A teenage boy's idea of ​​the perfect video game

shift up

There was a time in the not-so-recent past when gaming was considered a hobby primarily aimed at teenage boys.long ago tomb raiderLara Croft became a major magazine insert, E3 gaming trade shows became more famous for the babes in the booths than the actual games, and catering solely to the interests of adolescents was the norm in the industry. Progress has been made in recent years, and despite a vocal minority's backlash, advances in technology have allowed women in video games to actually look like real women, rather than gun-toting cartoonish facsimiles of Jessica Rabbit. It now looks like this.

But every now and then a game comes along that ignores modern sensibilities and utilizes all of the best technology in the industry for a clear vision. “What do you do when you get excited about video games?”

PlayStation's latest action title, stella blade It's that game (released on April 26th). There are many other games out there that steal almost every major idea from the most popular release of this era, and anime as a whole, creating perhaps the most frenetic game since. dead or alive I gave up on the fighting genre and became a beach volleyball sim.

Will it make a bad game? not much. Video games are not monolithic. Just like in movies and other media, it needs to be an open palette. But does the gratuitous, male-gaze focus help make it a good game? It will certainly be hilarious.

basic plot stella blade It feels like a normal anime story. Earth was destroyed by a creature named Nativa. As we know, humanity has nearly become extinct on Earth after countless apocalypses, and those who survive live primarily in off-world colonies. To wage war against the grotesque monsters of the Earth's surface, the Mother Sphere, society's vaguely defined leader and deity, recruits an all-female paratrooper force, a very sexy group called the Angels, to clean up the mess. Send in a platoon of super soldiers. Of course, they are instantly annihilated, but only Eve, the player-controlled protagonist, survives.

Let's get this out of the way. Eve is not a character. She is a vassal onto whom excessive sexual violence is projected. Her characterization fluctuates greatly depending on what scenario she is placed in. Sometimes she becomes a completely helpless fawn, completely lacking in her agency and in need of rescuing. Other times, she's an unstoppable killing machine, defying gravity and displaying the hideous innards of behemoths without breaking a sweat. Sometimes she gets through everything and gets grumpy. To others, she is a nurturing savior-like figure who helps unite humanity by resolving daily struggles.

In other works, these dichotomies would create contradictory and human characters. After all, humans are complicated. Eve is different. Her POV is always driven by what is most expedient to advance the current scene, and her only consistent characteristic is that she is always naive and has nothing written right in front of her. I'm interested in the central mystery that lies ahead. Also, she is half-naked by law.

Since its release, Eve has become the latest in a string of video game heroines whose over-the-top designs have been the subject of controversy.A comparison was made bayonetta and nier automata2B, a sexy witch and a sexy android respectively. There's a logical reason why 2B has no personality at all (she's a robot), but the comparison to Bayonetta is unfair. Ridiculously designed, Bayonetta is not only sexy, but sexual. She owns her appearance and mannerisms in a way that exudes self-respect. Eve is literally a blank slate, a doll to play with and dress up.

It's inherently sad, but at least it creates an unintentionally amusing cacophony throughout the play. stella blade. Checking all the boxes of modern game design, this game mimics almost every type of action beat from famous games, but with boobs.In the middle of the game, there is a sequence ripped directly from uncharted 2 There, Eve must escape from the dangling vehicle as debris and cargo rains down on her surroundings.where uncharted Making this one of the most harrowing cinematic scenes in the series, here the camera moves almost exclusively behind her for a full-frame upskirt shot as she comically turns her head. It plays like a porn parody because it's beaten.

Imagine trying to drive home the heart-pounding story beats of letting a young girl know that her missing sister is dead. Each reaction shot of Eve focuses solely on her breasts, the jiggling physics going wild and swaying autonomously. She's standing still!

The game's creators intentionally made Eve look like pure cheesecake because, frankly, the player controlling her would be spending most of their time watching her ass as she runs. It is recorded that it was designed by. Look, that's their prerogative, but it definitely stands out when all the female characters, from delicately aged NPCs to angelic engineers, also resemble the waifu's pillow design. When the hacker on your team speaks like an adolescent chimney sweep in a dominatrix swimsuit, you feel more than a little uneasy.

And what about men? All but two of the game's male characters don't even have faces, instead always opting for cybernetic enhancements or flattened robot heads to complement their tactical windbreakers and military pants.

Again, this isn't to say you can't design video game characters in a sexy way, but when the world and its characters are written as flat as they are here, playing it straight is Nothing will be done justice. If you take it at face value, stella blade It's okay if it's a hassle. But ironically, this has been one of his best comedy games in years.

Make it an action comedy. stella blade After all, it's mostly about action. That's where it shines.draw from games like nier automata and various soul-like (i.e., similar) dark soul), gameplay focuses primarily on meditative and carefully timed combat, requiring players to use both swords and firearms to perform solid parries, dodges, and lightning-fast bloodletting. there is.

Not everything is perfect. Switching between standard melee attacks, powerful beta skills, and timed burst skill reactions is fine enough, but switching to gunfights is even more of a pain. In boss fights, it's often not even worth swapping out for a long-range weapon, as the awkward transitions between mechanics leave Eve vulnerable to attack. Guns don't load instantly, and it's as if the enemy is planning their next move while the player frantically selects ammo type in his drop-down menu. Don't get me started on the fact that you have to go to the shop kiosk every time you fail, since spent ammunition is not restored upon death.

It's a shame because the shooting mechanics are great. stella blade This is one of the few PS5 exclusives that focuses on the haptic feedback of the DualSense controller. Using an adaptive trigger to produce the loud click of a shotgun shell exploding would be great if it weren't so taxing. But the DualSense feature extends throughout the game, with noticeable changes in vibrations that really convey the tangibility of this world, like when Eve's high heels plow through the sand or clatter against a metal floor. You can see it.

The game looks great too. Aside from the weapon-grade processing power that's gone into making Eve's chest physics so powerful, the visuals actually take advantage of his PS5 to make it feel vibrant and next-gen. Creating the world. Final Fantasy VII Reverse Lately, we haven't been able to provide character models with anything more than soulless shells.

The problem is that many environments lack variety, and polished visuals rarely shine in them. There are sunken cities and urban ruins, eerie underground facilities, and the occasional truly captivating sci-fi setting, but the bulk of the game is about dropping players into barren deserts and wastelands for long stretches of pseudo-open-world fetch quests. Let me down.

This is based on the fact that this game, created by Korean developer Shift Up, doesn't really know what it wants.It starts out as a creepy, sci-fi flavored take on things like Souls, and quickly drops the veneer for canned exploration resembling a desert environment. Horizon Forbidden WestMore apocalyptic natural terrain than anything else. There's a particular irony in this, given that the game recently became an online punching bag for its daring to feature a human-looking heroine rather than an airbrushed avatar. , and some see Stella Blade as the anti-Awakening answer for those looking for a more exciting character design. The jury is out on whether that was intentional, but “it's sexy.” horizon” This is different.

That is, what remains is equal parts nier automata, Dead Spaceand horizon, wrapped up in a very silly yet strangely fun package. With a realistic story whose twists are telegraphed miles away, and witty action that's exhilarating when it works, this game doesn't live up to its inspiration by any means, but it does about. The 40-hour campaign was successful in keeping viewers interested. Ignore all the side quests in the main city center and rush towards the objective in the center of the unstable open world. stella blade You can imitate the high-octane action players you probably think they are.

Otherwise, stella blade The film is a romp of practical action with occasional bursts of greatness set to a strangely hypnotic atmosphere of jazzy K-pop ballads. Plus breasts.