Summary
As you explore Stellar Blade’s world, more and more complex platforming becomes available to you. At first all you can do is climb onto a ledge above you, but as it goes on you can spin on bars, swing on ropes, run along walls, and it soon adds a double jump, dash, and dodge into the mix. The challenges get more demanding as these unlock too, but unfortunately, any feeling of coolness dissolves almost instantly.
Stellar Blade’s Platforming Feels So Unnecessary
Stellar Blade is a solid enough game that particularly excels when Eve is facing down epic and grotesque bosses, but it has some of the worst platforming I’ve ever experienced in a video game. It’s not even bad because it’s too dull or too difficult, it just never seems to work as intended. Eve overshoots or bounces off floating platforms that are supposed to be easy jumps, she’s too unresponsive when wall-running, and it all feels punishing by accident rather than design.
I collected my strawberries inCeleste. I got the gem onCrash Bandicoot’sStormy Ascent. I can knuckle down when the platforming gets tough. Stellar Blade is not that. I’d understand, maybe even respect, a crushing difficulty spike of platforming in the middle of the game. Playing it for review, with an eye on the embargo, I might not have adored it in the same way I felt about giving myself a whole afternoon to try Stormy Ascent again and again, but at least that would have been on purpose.
Instead, most of Stellar Blade’s platforming is there to be an easy amusement to break up the corridors and open spaces, to link areas, and to give Eve momentum while offering the player something to do beyond combat. It’s good, solid game design. It just never works as intended.
When It’s Difficult By Accident, You Have A Problem
When wall running, if you dash in mid-air, either for speed to extend the leap, Eve just hits the wall and falls to her death. If you’re sliding on a ramp and jump early to account for the double jump, Eve makes just a single leap and then falls to her death. The game often provides a balance beam to bridge a gap, but Eve leaps without the guidance we’d expect for a small target and so falls to her death. A podium in front of you? A little easy baby jump with no danger and no attempt to place an obstacle in the player’s path? Eve misses it or skids off the end and, you’ll never guess what, falls to her death.
The game continues to combine these techniques in different patterns and while ledge jumping and bar swinging are ever reliable, you never get to build up a rhythm because too many parts expect unnecessary levels of precision - when jumping a minor gap, it’s best to tilt the camera directly above Eve’s head so you can see exactly where she lands, making sure she’s in the middle of the podium rather than near the edge where the game might see her bounce off.
The final addition to all of this are rotating saw blades that grind Eve up into goo. Highly graphic deaths (especially compared to the combat where death sees the screen go black), these often come during on-rails sections where control of the camera is wrested from you, and with it, control of Eve.
In one section requiring you to time jumps with air vents, I took a wrong turn and walked backwards two paces. There was no abyss to fall into, no damaging hazard, I just went right when the path forward was left. But for some reason, the screen blacked out and sent me back to the start of the section. I couldn’t quite believe it so I made the same mistake again on purpose to test it, and once more I was back at the start. I still don’t know why.
Stellar Blade gives Eve a bunch of attacks and outfits to be an avatar of cool, suave success, but it all falls apart when she’s doing the most basic of tasks. I think I died as many times to simple jumps into the darkness as I did to lava bombs and laser beams of the gargantuan bosses. Ultimately, Eve is just too clumsy to be cool.
Stellar Blade
WHERE TO PLAY
Stellar Blade is an action-driven game from Shift Up, originally revealed as Project Eve. It follows the aforementioned Eve as she battles the alien Naytiba invaders, in a bid to reclaim the Earth for humanity.
