Category: Video Games

Today we’re looking at Stellar Blade, the new PS5-exclusive action-adventure game from Korean studio Shift Up. Starting at the main menu we have three modes, and from a player perspective, they are nigh on perfect. Each does what it states: Resolution mode focuses on the highest pixel counts, Performance mode targets the smoothest and highest performance, while the best, and default, is the Balanced mode that aims to provide the best compromise of both.

The differences are small – in side-by-side comparisons, the only changes I noticed are that depth of field and screen space reflections are of a slighter lower quality in Performance mode, with the focal depth being shallower in Balanced and Resolution mode. Additionally, the hair quality of the main character Eve, as well as other characters, is also reduced, specifically in real-time cinematics, as you move from Resolution mode down to Balanced and then Performance. Aside from this, the biggest changes are frame time, resolution, and thus texture sampling. Resolution mode is capped at 30fps and appears to target a full 3840×2160 with dynamic resolution scaling (DRS) possible but not necessary. Performance runs at 60fps targeting 2560×1440, and again DRS is possible but no counts were found below this. Both modes use a spatial upscale, which could be Unreal Engine’s own TAAu spatial pass or AMD’s FSR1. This results in some instability in the image on thin elements and oblique textures to the camera.

Surprising for some, the best image stability comes from Balanced mode, which also targets 60fps and a 3840×2160 ceiling. It uses a temporal reconstruction pass which may be Unreal’s own TAAu solution or FSR2. This looks to be dynamic, or at least, reconstructed from a 2880×1620 to 1920×1080 base, which again demonstrates why pixel counts are not that important. You can see in the video that thin edges, specular highlights, light sources, volumetrics, and certainly hair is far more dithered, noisy and unstable in Performance mode, and even Resolution mode, as compared to Balanced mode. This does come at the cost of the required pixel blends that soften high-frequency details in textures and such, but here the trade off is worth it – in normal play, this mode looks close enough to Resolution mode at a higher framerate to not be worth the cost of dropping to 30fps. This is due to Resolution mode having great per-object motion blur, but the fast locomotion and action, along with input latency impact, can take a while to acclimatise to. Due to the game’s reliance on fast timing-based combat, this is a high cost, for me, over the small image reduction balanced costs.

Performance Modes Compared

When it comes to performance, as I stated, these modes are nigh on perfect. The Resolution mode is, from all my tests and almost completing the entire game, a fully locked and perfectly paced 30fps. Running through the world, climbing buildings, or fighting hulking genetic monsters, the game holds a flat line on the required 33ms and thus 30fps readout. Likewise, the Performance mode runs an equally locked 16ms frame time target giving us a locked 60fps. From my long sessions of play and testing, I could not find any areas that cause a deviation from that target at all. Even if they did, it would likely be single frame dips into 33ms, but this never happened in my performance captures.

Balanced is the only mode that can fall below the designed 60fps rate, with it often hovering into the mid 50s during play. Vitally, it always keeps within the next refresh cycle of 33ms when it does, giving us a small but noticeable level of micro judder during exploring and combat. The worst case was the high 40s when heavy alpha and particle effects had filled the screen, hammering bandwidth and fill rate, but these instances are very brief. Anyone with a variable refresh rate (VRR) monitor or TV will have a much smoother time as the game is often just shy of the 16ms frametime required. The PS5 supports a 48-120Hz range in its VRR mode, and these dips often fall within a 20-25ms frametime, making them end up feeling as smooth as the Performance mode, but with better image quality and the best input latency, which is vital for cutting through the trouble in style.

Size and Scale

Stellar Blade is big in all aspects: large levels, a vast cast of characters, and tons of enemies, locales, and hulking bosses with which to do battle. What starts as a linear combat/exploration game opens up and out significantly, and as you continue through this derelict and desolate world you see a wide variety of beauty. From the sun bleached beach of the start through crumbling Greek-like cities, underwater tunnels, lush green outskirts, and the dense town of Xion, you will see some gorgeous sights throughout your playtime.

