Stellar Blade Is Shallow And Deceptive | Review

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The Electric Underground

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Published on May 5, 2024 7:00:06 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NgX_eN3gj8

Game:

Stellar Blade (2024)

Category:

Review

Duration: 37:58

37,448 views

1,897

Stellar Blade Is Shallow And Deceptive | Review. I'll admit I bought into this game's marketing hook line and sinker. Like everyone else I was interested and excited to see a new game come out with bold sexual appeal, graphic violence, and interesting combat. I am a hardcore Team Ninja fan and I miss the 2000s era action game of Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, and Ninja Gaiden like everyone else. Stellar Blade is definitely teased and aimed at this audience with its marketing and demo.

Because there is a law that every game that is made these days needs to be influenced by Dark Souls, I wasn't naive enough to think that Stellar Blade would be pure uncut character action. I knew from playing the demo that it would have that slower more 1 versus 1 feel and pace like the souls series and I was open minded to this possibility. I do enjoy souls games especially Elden Ring.

Day 1 I bought Stellar Blade and starting playing and after a few hours it became very clear to me that I had been played by this game -- rather than the other way around. Everyone is so wrapped up around the controversy of this game's visuals and the various culture wars that somehow have attached themselves to it that sadly no one has actually bothered to review the game itself. On top of that the people who do review games -- like game journalists -- are the exact market this game is targeted towards. What Stellar Blade does is takes the skin of a real action game and then guts out everything that is inside of what makes a game good. The section immediately after the demo ends is literally a swimming section ha. Honestly I do think Stellar Blade is the case of a small and limited action with a few interesting (but unfinished) boss fights that then got mixed in with a giant sludge of empty gamification and then passed on as a full release. And none of it is accidental. Let's not forget that at that core Shift Up are Gacha games makers, not classic arcade devs like the Devil May Cry and Bayonetta teams. They are more than comfortable treating game design as casino inspired mental manipulation rather than as an art form.

I won't spoil all my thoughts about the game in the vid description but I think after the initial hype wave and culture war boost this game has received has moved on (which it always does, like Bayonetta 3) players will calm down and see that Stellar Blade is more of a brilliant act of marketing than it is game design.

Incredible thumbnail made by the master @boghogSTG

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00:00 Modern Game Design Is a Scam of Empty Engagement And Gamified Mechanics
07:53 Filler Engagement and Pretend Challenge is the New Monetization Model – Sawdust Instead of Meat.
15:15 The Misleading Marketing of Stellar Blade – This Is Not a Genuine Action Game (Or Even a Souls-Like)
17:52 Stellar Blade’s Combat Mechanics Are Heavily Restricted, Prescribed, and Shallow
25:17 The Enemy Design is Passive and Uniform. They Don’t Trap or Challenge the Player
28:15 The Boss Fights Are the Best Part of the Game and Start Fun, But Are So Static They Don’t Have Longevity.
32:00 There was a Potentially Fun Game Here if Stellar Blade Developed Its Combat More and Didn’t Crush the Player Under Bloat and Intentionally Padded Content.
33:32 Don’t Put the *Meow* On a Pedestal Fellas, Wait for a Significant Sale at Least

#stellarblade, #stellarbladereview, #sekiro

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