Stellar Blade kicks high
40 hours with Stellar Blade, PlayStation’s new game of monster combat and sexy dress-up
In 2001, a commercial for the fighting Dead or Alive 3 made the entirely plausible suggestion that some players liked the franchise because its curvaceous female combatants didn’t wear a lot of clothes.
“I only play for the fighting,” a man says, as the camera cuts to one woman stepping onto another’s face. After another cut, she assumes a fighting stance, and her breasts heave.
“I appreciate the expansive multi-tier environments, and the 16 characters with the pixel-shading bump-mapping, and the rich plot development,” he says, as the in-game camera focuses on another woman’s crotch.
“Seriously, why else would I play?”
The man next to him chimes in: “She kicks high.”
Twenty-three years later, Sony is selling its big new exclusive Stellar Blade as “a thrilling slice of razor-sharp action.” That’s true, and that’s the main reason I just played it over the last couple of weeks for nearly 40 hours (39:58:48 to be precise).
But the hook for some players—and the obstacle for me, and maybe others—is that Stellar Blade’s protagonist Eve certainly “kicks high.”
Stellar Blade is a game with exhilarating combat and a stunning world to explore. It’s also a game about dressing up a sexy woman to make her look sexier, depending on your tastes and fetishes.
Such is the experience of this extraordinarily lavish adventure from South Korean studio Shift Up, made in conjunction with Sony:
The game starts with a cinematic scene of spaceships breaching Earth’s atmosphere, only to be blasted by cannons fired from the surface. Escape pods hurtle to the ground, and out of one of them steps Stellar Blade’s Eve, a voluptuous “Angel” warrior (who a later lore page suggests might have been trained to be a “complete moron.”) As players are given control, Eve uses a sword to hack and slash through ghastly monsters.
After a scene shift, Eve explores a rainy, ruined city. The game is largely linear at this point, as Eve runs, jumps and fights down one corridor after the next. She kills more monsters, maybe finds a box that contains the first of many unlockable outfits, and then flies off to the city of Xion, where she’ll meet a sidequest mission-giver who flirts with her and another who sells her helpful combat items and an array of eyeglasses.
Then, Stellar Blade turns into a quasi-open-world game. Controlling Eve, players can explore a wasteland full of enemies to fight, hidden nooks to explore and treasures to discover. During that trek, Shift Up introduces a side-task: collecting 49 soda cans hidden throughout the game. Back at Xion, a screen lists the perks for finding the cans. Collect seven to carry more healing potions (helpful!). Collect 35 to be able to revive your character twice during battle (even better!).
Find them all, and you can dress Eve in a “nano suit,” which is Stellar Blade’s sci-fi term for lingerie.
Other unlockable outfits for Eve, given to Stellar Blade players as rewards for finishing quests or spotting remote treasures, include a bikini, multiple short skirts, several designer looks generally involving stockings or tight pants and, to be fair, a yellow sweatsuit.
There actually was a narrative justification for all this clothing at one point, Stellar Blade director and Shift Up CEO Hyung-Tae Kim recently told Game Informer, but they took it out:
“There was some kind of lore behind Eve showing a lot of interest in the costumes that were left behind on the surface of Earth. We did have that concept, and it was part of her character, but then we later decided that this doesn't really have to be shown in the game.”
Unabashed as Stellar Blade and its developers are, there is nothing new about a video game protagonist being presented as an object lust.
Back in the 1980s, Nintendo rewarded the best Metroid players with a glimpse of the most undressed version of that game’s protagonist, Samus Aran.
Stellar Blade’s approach stands out because it is delivered with some of the most advanced graphics ever seen in a video game and arrives in an era where it’s become normal for some female video game protagonists to be presented as something other than sex objects.
Stellar Blade’s opening hours feel structured for players who are here for Eve, her hotness and the joy of playing in a world replete with unlockable hair stylists and duels with busty guards.
If you’re not horny for Eve and the other ladies in the game, though, the first chapters of Stellar Blade can be rough.
The early combat may be good, but it’s simple. Exploration is clunky. The game invites players to explore its crumbling skyscrapers and fractured wasteland, but Eve’s jumping abilities are finicky.
The dialogue is stiff (tip: switch to Korean voiceover, English subtitles ASAP).
The plot’s twists are so obvious that they probably could have kept the lore about Eve’s wardrobe and excised the one where a dead solder wrote: “Are we even trying to fight monsters anymore? Or are we becoming the monsters ourselves?”
