It’s really a shame that reactions to Stellar Blade are more focused on the fanservice or the coomer reactions. You got one group of people who just focus on the fanservice and hail the game to be the savior of sexualized women in gaming, and then you got the other group who view the game in a negative light because of the first group. And you know what? I can’t even blame them because the first group is really insufferable.

I don't care in the slightest about Stellar Blade having a "sexy" protagonist. I saw a trailer for it once and was immediately interested, because of how fun and unique it looked.

But coomers saw the female Protagonist’s butt and were obnoxious about it ever since. Like come on, it’s bottom of the barrel fanservice you’re going all crazy for. Literally everything I've seen about this game online is people with underaged anime character avatars cream their pants over how this game is "destroying wokeness" or whatever. Nothing against Eve, because she is really pretty and I actually really like her, but she looks like every female character in every korean MMO ever made. It's like people going to war over white bread. Apparently, these guys are now whining about censorship, signing petitions, and making videos of themselves (they look about as you'd expect) about why their cause matters lmao. These pathetic gamerbros will never not be incredibly annoying and cringe to me.

Because Stellar Blade is just so much more. Picture all those apocalyptic gachas and their really great world-building, fantastic atmosphere but really cheap and dull (chibi) gameplay, then amp it up to AAA levels – that's the magic of Stellar Blade.

The environments are beautifully crafted and the atmospheric soundtrack is another aspect I deeply appreciate and thoroughly enjoyed in this game. There's nothing quite like losing yourself in a captivating melody as you journey through vast, lonely landscapes and cities. Just like Nier, Stellar Blade really nailed its soundtrack.

The gameplay is just so much fun and showcases an exceptional level of refinement and polish. Every movement, dodge and parry hit the mark perfectly. The more skills you unlock, the cooler and more fun the combat gets. There's never a dull moment - the gameplay remains consistently exciting and stylish from start to finish.

I found the plot to be really intriguing, and I really enjoyed uncovering plenty of secrets and snippets of lore. But what really surprised me were the sidequests. Sure, some were usual filler content, but most served to make the world feel alive and deepened the lore. Completing them was enjoyable, they never felt like a chore. So good job there.

Oh, and I'm pleasantly surprised by Eve! Initially, I expected her to be the typical "waifu" (ugh, I hate that word), merely there for visual appeal with little personality beyond conforming to generic “anime girl” tropes. Most of these tropes revolve around being “innocent”, "naive" or a "sweet flower girl." But Eve defies those expectations, and I couldn't be happier about it.

Even though Stellar Blade took huge inspiration from Nier and other apocalyptic gacha games, it's still an extremely unique and fun game that everyone should give a chance. Don't listen to the manchildren throwing tantrums or all the buzz about the “fanservice," which is honestly vastly overexaggerated due to some optional skins. Honestly, aside from the optional skins, there are absolutely no horny aspects present in the game.

There are just so many little touches to the point where you can tell the developers really cared about making this game great, and they succeeded. Stellar Blade is simply a beautiful game.

(Part 3 of the Half Century Challenge, created by C_F. You can read their third review here)

In the depths of the ocean surrounding all of us in one way or another, there are plenty of different fascinating creatures that lurk below it, ones that are quite common for us to find, and even in some cases own as pets, and plenty of others that have yet to even be discovered by us at the time of me tying this review. One of the many different kinds of creatures that we do see often lurking below the water’s surface would have to be sharks, and for good reason. I mean, come on, they are only some of the best kind of fish that you could find, being very neat to watch go about their business, seeing the many different types of sharks out there, and even enjoying them with a nice side dish whenever you catch and murder one………… or at least, I assume they taste good, cause I have never eaten one myself before. Naturally, because sharks are cooler then you will ever be, there have been many different types of movies, games, or what have you entirely revolving around sharks and the things they do best, and in terms of video games, we would see ones involving sharks going as far back as the early 70s, such as the case with today’s game, Killer Shark.

Now, truth be told, I had no clue this game existed for a long time, and most of you probably haven’t either. If you were like me, you have probably only seen it once before during this scene in Jaws, not paying any mind to it, and just moving on with your day, but now that I do know about the game’s existence solely through this challenge that I am doing, looking back on it while knowing details about it is… pretty fascinating, not gonna lie. I did wanna try to play the game for myself, but unfortunately, I was not able to, not only because of there not being a machine of it anywhere near me (or probably anywhere else for the next five or so states), but given the way that the game works, you probably wouldn’t be getting the full experience of the game by trying to emulate it, so I decided to opt out of it. However, just because I can’t play a game doesn’t mean I can’t talk about it, so come along, friends, as I ramble on for a good couple minutes or so about this random game from 1972 that nobody gives a shit about! HERE WE GO!

One thing I gotta point out automatically with this thing is just the design of the machine by itself, as it does a pretty great job of automatically drawing me in. The simplicity of the design, the eye-catching colors that compliment each other, the very simple silhouettes of the diver and shark placed on it, all of it tells you exactly what you need to know about the game, and I imagine it managed to catch peoples’ attention back in the day effectively as a result, which is to be admired for this early on in video game history. The same can also be extended to the actual “graphics” of the game itself, which are dated and basic as shit, but they still look pretty good for the time, and the way that the sharks in the game are animated is charming, in an amateurish sort of way.

The objective of the game is very simple: you are a diver who is about to have the worst day of his life, when he runs into a vicious, killer shark, who follows the wise words of his fellow shark, Bruce, and doesn’t eat fish, but humans are ripe for the picking as far as he’s concerned! So you gotta swim away from that bitch as fast as you can, while armed with your trusty harpoon gun, which you will be using to fire at the shark for an unprecedented amount of time, because for some reason, it is a super mutant shark that can take many different shots from a harpoon. From there, you grab ahold of the plastic gun that the game presents to you and then take aim, shooting many different shots at the shark to make sure it regrets ever messing with you, racking up a very simple score that can be seen on the top of the cabinet, all within a time limit, to prove that you are the best Brody impersonator on the planet.

There isn’t really anything else that this game has to offer besides all of that from what I could tell. You shoot at a shark for a good while, you rack up points, you try to beat your friend’s high score, and that’s all she wrote, which is to be expected from a lot of arcade games like this, especially released this long ago, but once again, a lot of why I found this game to be so appealing was because of its simplicity and charm. The way that the shark moves around on the screen, the noises that the gun makes whenever you fire it, the incredibly simple scoring system on the top of the arcade machine, and the hilarious animation that plays whenever you actually hit the shark at any point. It definitely shows just how primitive video games were at that point, but at the same time, it is also pretty impressive for its time. Yeah, it is mostly just done using lights, with not much else helping it stand out visually, but in a time when your only other options out there were a game where you bounce a ball back and forth or some text-based adventures here or there, this shit is revolutionary in some sense, and I think that alone deserves some praise above all else.

Overall, Killer Shark was an interesting game to look over with the footage that I found online, as it not only shows just what kind of games could be made at this point in time, but also how to make something so simple as killing sharks feel so engaging and welcoming in video game form, and while I may not ever be able to play it, I am at least glad that I know of its existence, as well as how I can share it all with you guys to some capacity. If you wanna see the game in action for yourself, check out this video, as it does a pretty good job at showing off what this game is all about, and hey, maybe later down the road, I could try doing some more reviews in this kind of style, ones that are meant to observe a game rather than needlessly nitpicking the fuck out of it. I dunno, we’ll see how it goes. For now though, I think I’ll move onto a game that I can actually play, and one that involves less sharks dying. They already have it bad enough as is, what with them now snorting cocaine and becoming tornadoes.

Game #580