a slitterhead, alternate between dodging and blocking attacks, lash out at your enemy when their own cover is no longer guaranteed, and jump frantically between the person whose body you have just possessed and others Human hosts nearby reach back and forth to your opponent and deliver a fatal blow.

There are a number of other sub-mechanics that emerge from Slitterhead’s core gameplay loop, such as the ability to sever the opponent’s limbs to restore their health, or be temporarily disabled if one’s own limbs are severed. Bottom line: If you want to survive, you’re going to have to do a lot of jumping between bodies in the middle of a fight.

However, in combat you don’t just switch between bodies. You must use the Hyoki’s ability to possess others to traverse Kowlong and its many facets, assuming the bodies and personas of innocent bystanders and rarities alike as you uncover all of Kowlong’s secrets and put an end to the Slitterheads’ campaign against them want humanity.

One of the strangest and probably most defining mechanisms of Slitterhead is “Sight Jacking”, which allows the player to see through the eyes of a hidden Slitterhead just before it is about to attack someone. By switching back and forth between your character’s perspective and that of the Slitterhead, you must identify where a Slitterhead is based on context clues visible within its line of sight.

If you’re familiar with Toyama’s work as a developer, you’ll recognize that Sight Jacking was first introduced in 2003 siren and became an integral part of the entire Siren series. It’s through the lens of SlitterheadThe inclusion of sight jacking highlights the ethos of the game as a whole. It is the highlight of Toyama’s career to date and his first independent game since leaving Sony Interactive Entertainment following the closure of the Japan Studio in 2021. If you know that, it makes sense Slitterhead feels like a chaotic but entertaining mix of several different mechanics, stacked and connected by the ability to look through other people’s eyes: the game ultimately reads as an expression of Toyama taking stock of his career so far as an opportunity to experiment with new ideas and mechanisms that might not otherwise have been possible for him while working at Sony.

Slitterhead is a very strange game that throws about a dozen different ideas at the wall, and to the game’s credit, most of them have stood the test of time. With the exception of some occasionally tricky platforming, an inherently chaotic combat system, and a near-constant feed of tutorials that introduce new mechanics as the game progresses, the game is an engrossing hodgepodge of ideas that plays like the survival horror equivalent of the multi -Games feels. Perspective gameplay from Watch Dogs: Legion. His eccentricities may be off-putting to some players, but on the whole Slitterhead is a fun and experimental experience that only gets better with time.

Slitterhead will be released on November 8th on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC and Xbox Series X. The game was tested on PC using a pre-download code provided by Bokeh Game Studio. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These have no influence on the editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. More information about Polygon’s ethics policy can be found here.