Keiichirō Toyama is a developer’s developer. He may not be a name you know by heart like Shigeru Miyamoto or Hideo Kojima, but you’re probably familiar with one of the many games he’s directed, like Silent Hill, Sirenor Gravity rush. His latest game, Cutter headfeels like the culmination of his nearly 30-year career to date: an action-horror stealth thriller about two warring factions of parasitic creatures vying for control over the fate of humanity. Furthermore, it’s a game where truth is really just a matter of perspective, as you jump between different characters in your quest to both understand and resolve the game’s ongoing conflict.
In Cutter headplayers take on the role of a Hyoki, a nameless, disembodied entity with the power to possess unsuspecting living beings and control their bodies at will. At the start of the game, you take on the role of a stray dog wandering the alleys of Kowlong, a neon-filled fictional metropolis inspired by 1990s Hong Kong, specifically the densely populated enclave known as Kowloon Walled City. 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 remains one fact that burns into your mind with certainty: humanity has been infiltrated by a parasitic species of body-grabbing creatures known as ‘Slitterheads’, who devour the brains of their victims before taking on their identity. The Slitterheads are your natural enemy, so it’s up to you to hunt down and kill everyone you can find in the city until humanity is saved.
To successfully navigate the city and track down the Slitterheads, who disguise themselves with the bodies of their prey, the player must jump between several people, possess their bodies and suppress their consciousness in the process. During battle, you can manipulate the blood and bones of your human hosts to create weapons that allow you to defeat your enemies and block oncoming attacks. If you manage to block an attack when an icon appears on the screen, you can parry the attack and your weapon will regain its durability. Likewise, if you fail to block an attack in time, or if you take too many consecutive hits while blocking, you will lose health and your weapon may shatter, temporarily rendering you unable to counterattack. feed.
However, you are not alone in your battle against the Slitterheads. Over the course of the game 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 possess special blood-based abilities that can help them during the fight against a Cutter. 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 most important sources of inspiration for Cutter head‘s setting. Hyoki’s abilities when possessing Julee range from offensive powers, such as sprouting bloody claw-like claws or throwing daggers made of blood, to defensive abilities, such as regaining health or attracting nearby people to give the player the opportunity to outnumber and overpower 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 each specific ability to complement another in battle.
All combat encounters in Cutter head are somewhat similar: you encounter a Slitterhead, alternate between dodging and blocking attacks, peppering your enemy when his own guard is away, and frantically jumping between the human whose body you currently possess and other human hosts nearby to make sure you drop your opponent and deliver a killing blow.
There are a lot of other minor mechanics that arise from the core of Slitterhead’s gameplay loop, such as the ability to cut off your enemy’s limbs to regain health, or be temporarily disabled when your own limbs are severed. Bottom line: If you want to survive, you’re going to have to jump back and forth between bodies a lot during combat.
You don’t just switch between bodies during combat, though. You will need to use the Hyoki’s ability to possess others to traverse Kowlong and its many facets, taking over the bodies and personas of innocent bystanders and Rarities alike if you wish to uncover all of Kowlong’s secrets and put an end to the the Slitterheads’ campaign against humanity.
One of the stranger and perhaps defining mechanisms of Cutter head is ‘sight jacking’, where the player can look through the eyes of a submerged 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 intuitively sense where a Slitterhead is using contextual cues visible in their field of view.
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 a staple of the Siren franchise. It’s through the lens of Cutter head‘s integration of sight jacking which brings home the ethos of the game as a whole. It’s the pinnacle of Toyama’s career to date, as well as his first independent game since leaving Sony Interactive Entertainment following the closure of Japan Studio in 2021. Knowing that, it makes sense that Cutter head comes across as a chaotic yet entertaining mix of different mechanics, layered and connected by the power to see through other people’s eyes: the game ultimately reads as an expression of Toyama taking stock of his career so far, as well as his chance to experiment with new ideas and mechanics that he might not otherwise have been able to do while working at Sony.
Cutter head is a very strange game, one that throws a dozen different ideas against the wall, and to the game’s credit, most of them stick over time. With the exception of some sometimes finicky platforming, an inherently chaotic combat system, and a near-constant stream of tutorials that introduce new mechanics as the game progresses, the game is a compelling mash-up of ideas that feels like the survival horror equivalent of the multi-game . perspective game of Watch Dogs: Legion. The eccentricities may be a turnoff for some players, but overall Cutter head is an entertaining and experimental experience that only gets better as it goes on.
Cutter head will be released on November 8 on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on PC using a pre-release download code from Bokeh Game Studio. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions on products purchased through affiliate links. Additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy can be found here.