Good thing, because the irony would not be lost if it was technically less than stellar…
Stellar Blade (formally Project Eve) - Korean Sci-Fi Bayonetta/Nier: Automata/Sekiro Edition
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Good thing, because the irony would not be lost if it was technically less than stellar…
I'll believe that you do. The dudebros? No, they just want tits and ass for jerkoff material. That's why they get angry at "uggos"- if they can't tug their beef to a woman, why should that woman even exist?
I meant an episode about it entirely, not just addressing it. I know it was brought up a bit in the MLK episode and in the synthesis episode, but do you have another in mind besides those? Cause I tried to come up with one but it's been a hot minute since I did a marathon.
Ok so here's the deal, with art and games and fiction in general, there's an aspirational component, which is why the ancient greek statues were all of beautiful people, it's aspirational, showcasing an ideal to admire and strive towards. The best humanity can be. So while not "wrong" per-se, there's a millenia-long tradition of art functioning as showing the world as being more beautiful than it really is, or about as beautiful as it can possibly be if all the conditions are perfect. And there's value in that tradition. Expecting it to be continued and not destroyed should be the default, and there's nothing wrong about that.
And yeah like I said you can depict beautiful in a million different ways, nobody wants every char to look like Eve, that'd be boring. We just want them to not be ugly as all hell unless the game is meaningfully impacted by having ugly chars cause it's some sort of horror game or what have you.
Nobody's saying if you find a big muscular chick hot that that shouldn't be included, for example, nobody complained about the Amazon from Dragon's Crown and she looks like this:
People only complained about the more orthodox, buxom sorceress, on the other side.
The issue is with people making chars intentionally ugly, not diversely beautiful.
That's what I'm talking about. There was one that came up after the Martin Luther King episode. The one that involved Riley's white teacher saying the word and felt it was unfair since he wasn't using it in a racist context. I can't remember the name of that episode, but it's that one.
Except for the millennia long tradition of art *not* being that, sure
If gamers think Aloy is ugly as all hell, that explains a massive amount about how gamers act
EDIT: Like, c'mon: the new Mary Jane is still a model. Abby isn't going home empty handed if she doesn't want to. The new Star Wars gal looks like any number of ladies on '80s TV
These are not ugly people, possible uncanny valley aside
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Except these days there's plenty of "trad-chuds" who would have a problem with the Amazon from Dragon's crown for not being traditionally feminine enough.
You're also making a really sweeping generalization that art is supposed to depict aspirational beauty. There's plenty of very famous art made by very famous traditional artists that depicts normal people rather than Greek gods. Just look at this Caravaggio:
There is plenty of renaissance era portraiture that is ugly and depicts people as they are with all of their blemishes, because the artists thought that depicting flawed humanity was just as interesting as drawing perfect angelic figures.
Thank you. From what I am seeing, Dreiko's is just using typical arm chair and wannabe arts degree logic.
There will always be personal preferences and who’s to say otherwise. I myself am all for anyone staying in shape with little to no waste jiggling, but when a chic starts to look more masculine than feminine is where I lose visual interest. Nothing wrong with it and more power to them, but just not for me.
The unattractive art from renaissance or whenever else has its place in culture but also IMHO is kinda beside the point on the laws of attraction beyond a platonic nature.
I played Stellar Blade for about 6 hours between last night and this morning beating a few bosses and hunting down side areas as much as I could find. The combat is bad imo, I think it might mostly be due to how much of Eve's skillset is locked behind the leveling system so the lack of tools early game make combat shittier feeling than it will towards the end, but that just means you have a bad combat system here. A combat system should be fun and feel good at the most basic level, then continue to get better and cooler with unlocks along the way as you go along. DMC knows this, Bayonetta knows this, God of War knows this, many action games understand this concept.
Stellar Blade does not and in a lot of ways the game feels very amateurish in how directly it rips off Nier Automata in setting and premise and even story beats are straight up copy pasted from Nier. And in the sense of a lack in game design principals that most of the industry has figured the fuck out already. Why is the interact/gather button R2? Can anyone tell me?
The level design sucks too mostly because they are really trying to ape a Souls-like style where the levels double back on each other but a lot of the double backs are loops that happen within seconds and without enemies to fight so a shortcut is meaningless. Top that off with locked doors that either need a key or a password that is ALWAYS available around the corner. You will never have to hunt for a password or figure out a puzzle to find a key or anything. The answer to every lock is 20 feet away. Top that off with the ruins and area all looking so samey that the real challenge is not getting turned around or realizing you can jump onto a ledge to proceed, thanks yellow paint btw.
