ShiftUp makes pervert games. This is not a judgemental statement on my part, it's an observation. I have recently tried out their mobile game, Nikke: Goddess of Victory. Which is interesting.
Not for its gameplay, which is some really rudimentary Moorhuhn shit and where I put the difficulty on Easy Mode as soon as it let me. But for being a game that kind of leverages its ecchi softcore hentai designs for... kind of an artistic purpose. An artistic purpose that is clearly secondary to its commercial purpose, which is to act as a selling point for the straight male costumer base but it's a game that is also clearly self aware of how ridiculous its character designs are. And I don't mean "self-aware" in the sense of poking fun at it, but in the sense of treating "objectification" as its core theme. In the sense that its cast of collectible waifus in loosely military themed fetish wear are battle androids (although with the minds of real women) and most of the games story arcs explore their status as a dehumanized underclass in a militarized, post apocalyptic society, sort of a Terminator setting where robots have taken over the world and humans live in underground shelters.
It's a work of sexploitation and, at least from what I personally played of it, never really manages to transcend its status as such, but goes to some lengths to inject as much actual pathos as the genre allows for. I can't really muster much more than a lukewarm defense for it, but it has some decently interesting explorations of transhumanism and discrimination and civil rights in it, moreso than what you'd expect looking at it. There's a really good video that goes over its merits and flaws in greater detail by someone who's played a lot more of it, so I'll just leave that here:
Stellar Blade's use of sex appeal, on the other hand, never really even tries to justify itself diegetically, much less artistically, as far as I remember. I think the only aspect of it that I particularly liked was the way all those tight spandex clothes you could put on Eve had some flavour text of all those brands who manufactured them, suggesting a world where there's this weird merge between high fashion and combat gear, which I found kind of interesting. Which made me wonder what that society that dispatches super soldiers that look like K-Pop idols in designer clothes to fight monsters on a ruined earth is actually like. Which we never learn that much about. But, I dunno, there's an angle there, it's kinda gotten me intrigued.
But for the lack of any context to the fan service, it just felt gratuitous, particularly because it didn't work for me. The characters just didn't do much for me. Eve isn't a character design that appeals to me the way, like, Shinobu from No More Heroes or Heather from Silent Hill 3 do, nor did I find her personality endearing enough to win my heart, like Aerith from the FF7 Remakes or Jessie from Control. And there is something very irritating to having to spend an entire game with a character that you know the developers expected you to be attracted to, and you just aren't. It's like being on a bad date, except your stuck on it 15 more hours after realizing you just aren't hitting it off. If anything, I liked Lily a lot more.
I don't know, man, maybe they can actually channel some of the writing talent from Nikke into Stellar Blade 2 and win me over, but I'm not getting my hopes up. There's part of me that thinks it would be cool to have games that can both be sexy and smart, sex appeal has become a tool that it feels like developers have become really reluctant to use, out of fear as being perceived as trashy or sleazy. As if it were some last ressort when you don't have anything else to sell your game on. And, I don't know, I remember a time when it was much more present in mainstream game releases, movies too, on that note, and it was accepted as a perfectly legitimate thing to do, if obviously not on the level of something like Nikke. But it wasn't a red flag for low quality.
www.forbes.com
kotaku.com
