Fashion
Hostile Takeovers in a World of Grotesquerie
Slitterhead’s nightmare alley is easier to navigate unnoticed thanks to the player’s power to possess the bodies of others.
The terror-filled indie Slitterhead is notable because it is made by Keiichiro Toyama, the creator of the revered Silent Hill survival horror series. Toyama and his Bokeh Game Studio have produced a bloody, gruesome, sometimes indecipherable tale set within a seedy 1990s-era Kowlong, a fictional city based on a district of Hong Kong. In the game, the slum nights are long, denizens heave into trash cans and neon signs advertise massages.
The game’s opening contains moments that are among the grossest I have watched this year. Flies buzz near a trash container into which a human body has been stuffed. There’s a hole where a man’s right eye should be. An investigator shines a flashlight there and the camera travels deep into the ocular remains, exposing yellow-brownish matter. Repulsive as it is, this particular moment is an example of horror as an art form. After the shock abates, a question remains. Who or what made this hole in someone’s head?
To help players unravel Slitterhead’s mysteries, a key gameplay mechanic is quickly revealed. Slitterhead is all about possession. As you begin, you’re the unseen flying Spirit. With the flourish of a rotating ring of fire, you possess a dog right though its barking mouth. The short-haired mutt, now with glowing red eyes, allows you to move furtively through the city’s dirty alleyways.
While trotting along, I listened in on T-shirted men talking about terrible killings. People’s brains have been sucked out by Slitterheads. “Bad for business,” complained one depressed smoker.
With enthusiasm, I possessed people hundreds of times during this 15-hour escapade. If a fence barred the way, I could focus on a human beyond it and invade his or her body. Slitterheads, who are disguised as people and can’t be possessed, aren’t zombies. Rather, they turn into hideous creatures that sometimes reminded me of the Bloater from The Last of Us Part II.
Instead of being fungus-ridden like the infected in that game, these monsters might have globules of guts on their heads. In an odd but effective design choice, one looked like its head was growing green bananas. Others are ugly mantises with octopus tentacles, or skeletons that have mutated to outsize proportions and from which flesh-colored, brain sucking probes appear. They scream like angry elephants, trumpeting and roaring.
