There will be blood.
From the creator of Silent Hill and Forbidden Siren comes a game that spits in the eye of survival horror. Slitterhead is a bloody ridiculous action slaughterhouse. True, there’s tons of Cronenbergian monstrosities to battle, and lots of unpleasant things happen to people’s constantly popping-off heads. But this is pure schlocky pulpy nonsense, with few genuine scares to be had in a game where you lob spears made of gore at beasties and try not to giggle at ‘blood’ being the prefix to practically every other word in its vocabulary.
You play a mysterious floating entity with no memories (of course) who can possess almost any NPC in the game. You spend your initial moments bouncing between bodies until someone down a dark alley greets you with their head exploding, revealing your first Slitterhead underneath—the game’s monstrous antagonists. They’re gloriously horrible, especially when they reveal their massive final forms, as if the designers saw a typical Resident Evil boss battle and thought ‘hmm, far too understated and subtle’.
Luckily, you can fight back with any NPC you possess. Less luckily, most people are easily slaughtered by Slitterheads in just a few hits. So you’re encouraged to constantly hop between civilians, with a brief damage bonus each time you do. But if you die three times before escaping your host body, it’s game over. Slitterhead is no open world game, but its large NPC-packed levels are still a great showcase for this impressive body-hopping tech, bringing back fond memories of the criminally-underplayed Driver San Francisco.
Whacking a Slitterhead in the back, watching it turn its understandably-angry attention onto you, then leaping into another body behind it and hitting it in the back again is a delightfully cheap treat. NPCs can also lob a sort-of blood grenade, though ripping vital fluids out of your own body understandably comes with a steep health cost. Fortunately you soon meet Julee, a ‘rarity’ who unlocks a host of new powers when you first possess her.
Julee can grow huge Wolverine-style claws out of her hands made out of (you guessed it!) surprisingly solid blood. Rarities are made of slightly sturdier stuff, and are discovered at a decent clip, keeping combat varied with new powers. Anita’s Devil Scent summons a crowd of NPCs, and that pairs perfectly with her Mind Hack that makes them all go on the attack, no pesky possession required. Blake’s Bloody Shot is essentially an OP minigun firing blood bullets, and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank it for helping me get this review done on time.
