Following Helldivers 2, Stellar Blade marks a streak in Sony published games that actually stand out from all the rest of them. Now how do these two stand out you might ask? My answer would be that they are made by people who are proud to make games.

The most popular PlayStation exclusives since the launch of the PS5 have been The Last of Us Part 2, God of War Ragnarök, and Spider-Man 2. When they want to be a good game they can be good. But there are very frequent moments where they completely take control away from the player and become basically a tv show or something. I’m not talking about cutscenes, I’m talking about those moments where it’s just you following someone for some exposition for like 20 minutes. This shows that many in charge of those game’s development would rather be making something else. That they’re ashamed to be making a game. Shift Up is a team of developers who truly appreciate video games and what they’re meant to be.

Stellar Blade shines brightest with its combat, exploration, and art direction. The high octane burst of energy you get when you charge at an enemy and pelt them with a flurry of attacks is unmatched, while still not feeling overpowered as Eve really is quite the glass cannon. Fights are always a good time. I never really found myself trying to outright avoid a confrontation, they’re that fun.

Exploration harkens back to something like Super Mario Odyssey with it’s open areas, minimal invisible walls, and Eve’s acrobatic skills, but that’s not to say exploring the linear areas is boring, far from it. This game uses the dreaded yellow paint incredibly well by having it grab your attention away from the beaten path and towards something that you may have seen just out of reach along the way. This is probably the best use of yellow paint I’ve seen in any game actually.

Now for art direction. This game is fucking gorgeous. Every character model and environment was so beautifully detailed and lush (the final few areas of the game are especially jaw dropping) that it actually blew my mind to see that this game maintain 60fps (aside from a few areas where if you stay for a while it’ll dip to like 40) across gameplay and cutscenes and is only like 30gb big and runs on Unreal engine. Many, MANY developers struggle to make their games under like 80gb on Unreal or anything else really while still looking and performing worse than this game. I really wanna know how Shift Up did it. They might just have optimization skills great enough to rival Nintendo. Also yes Eve is very attractive, but I found my favorite outfits to be the ones that incorporated much more casual clothing. All of them are great, though. Makes me thing they got actual fashion designers to work on them.

I gotta agree with the general public here though. The story and characters are the weakest parts, but they still kept things engaging with some great twists and turns. Definitely keep a look out for text logs and all that to get a better understanding and enjoyment out of the story.

Stellar Blade is an absolute triumph of a game. Shift Up clearly shows their inspirations, but they show them with pride and admiration while still making this game wholly unique. This feels like the first true game to make actual use of next generation (we’re almost 4 years in actually. Might as well call it current generation) hardware and is a must play for anyone who is a fan of games being great.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is everything I wanted and then some.

Well, to clarify, 95% of it is everything I wanted and then some. That 5% isn't nearly enough to kibosh the entire experience for me but the fact that the vast majority of it was truly stellar is a triumph, honestly.

Rebirth needed to do a lot following up from Remake, and it does pretty much all of it to such a high level that it's baffling that a game of this magnitude could even be possible in such a short development time. Of course, I'm referring to both playtime and scale, but also to how lovingly crafted and relentlessly charming it is in all 60+ hours of the journey it takes you on, with only a handful of missteps along the way.

The overarching narrative and, most of all, the character writing in Rebirth are the strongest they've ever been. Characters that were presented well in the original are somehow made even better here, with backstory and banter that's consistently such a treat to listen to. If you manage to even make Cait Sith compelling, then you've got a real winner on your hands. The story beats and their wider implications differ from the original, as with Remake, and not all of them hit. However, again, the vast majority of them I found to be much more compelling than ever before, thanks to the greatly expanded scenes and dialogue present throughout.

The ending is indeed as divisive as you might have heard and while I won't go into it here, I did enjoy what it presented; however, I can absolutely see where and why people would dislike it, as the execution feels very slapdash. I totally get what they were going for and it went the way I figured it would but it's indicative of an ending that's spinning too many plates at once, both narratively and thematically.

But as I said, that falls under the 5% that wasn't as stellar as the rest of the package.

Gameplay-wise, there's not really much to add that hasn't already been pointed out by everyone else—it's just Remake but better, with tighter controls for each of the characters and much more mobility with air combos and team attacks now entering into the mix to make battles feel far more dynamic than they were before. When you get into a flow state with it, particularly during the game's many boss battles, it feels great and is a natural extension of the formula they crafted in the previous game.

As for Rebirth's open world, ultimately, I found it to be the poster child for the phrase 'too much of a good thing'. It's filled with the usual Ubisoft open-world guff of towers and challenging enemy encounters that seem to mostly exist simply to pad out the exploration some more, but there are also some truly excellent side quests and artifact hunts that feed into the game's larger narrative and world-building that are almost always worth seeing through.

And then there's Queen's Blood. I'm not even a fan of card games at all and QB just dominated my playthrough. Honestly, if Square releases it as a standalone game on the level of Hearthstone, I'm going to be even more unemployed than I already am.

All of this extra stuff is really great; however, it's an absolute overabundance. By chapter 12, you basically get given another 10+ hours of new side content to do and at that point, I just wanted to see the story through to the end.

Regardless, FF7 Rebirth is a real 'above and beyond' type sequel. It's by no means perfect and it has its faults here and there, but those highs are so high that the third entry will have to do a lot to supersede it.

9.5/10

In the 2013 video game Puppeteer, a breezy and simplistic yet charming 2.5D platformer that justifies its 2.5D more than the bulk of games in that style ever have with its stage show aesthetic, your character Kutaro is a wooden puppet. A big part of the game is collecting puppet heads which act as hit points

There are a total of 104 heads to collect across the whole game. Every single one of these heads has a unique animation associated with it if you can hold onto it in the right spot. Could be a unique contextual moment within the game to take a shortcut, get rewards, skip a boss phase, or reaching a bonus stage. Beating the game will give you a head that can perform the contextual action of any other head to see the work put in, but there’s still that desire to find which heads you missed to see their distinct sense of character.

That is a level of soul and dedication you really only see from developers incredibly passionate about their craft and appreciating their effort a decade later it’s a damn shame to see Japan Studio shuttered now when it could be the perfect gap material between Sony’s mega blockbusters.