Powered with Epic’s Unreal Engine 4, it is an impressive looking game with strong visuals, lighting, and cinematography. Character models are a highlight, with Eve herself being front and center, with soft and fleshy skin tones and long, physics-based hair – a key character trait which folds, self collides and moves with grace with Eve’s motion. Animations are fast and fluid, and expand with a wide variety of moves, weapons, skills and outfits. All characters have an equally high-construction quality, with soft sub-surface scattering on skin, deep parallax eyes, and a good balance of polygon count bolstered with texture and normal map details. A big reason for the human-like quality is that many of the characters are based on digital scans of real people, which alongside the brilliant physically-based lighting and material systems provides a borderline photorealistic look – but with just enough artistic change and ethereal design to never stray into the uncanny valley.

The Naytiba enemies are equally lavished with effort and style, with general cannon fodder having a mutated but organic style. You have spider-like robots, mutant hermit crabs, horse-meets-hammerheads, and giant pyramid head fleshy bosses galore. The animation and fluidity of all the enemies is a big reason why things often look the best during gameplay. As you slash, flip, slide, and topple colossi throughout the game, everything feels as alive and physical as you do.

Adding to this is the brilliant use of lights, shadows, alpha, and particle effects. Whenever you block an attack, slice into an enemy, or teleport behind a beasty, you are greeted with GPU-accelerated particles, via splatters across the floor and even yourself. Enemies can also dish out the effects with liquid projectiles flying across the screen, splatting and spreading on the floor or clouding the air with a poisonous haze temporally.

Underwater the sense of depth and light propagation is very good, with a clear split of above and below the sealine helping make these sections atmospheric. The use of post effects is again central to the look and feel, and a high quality per-pixel motion blur is included, which works well across the three modes. High quality sprite-sampled bokeh depth of field is used during gameplay and the real time cinematics. This aids the high CGI quality these sections have, making them look close to offline renders at times due to the composition and consistency. They are also used to focus your gaze on important areas or frame the shot as per standard cinematography ques, and though some of these are longer than I personally liked, it helps drive the story and character development well – in between all the butt kicking.

That said, not everything is roses in this garden, as the scale of the game and high quality it achieves can be contrasted by some weaker aspects. Textures, as a whole, are good but not great, with some lower-quality mips used on incidental objects and walls, causing them to lack much detail. Colour schemes can be a little too beige in some of the city sections, and the dreaded yellow painter man has run ahead of you to clearly mark the path forward. Although I understand the benefits this offers, it does, in my opinion, become redundant on the exploration aspect to have these yellow breadcrumbs rather than using light, design and architecture to draw you through. The issue is not exclusive to this game, but I must say it felt at odds with Stellar Blade’s otherwise focused art design.

Animation of characters outside of action can be a little wooden and, ironically, robotic, with some sections having very stiff movement and limited facial expressions, which can vary from great to ok depending on the scene. Sound is also very good, but the voice acting on some scenes and over reliance on the same combat sound bites of Eve can become repetitive a few hours in. More variety here would go a long way. Polygon counts can also be low with some signs of the old, cross-generation base the game started with. Similarly, some sections of volumetric light and water surface effects are not always up to the same high standard. Most of these are small complaints though, and they do not distract from a vast, enjoyable, skill-based and above all, gorgeous-looking game that delivers on its aims.

Summary

For a brand new studio, Shift Up has certainly lived up to its name. The quality, variety, scope, and size on offer is exemplary for such a small studio. It has grasped and overcome the challenges of Unreal Engine and not fallen afoul of any of the common streaming stutter or performance hiccups that can blight other teams. The choice of performance modes is commendable, with options available for those who prefer a locked 30 or 60 fps, as well as a balance for those that want the apple and the branch along with it. As a PS5 exclusive it will likely be a game that has legs far beyond the final credits, offering up a visual and gameplay experience that is quite welcome in the gaming garden.