So on the surface Stellar Blade is kind of shit. However I do think that people who love action games with combo-based combat will love it, if they can get through the opening hours when you start to unlock actual abilities that make the combat more involved. I can't really knock it at the end of the day because it does get good, but the first impressions are absolutely garbage. From what I've heard the story never gets better and every character sucks, so there is that, I don't think many action game lovers will care about the story anyway so I don't know how much of a negative that will be.
I will speak on this though, the HARD R thing. Context really matters and of course the internet is a bunch of knee-jerking dipshits eager to be offended by anything and everything. In the opening level, the first real level not the demo, the characters make reference to the word "Harder" five fucking times, the little robot telling Eve how much Harder everything is going to get. Which in that context explains exactly what the graffiti meant and that's the end of it. They love the word harder, maybe that's because that's how the designers felt Eve made them feel in the pants the whole time they developed the game.
"Kenshi is that art done yet?"
"No sir, I keep trying to draw her a new outfit but I keep getting Harder."
"What?"
"Nothing, I'll have it done soon as I'm done!"
Stellar Blade does not and in a lot of ways the game feels very amateurish in how directly it rips off Nier Automata in setting and premise and even story beats are straight up copy pasted from Nier. And in the sense of a lack in game design principals that most of the industry has figured the fuck out already. Why is the interact/gather button R2? Can anyone tell me?
The level design sucks too mostly because they are really trying to ape a Souls-like style where the levels double back on each other but a lot of the double backs are loops that happen within seconds and without enemies to fight so a shortcut is meaningless. Top that off with locked doors that either need a key or a password that is ALWAYS available around the corner. You will never have to hunt for a password or figure out a puzzle to find a key or anything. The answer to every lock is 20 feet away. Top that off with the ruins and area all looking so samey that the real challenge is not getting turned around or realizing you can jump onto a ledge to proceed, thanks yellow paint btw.
So on the surface Stellar Blade is kind of shit. However I do think that people who love action games with combo-based combat will love it, if they can get through the opening hours when you start to unlock actual abilities that make the combat more involved. I can't really knock it at the end of the day because it does get good, but the first impressions are absolutely garbage. From what I've heard the story never gets better and every character sucks, so there is that, I don't think many action game lovers will care about the story anyway so I don't know how much of a negative that will be.
I will speak on this though, the HARD R thing. Context really matters and of course the internet is a bunch of knee-jerking dipshits eager to be offended by anything and everything. In the opening level, the first real level not the demo, the characters make reference to the word "Harder" five fucking times, the little robot telling Eve how much Harder everything is going to get. Which in that context explains exactly what the graffiti meant and that's the end of it. They love the word harder, maybe that's because that's how the designers felt Eve made them feel in the pants the whole time they developed the game.
"Kenshi is that art done yet?"
"No sir, I keep trying to draw her a new outfit but I keep getting Harder."
"What?"
"Nothing, I'll have it done soon as I'm done!"
Great, so a even worse version of Wanted: Dead? The only difference is that there's no leveling but you have these dumb skill points in WD for moves that should have been there by default.
Thank you.
Still haven't been given examples of who these "intentionally ugly" characters (women) are, that isn't just compliants about them looking plain or muscular.
Like, can someone give me actual hags. Because if developers are doing it intentionally, to spite all those men who want pretty girls, you'd think they'd do more than just make 'm plain and go full Angelica Huston in The Witches.
Thanks for the write-up u/CriticalGaming
a-hah...
There it is, another example of too much f'n Darken Ring Souls in everything.
I noticed this when I played the demo but I didn't dwell on it because it was just the demo/intro and maybe it would get better later on. Like maybe it was just introducing us to the concept of shortcuts and locked doors- after all, they shouldn't just assume everyone played a Dark Soul. But if they don't do anything interesting or cool with it then ferpetesake don't put it in.
Same as I feel with the not-bonfires in Jedi: Fallen Survivor games (which I did really like otherwise). It's unnecessary, it's a shittier version of something else that is just there to be there.
So basically confirming that this is a game for folks who really loved and ace every other recent souls-like and wants more. A game to play after Sekiro, Nioh, Nioh 2, Elden Ring, Wo Long: Fallen Potential, Rise of the Ronin, Lies of P, and (The) Lord of the Fallen.
a-hah...
