Free Stellar Blade update adds boss rush mode and eyebrow-raising outfits

By Carli Velocci May 24, 2024

Eve fighting a large boss, with sparks flying around them. She's in the new NeuroLink Suit, which has tight red pants and a white top. — Shift Up

A new Stellar Blade update has been released, bringing not only a new challenge mode but a number of outfits, including some surprises.

The first big change to patch 1.003, documented on the PlayStation Blog, is the Boss Challenge, which lets you fight the game’s 19 bosses by themselves. To begin the Boss Challenge, you had to have defeated bosses in the main game because the challenge uses your boss fight data. You can also choose from several preset gear kits or use your own. Combat was one of the highlights of Stellar Blade, so having more enemies to fight is very welcome.

Stellar Blade has become known for its outfits, so of course the update adds three new suits for Eve. One is the Neurolink Suit, which you can get if you defeat all the bosses in the challenge on at least normal difficulty, along with two Nano Suits: White and Black Kunoichi.

According to IGN and other outlets, the update also added two revealing outfits to the game: Midsummer Redhood and Midsummer Alice. They’re skimpier variants on the Bunny and Cybernetic Bondage suits, which were the subject of unsubstantiated claims that Shift Up was being forced by Sony to censor outfits. Their designs had been changed between pre-release promotional images and after the day one patch, with a bit of fabric added to Eve’s chest and hip areas.

In an interview with Shift Up director Kim Hyung Tae, changing the outfits was an intentional choice by the developers. “I can assure you that was our [final] product. We can’t promise you anything right now, but we are discussing the issue internally and hopefully we can make an official statement later,” he said during an interview at MiniMap.

Elsewhere, the update adds some quality-of-life improvements, including the ability to remain locked on an enemy despite changing your attack mode.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Contributor, Games

Carli is a technology, culture, and games editor and journalist. They were the Gaming Lead and Copy Chief at Windows Central…

Gaming

The best Among Us mods

The crew from Among Us plays Among Us.

One of the reasons Among Us took off in popularity was how simple the game is to understand. It has charming, but basic graphics, and the mechanics of one team trying to secretly kill the other without getting caught was hugely appealing. bur what made it so accessible were the social elements where everyone would argue their case and try to convince others of who the killer was to send them out of the airlock. As great as that simplicity is, it does eventually get a little old even with the new roles added in 2021. Among Us mods breathe new life into this fantastic game with quality-of-life upgrades and entirely new ways to play. We understand that a lot of mods out there are pretty sus, but you can trust that these are the best ones available.
Skeld.net

The easiest mod to recommend is one you don't need to tinker around with to get working. Skeld.net offers simple instructions on how to use this custom launcher to access free and public modded Among Us servers with people all over the world. That means you don't have to gather a bunch of friends who all have the same mod to play. In total, this launcher lets you play over 10 new custom mod servers, including Slenderman, Cops & Robbers, Jester, CrazyColors, and more. Each one changes up the base game in fun and unique ways that are a blast to experience. There's even a community Discord where you can hang out and coordinate games with others using the launcher.
BetterCrewLink

Gaming

This Miyazaki-inspired survival game lets you heal the environment

Person flying on green glider toward floating island in cloudy sky

Aloft gets its name from its floating archipelago, where you (and up to eight friends) are the only people left in an otherwise abandoned world. Like BitCraft, which I previewed during this year's Game Developers Conference, it focuses on an interactive environment where players have to give in order to get. However, Aloft adds to the world-building with "healing," which will rebuild and nurture cursed islands. At Summer Game Fest, I attended a hands-off preview where I spoke with developers about their inspirations and watched them fight evil mushrooms to save the environment.

After 30 minutes, Aloft gave the impression of a survival game with a solid gameplay loop of cleansing hundreds of islands, designing your own home, and discovering new pieces of the world's mysterious history. As players glide between islands, they might find a few with dark auras that indicate infestation. There, they fight against monsters using weapons like axes and bows. Often, the core infestation manifests as a thick root that spawns hostile fungi-inspired enemies. Once players defeat them and rid the island of the cursed root, the dark aura disappears and it becomes lush again.

Gaming

Video games are changing, and Summer Game Fest just teased what’s next

Geoff Keighley shows a slide showing the top 10 selling Steam Games of 2024.

When Geoff Keighley takes the stage at an event like The Game Awards, he doesn’t tend to talk about current events. That’s been a point of frustration for some people over the years who have voiced criticism over how the gaming figurehead uses (or misuses) his platform. As Keighley walked on the stage at this year’s Summer Game Fest, expectations that he’d acknowledge the current layoff crisis in the video game industry were low. Then Keighley delivered the show’s biggest surprise in its first minute.

“This has been a tumultuous and difficult year with company layoffs and studio closures which have disappointed all of us. But there’s also something else happening,” Keighley said to open the show before flipping to a slide showing the top 10 bestselling new games on Steam so far in 2024. The list wasn’t filled with blockbusters; it was topped by surprise success stories like Palworld, Balatro, and Manor Lords.