Above: A taste of Stellar Blade’s satisfying defend-and-counter combat. (Captured by Game File)
I was surprised to discover that, as the hours rolled by, Stellar Blade improved. That’s thanks to the gameplay.
Video games are, after all, most engaging not because of what you see in them but what you do in them. While part of Stellar Blade involves dressing Eve up, most of the time, you wind up running around battling monsters—and that part gets really good.
As the hours go by, Shift Up adds complexity to its combat by introducing new systems for defense and counter-attacks. Combat becomes a dance of managing special meters that can activate killer moves, while chipping away at an enemy’s balance bar or timing a counter just right to exploit a narrow opening. The game’s later enemies fight in more elaborate ways and begin to crowd you as Shift Up assumes you’re ready for stiffer challenges.
Late-game combat in Stellar Blade is also thrilling, because it is set in one jaw-dropping locale after another. The deserts, collapsed bridges, and Musk-ian “hypertubes” are stunning, as is a late game sequence set in front of one of the best in-game sunsets I’ve ever seen.
Even Xion, a city that’s full of characters who initially generate eye-rolls, proves more interesting by the end, as a series of interlocking sidequests helps flesh the characters out. Turns out there’s a reason there’s a sad man standing in a room full of teddy bears. Who knew?
If AAA games are about anything, it’s that they’re full of things. They can’t just be a combat game (there’s some elaborate and commendable shooting sequences in the game, too). They can’t just be full of thrilling battles (there’s a lot of tedious block-pushing, as well). They can’t just be about sexy lady dress up.
There are reasons to like Stellar Blade more than the outfits, otherwise I wouldn’t have played for 40 hours.
Or do I just sound like those guys in the commercial at this point?
No comment on the game’s bump-mapping.
Note: Stellar Blade, which teases a sequel at the end, concludes as a fascinating project that furthers some key trends:
After last year’s well-regarded Korean-developed Lies of P for consoles and PC and now Stellar Blade, the biggest Korean-made game published by a console platform-holder, what’s the next big step for the country’s robust mobile and PC development scene, as it warms to console development?
Stellar Blade is the third Sony-published game in 2024 from a non-Sony developer (see also: Arrowhead’s Helldivers II and Team Ninja’s Rise of the Ronin). All had solid-to-strong reviews, and all are signs of Sony working more productively with outside teams, rather than just its acclaimed in-house groups. More to come?
Item 2: In brief…
😲 Microsoft reported gaming revenue of $1.8 billion for the first three months of 2024, largely thanks to the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
Hardware revenue was down 31% compared to the start of 2023, thanks to lower sales of Xbox consoles. But game and services revenue was up 62%—61 points of that from Activision Blizzard.
🤔 Popular PC game creation tool Garry’s Mod is deleting 20 years’ worth of Nintendo-related uploads, at the Mario-maker’s apparent request, VGC reports.
🌨 BlizzCon, the popular festival for all things Blizzard, isn’t happening in 2024 but could return in the future, Blizzard has announced. No reason cited other than the decision being made “after careful consideration over the last year.”
🥽 Meta says it will license out its virtual reality operating system—now called Meta Horizon OS—to third-party companies, including ASUS’s Republic of Gamers, Lenovo and Xbox. That last one doesn’t exactly mean an Xbox VR headset is coming. Meta notes it is working with Microsoft “ to create a limited-edition Meta Quest, inspired by Xbox.”
Meta’s Reality Labs division, which makes its VR/AR headsets and experiences, generated $440 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2024, but the division posted a loss of $3.8 billion.
⏱ Speedrunner Aleksey “4shockblast” Kamenev has cleared Doom 2’s first level in under five seconds (watch here), breaking a record that’s been untouchable for 26 years. YouTuber Karl Jobst broke down how it happened.
Item 3: The week ahead
Monday, April 29
A new IGN x ID@Xbox indie game showcase is streamed (at 1pm ET); queue more clamoring for Silksong (which probably won’t appear).
Thursday, May 2
Virtual scuba hangout Endless Ocean: Luminous (Switch), 19th century Russian nun adventure Indika (PC, and later in the month for PlayStation, Xbox), mountain-climbing game Surmount (PC, Switch) and medical/bioweapon management simulator Undead Inc. (PC) are released.
What’s this Hard R controversy I’m reading about? Apparently linked to a racial slur?
I’m like what?