Controversial game Stellar Blade gets a free demo

Stellar Blade, an upcoming PS5 exclusive, has gotten a free demo. This will let you play the entire first stage of the game, right up to the first boss fight.

Here you control Eve, who’s been sent to Earth to battle the Naytiba, monstrous aliens which have taken over the planet and whom you’ll be fighting in this demo, which has been available to download from the PlayStation store since March 29.

The demo also includes a tutorial for the game which will let you familiarize yourself with Stellar Blade’s gameplay, with the full game arriving on April 26 this year.

Those who like what they see and are looking forward to getting the full game when it’s released later this month, will be pleased to know that save data will carry over to the full game. That’s it, you’ll be able to continue your journey just where you left it, as long as you keep the demo’s save data on your PS5 system as Sony explains on the PlayStation blog.

Stellar Blade, though, has been controversial before launch, mainly due to the sexualized way in which the game’s female protagonist is portrayed in the game. Eve is a futuristic soldier of the 7th Airborne Squad which has been sent to wipe Earth clean of the Naytiba aliens, and has a curvy physique that reminds me of the Lara Croft of the 90’s.

The way the game’s protagonist is portrayed is definitely a throwback to an earlier time.

And even Stellar Blade’s director Hyung-Tae Kim has recognized this, telling Games Radar that the glamorous design of the game’s characters “has become somewhat of a brave thing to be going for or attempting”.

Stellar Blade’s protagonist Eve is based on the likeness of sexy Korean model Shin Jae-eun, and the game’s director seems unrepentant about the sexualized way in which Eve is portrayed in the game.

“When it comes to the design, we put special attention on the back of the character because the player is always facing the back of the character when they’re playing”, he said in the Games Radar interview. He also added that the game his studio (Shift Up) is gearing up to release is “entertainment targeted for adults”.

Having played through the demo, I found Stellar Blade to be a pretty good third-person game with RPG elements. There’s some nuance to the combat too, as timing is important when it comes to parrying the Naytiba’s attacks (so that you can execute powerful countermoves) while throwing enemies off balance with specific attacks is also a thing here.

The game’s sci-fi setting is also interesting and detailed, although the Naytiba aliens are the sort of generic monsters which have been seen in video games many times before. And Eve is sexy and cool character to control too…

It remains to be seen, though, how good the game is as a whole, something we’ll find out when it hits shelves later this April, although Stellar Blade is looking like it could be one of the top PS5 exclusives slated for release this year no doubt.