Stellatum Review – PlayStation 4

Originally released more than two years ago on PC, Stellatum has finally made its way to the PS4, yet despite the two years it took to transition, this potentially unique space shooter falls woefully short when it comes to performance and fun.   On paper this game should be great. It’s one of few bullet-hell games to even bother with a story, and it’s a relatively good story told through some artistic and oddly silent story panels. Stellatum also mixes things up by offering a standalone Campaign mode to tell that story along with a secondary Arena mode which is all about survival.

Things get even deeper once you get into the game. Your ship has eight nodes where you can install various parts like engines, energy mods, primary and secondary weapons, and shields. These items can all be crafted by unlocking blueprints then gathering the raw materials during the actual game, collected from destroyed enemy ships and asteroids. Ironically, Stellatum plays out just like a game of Asteroids, with your ship locked to the left stick while your weapons and facing direction link to the right, giving the game a twin-stick shooter vibe even though you still need to actually fire the weapons. Enemies enter the screen in predictable and repeatable Galaga-like patterns, forcing you to be in constant movement to avoid the oppressive amount of bullets tracking you relentlessly. There is a challenging mix of enemy ships and environmental hazards such as asteroids that are difficult to tell which layer of the background they exist. Some you can fly over while others are on your same Z-level. There are also barricades and space station-like structures with multiple gun turrets that track your every movement and add to the chaos.

The story mode takes you through numerous missions spread across a star map that also includes a few diversionary side quests useful for obtaining more resources to craft better equipment to help you survive later levels and the righteous boss fights. The progression system seems terribly unbalanced, forcing you to replay previous levels to grind materials to keep your ship competitive. Even the game seems to sense this, as it would often default to mission one when exiting the hanger; a fact I didn’t pick up on until I realized I was playing the first mission over again when I should have been playing Mission 3. Moving the mission-select cursor along the jagged constellation-like star map is also problematic.

Unlike traditional space shooters there are no in-game power-ups. All of your ship upgrades are handled before each mission in the hanger where you can construct new parts from blueprints and deconstruct unwanted parts back into raw materials. This definitely adds a bit of realism to the mix while simultaneous sapping much of the fun we tend to expect in these shooters. The hanger interface is visually appealing but navigating the menus is clunky and frustrating.

The game looks good as far as scrolling space shooters go. There is a nice level of detail and multi-layered backgrounds that scroll by, but the framerate on the PS4 ranges from poor to unacceptable. In heavy moments of combat the game will literally freeze then a second later my ship will reappear where it would have been based on my stick movement. This just can’t happen on a game as hectic as this. There is not that much going on here; certainly nothing that the PS4 shouldn’t be able to handle, so I can only assume this is an un-optimized port to console.

Despite all the pros and cons of Stellatum it all boils down, for me at least, that the game simply isn’t fun. There is nothing here that a dozen other space shooters haven’t done better. I was interested in the RPG-elements of crafting and customizing your ship, both visually and tactically but not enough to endure the awkward interface. The action is blindingly beautiful at times with all sorts of crazy special effects, but when the game starts to look its best the performance drops to unplayable, causing unwarranted deaths. It took a herculean effort to make it through the first ten levels, and I never see myself experiencing all 80 of them unless there is a massive performance patch coming for both gameplay and the UI.

The game offers up a co-op mode, but sharing the experience doesn’t make anything more enjoyable and probably puts more pressure on a game that can barely run properly, even on a PS4 Pro. Stellatum could have been one of the best shooters on the PS4 since R-Type. There are a lot of great concepts at work here with a fantastic presentation of quality music and detailed graphics. Hopefully with some future tweaks this game gets more enjoyable, but for now I can’t really recommend you even try to play this on the PS4.

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Author: Mark Smith
I've been an avid gamer since I stumbled upon ZORK running in my local Radio Shack in 1980. Ten years later I was working for Sierra Online. Since then I've owned nearly every game system and most of the games to go with them. Not sure if 40+ years of gaming qualifies me to write reviews, but I do it anyway.

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