DISCLAIMER: This is a re-edited review of Stellar Blade. Just telling you now, I'm going to be talking about more about the dark sides of gooner culture than the game itself because Stellar Blade is a lynch pin for things I find fascinating about the internet as it stands in the month of May, 2024.

We been spendin' most our lives living in a gooners paradise.

I am fascinated by Stellar Blade and what this game might mean for the future for video games. It's going to sound like I hate this game, but I don't. I think it's Fine™.

If it wasn't obvious, this game wants to be Nier Automata Souls Asura's Wrath Bayonetta. The intro of the game is VERY similar how Asura's Wrath started just swapped with Korean mobile game models usually reserved for Gacha-pull auto-battlers -- doing orbital drops onto the Earth doing Bayonetta moves before getting torn to pieces like Gears of War characters by Infernal Demons. There are other games you could pull into the conversation that Stellar Blade reminds you of and you'd be on the money. The game is a homunculus of other game ideas. Stellar Blade is just the title that dared to glue every game it worships together like this. It feels like an astounding ripoff with enough effort put in it's distinctions for me to not feel mad about it.

My only two real criticisms that I care about is that the parrying is BAD. DELAYED FRAME WINDOWS FOR PARRYING IS BAD. If you are going to have parrying in your game, and the parry timing is not finely tuned to the animation of an attack, then the game is going to suffer because of it. Lies of P did this shit, too. We are half a decade removed from the release of Sekiro. Make the parry windows make sense.

Secondly, the plot and characters are just so bad that I find it cannot be enjoyed even in an ironic way. This game is so earnest in it's stupidity, turning on my brain to pay attention to the game's narrative actually felt like it was my fault. You play as android woman named EVE and you meet a guy named ADAM and you two are basically the last people on EARTH.
It's not deep. It is in fact stupid as fuck. But, at the end of the day, I like the fact that Stellar Blade THINKS it is deep. But who cares what I think. Thinking is for people who are not edging to Stellar Blade in between unemployment checks. Just shut the fuck up, me. You cuck-pilled kink-shame-maxxing soyboy. I'll kill you.

After the intro, the game settles into being Nier Automata with Souls gameplay. You know what? That mix sounds pretty damn nice. It IS pretty nice sometimes. It needs a lot of fucking work in the plot department. I only care because the game wants you to care about the whole lot of nothing happening 90% of the time. Only one character has an arc worth bring a first-monitor amount of attention to, but that goes nowhere too after faking out the audience that it WILL go somewhere and it's just like what the fuck are we doing, people. What the fuck is this. What and why do you want me to care. I demand someone answer me. And why is everything sticky?

I love the checkpoint system, I really like the PS2/PS3 platformer style exploration of the environments. The hair physics are too much and it actually affects the performance of gameplay, but IT IS fun to have Eve walk under a waterfall and her becoming wet and her hair wrapping itself her body so you look like a bog witch. Very funny. I struggle to talk about the gameplay itself. It's a goddamn Souls game with platforming. You can autofill what to expect from there.

Stellar Blade should be something more aligned with how it paints itself. I waited for something beneath the veneer of this game to make itself known, only to let myself down when it didn't really happen. This shit REALLY ain't that deep. Which is ok, but why go through the effort of pretending? You know? Hello? Are you listening? It still feels like I'm not being heard right now. You know what? Fuck it, whatever. Let's move on.

My real fascination with Stellar Blade is the cultural impact. Sometimes I wonder how detrimental it is being a perpetually online, horny weirdo in the long-term. I genuinely wonder how much have mobile games that inspired the character design of Stellar Blade conditioned porn-addled individuals to latch onto this game like a big-titted, zero personality octopus dragging a victim into the ocean? How much was the sexiness of Eve was factored into the marketing equation as a distraction from Stellar Blade's unpolished elements? It's straight up nefarious how mentally ill Twitter people who want to jerk their dicks off their body and continue to jerk off the flesh mass on the ground until it is giblet paste -- will tie their sexual freedoms to a corporate product. That's just the state of the world I guess.

I don't want to see cultural zeitgeists eventually revert back to prudishness when it comes to sex, but what I see online from those defending Stellar Blade from being seen as anything other than the best game of forever -- is cumming from a place of defense for unapologetic gooner-maxxing instead of objective reverence for the game itself. Eve isn't real (yet). Her pussy isn't going to vacuum your internal organs out of your genitalia (yet). Gooners, please. Divest 10% of the blood of your penises back into your brain. I need you with me, buddy.

On the flip side, seeing a character like Eve on the cover and the game not being a complete waste of time is an unironic step forward for the gaming industry. The cover looks like fucking Onechanbara spin-off. I do believe we are close to a real gooner game with undeniable quality. Stellar Blade is in many aspects SO close to classic status.

Still, the game is good, not incredible. Bayonetta 1 is incredible. Nier Automata is incredible. Those two games are gooner games with brain cells in them. Though the guy who directed Nier Automata is saying that Stellar Blade is better than fucking NIER AUTOMATA.. I don't know if this is a work so Mr. Taro can direct the next game from this studio, which would be hilarious, or if he is at heart just a gooner. Guess we'll see.

Stellar Blade has led me to be fascinated with the "pussy over everything" mindset and how much fetishization will override any objective discussion. Loneliness and desire to quell that loneliness with sex has defined the present and most certainly will define the future. Defending women who are not real in a time where real women don't even secure reproductive rights is fucking hilarious. I know none of you care, I do. I enjoy laughing about the state of affairs because it keeps me from going insane.

So yeah whatever I just know half of you reading are saying "shut the fuck up loser smelly bad gay slur-coded cuck and let me teach my semen a lesson that it should be in a jar and not my body." or even better, the other half going "what are you even talking about" crowd. Because the latter are so pure and don't read up on what goes on in the day-to-day discussions on gaming. You innocent sons of bitches. I really, truly wish I was you. I am a man witnessing madness and devolving affairs and speaking on it and you can just tell me I'm crazy and allow my review to pass over you. The innocence of ignorance. You don't know the gooners will be at your doorstep, soon. They'll come for you and your mom's retirement checks that you use to buy Jujustsu Kaisen figures. Truly, willful centrism is your zion.

My real message here: Jerk your dick to your heart's content, just don't let your jerk bait define you.

Stellar Blade, everyone.