First shown nearly three years ago under the name Project Eve, the Korean developed Stellar Blade has finally arrived and for me delivers an experience that feels like a proper, complete, polished console game. You see, in this age of incomplete games, buggy launches, and countless promises buried in patch notes, Stellar Blade launches in an impressively complete state. This is an impeccable, gorgeous, and fun action game that perfectly balances modern sensibilities with design elements that would feel right at home on the PlayStation 2 – and that’s a good thing.
Going into this one, it’s fair to say that many of us were sceptical when Stellar Blade was first revealed. While the game was getting a lot of attention for its main character, there were a lot of questions surrounding the game – its developer, Shift Up, for example, had never made a large-scale console experience, focusing instead on mobile games. Furthermore, the various pre-release media showed unstable performance, leading us to wonder how the final game might perform.
The good news is that the final product is a cohesive experience that harkens back to a time when Sony Computer Entertainment would publish games across a wide range of genres – the PlayStation and PS2 era were packed with first-party published games developed by partner studios that played in so many different genres and themes. That’s exactly where Stellar Blade sits. In a sense, it feels like a game from 2002 built using modern technology and design elements. It’s not another sequel or remaster – it’s a highly enjoyable game.
