Silent Hill Creator’s New Game Receives Weak Reception

‘Slitterhead’, Bokeh Studio's first release, has been met with a disappointing reception from critics. It currently has a weak 65 rating on Opencritic and a mere 26% recommendation rate. Unfortunately, this action horror release seems to have missed the mark in more ways than one. Dull, repetitive, and tedious words crop up in many reviews and are exactly the opposite of what you’d want from a hack-and-slash experience.

Image by Bokeh Game Studio

The game sees you playing as a ‘Hyoki’, who is tasked with hunting down monstrous beings hiding in plain sight as humans. An interesting concept (especiaally when you consider that your abilities involve possessing humans to battle these monstrous entities) but, unfortunately, it seems that the potential was squandered here. Gamespot gave the game a 4/10- lamenting how it quickly became boring. They said the following:

“Though it can be strange and fascinating, Slitterhead ultimately feels empty thanks to dull and frustrating combat and repetitive missions.”

Similarly, Metro GameCentral were not impressed. They said the following in their very harsh 3/10 review:

“A deeply flawed attempt to combine survival horror with Devil May Cry style action, that tries to do a dozen things at once and succeeds at none of them.”

Image by Bokeh Game Studio

Bokeh Studios was created by Keiichiro Toyama, Sato Kazunobu and Junya Okura, who worked on famous horror legends like Silent Hill and Siren together. With Slitterhead, they wanted to take body horror elements and combine them with hack-and-slash combat in an intriguing dark setting. With its lacklustre exploration and battling mechanics, however, this release doesn’t seem to live up to its expectations. If the trailers and promotional material still look intriguing to you, however, you can pick this one up when it releases later this week on November 8th.