Slitterhead

• Genre: Action
• Spoiler Free Review: A little bit of spoilers concerning how mechanics tie into the story.
• Time Played: 19 Hours
• Too Short/Long: Just a little too long, maybe because I wanted to 100% it and had to replay some sections, but also, it has you kind of replay some sections anyway. But really, it's only a couple hours too long tops, minor complaint.
• Soundtrack: The soundtrack is pretty good. I had uploaded the soundtrack prior to playing because I wasn't sure when I was really going to get into it, and any time a track was playing from this, it has my wife say "What is this?" out of interest. The stylings of Akira Yamaoka are clearly represented.
• Why I played: I honestly forget what made me want to play this. The gruesome gorefest it is makes it very near a horror game. It's definitely horror-themed, but it's not a "horror" game in the traditional sense, it doesn't try to scare you(maybe gross you out) and you're generally too powerful to build up tension anyway.
• Did I cry: Nah.
• Jank: It's a little janky as it feels like a 20 year old game.
• Difficulty: It's mostly pretty easy, but toward the end I do feel the game really ramps it up.
• Recommend to others: It's a weird one. I'd recommend it to people who want a simpler and more linear experience than most modern games provide. If you're nostalgic for a different time in gaming other than just that defined by pixels or low-res textures. As long as you don't have a weak stomach.

It's not the first time this year, and looking at what I want to play in the near future, might not be the last time this year, I play some PS2/3 ass new game. It feels weird to describe an era in which I was almost, if not a full adult for as something nostalgic, but nobody saw anything unusual about SNES, PSX, N64, etc being nostalgic in 2015, or even before that. Shoot I feel like SNES games were being called retro as early as the mid 2000s. By that standard, the earliest PS4 titles are "retro"

Slitterhead is a new game, less than a year old, but it feels like something made ~20 years ago. Like it's just been sitting in a vault, all but completed, and since it was 2025 they made sure it matched todays specs, to a degree anyway, and then released it. It's not always the prettiest game, and I don't say that just because of the grotesque imagery.

Everything from the presentation, the music, sound effects, UI, controls, mechanics, it just all feels like something that could easily be a late PS2 game, or early PS3 game.

I don't say this as a bad thing, it just makes me nostalgic for an era I didn't yet realize I could be nostalgic for. I've played PS2/3 games in the past year, but they didn't make me feel so nostalgic for the era and a certain way of making games that has fallen off. When the bigger publishers were still being really experimental with how they presented games.

Now we have so much that I can't really complain, because game development is so much more accessible, there are tons of independent creators making anything you can imagine, but the way the larger developers making games has become a bit more homogenized. Arguably you can even say that with independent developers too, but there are just so many, there is always someone going against the grain, or just not even near the grain.

And it's not even that this game is SO different. It's not, as I say it feels reminiscent of that era, it's for a reason. It feels familiar. Just familiar in a way I haven't felt for awhile. Like they understand how to make a 3d character action game now where the combat is really good. But they don't know what to do with that information.

We can't make it just like God of War, too cinematic, too big of a budget. We don't want to make a linear game that  every other action game is, just mission-to-mission and once you're done mission 18 the game is over. Open worlds don't exist for this type of game yet, that's reserved for adventure games, rpgs, maybe some platformers, and games with cars and shooting, not 3d action platformers with an emphasis on story telling and mood setting. But maybe we can have... semi-open areas? Even though most areas are linear and combat usually takes place in a room. Using the streets will be cool sometimes, like in those two Yakuza games nobody played. If we're jumping around to various locations over different times, how do we present the narrative between missions? We can just throw some conversational montage together, we don't have to have two characters directly talking to each other face to face. Players will get what is happening through context.

It feels kinda put together via inspiration to do something different centered around a specific mechanic, but then semi-slapped together to work within the limitations. Limitations that defined aspects of games in prior eras, but are nearly inconceivable in todays approach to game design.

Slitterhead was a decent game. I liked it. It's bares mentioning that it's pretty much the closest thing to a Parasyte video game there is without breaking any trademarks, with the visual style leaning more Parasite Eve. It's combat was fun, jumping around in bodies was fun, and it's not the first game I played with that as a primary mechanic this year. Managing health through aggroing enemies as civilians, in order to save other civilians, and use some powers in the meantime made for a nice change of pace from using one of three health potions I restock on every time I hit a check point. I would have appreciate more variety in objectives though. 

The story was interesting enough to keep me invested, at least how it was presented. Like the other body hopping game I played, it's more about the intrigue of the mystery of why things are happening, rather than the payoff of learning it. It's also kind of funny that it wasn't JUST the body hoping aspect of the game, and the fact you have a groundhog-day like aspect where you're replaying the same set of days. To a degree anyway, the days aren't so clearly defined in Slitterhead, but the fact it exists in both this and Amedama and I played them a month apart is just kind of an interesting coincidence.