There it is, another example of too much f'n Darken Ring Souls in everything.
I noticed this when I played the demo but I didn't dwell on it because it was just the demo/intro and maybe it would get better later on. Like maybe it was just introducing us to the concept of shortcuts and locked doors- after all, they shouldn't just assume everyone played a Dark Soul. But if they don't do anything interesting or cool with it then ferpetesake don't put it in.
Same as I feel with the not-bonfires in Jedi: Fallen Survivor games (which I did really like otherwise). It's unnecessary, it's a shittier version of something else that is just there to be there.
So basically confirming that this is a game for folks who really loved and ace every other recent souls-like and wants more. A game to play after Sekiro, Nioh, Nioh 2, Elden Ring, Wo Long: Fallen Potential, Rise of the Ronin, Lies of P, and (The) Lord of the Fallen.
Both SkillUp and one of the guys MinnMax said that the best part of the game is the end- the final boss-rush style push of combat and everything coming together.
This is a surprise- one of my major current gaming peeves is crappy endings, putting all give-a-shit into the beginning and then letting things fall apart at the end. This clashes with my own preference for narrative- not necessarily literary narrative but some through-line with a satisfying END. Kudos to Stellar Blade for delivering on that front at least.
This is a surprise- one of my major current gaming peeves is crappy endings, putting all give-a-shit into the beginning and then letting things fall apart at the end. This clashes with my own preference for narrative- not necessarily literary narrative but some through-line with a satisfying END. Kudos to Stellar Blade for delivering on that front at least.
I wonder if this game would have been cooler if it had been an Alita Battle Angel game instead of a Nier knockoff.
I'm glad it wasn't a Battle Angel game. The Souls style does not fit that type of character nor world. Like I told you back in 2021, if they're going to do a game like that, it has to be at least DMC style, some God Hand thrown in possibly.
Another thing I wanted to moan about is the stupid fucking enemy design. The monsters lack personality, they are just monsters with no real characteristics to call their own. While they all have a certain ascetic none of them have any definability.
A good enemy is an enemy where you can look at the enemy and have a pretty good idea of how they are going to attack you. This is very important when you have a game that is so dependent on the player being able to have a rock solid defense and counter playstyle. In Sekiro, when the fucker runs up to you with a spear, you can assume he intends to shove it up your ass.
In Stellar Blade there are monsters that will suddenly sprout another fucking arm from nowhere to slash at you. And when your enemy can literally pull an entirely new weapon out of it's ass, how is the player supposed to read the attacks from something that doesn't exist?
And this doesn't even touch the samey-ness of all the enemies where it can be hard to distinguish what flavor of hideous disfigured monster your dealing with until you've engaged with it.
As I said before it just speaks to the inexperience of it all. Like some college kids got a AAA budget to make a game and they really didn't know what to do so they just made a hodge-podge game that is trying to combine things from too many different other types of games for it to ever be a cohesive game in it's own right.
A good enemy is an enemy where you can look at the enemy and have a pretty good idea of how they are going to attack you. This is very important when you have a game that is so dependent on the player being able to have a rock solid defense and counter playstyle. In Sekiro, when the fucker runs up to you with a spear, you can assume he intends to shove it up your ass.
In Stellar Blade there are monsters that will suddenly sprout another fucking arm from nowhere to slash at you. And when your enemy can literally pull an entirely new weapon out of it's ass, how is the player supposed to read the attacks from something that doesn't exist?
And this doesn't even touch the samey-ness of all the enemies where it can be hard to distinguish what flavor of hideous disfigured monster your dealing with until you've engaged with it.
As I said before it just speaks to the inexperience of it all. Like some college kids got a AAA budget to make a game and they really didn't know what to do so they just made a hodge-podge game that is trying to combine things from too many different other types of games for it to ever be a cohesive game in it's own right.
IIRC the designer said he based the character off of Alita, and the Nier designer said Stellar Blade was better version of his game or something.
Ahh yes here we are -
Stellar Blade Was Inspired by a Taxi Driver Strike, Along With Alita: Battle Angel and '80s, '90s Sci-Fi - IGN
Stellar Blade's director says that, in addition to inspirations from Alita: Battle Angel and '80s and '90s sci-fi, the theme for the game originated from a real-life taxi driver strike.
Stellar Blade is superior to NieR: Automata, says Yoko Taro
Stellar Blade is better than NieR: Automata, according to the latter's esteemed director Yoko Taro.
www.eurogamer.net
