Reviews VideoGame / Death Stranding

Norman Reedus and the Amazing Fetus

Death Stranding is a game about traversal and logistics, You aim to deliver a box from A to B in good time and shape, and your reward is the fabled S-Rank. The main quest is a pretty easy 70 missions, while the side-content is the pretty time-consuming act of achieving max-rank with 30 odd settlements.

HIGHS

- It's a long game that never makes killing worth-while. You'll hog-tie the odd postman or sever a ghost's umbilical cord but there's no call for bloodshed. You're not a soldier, you're the best damn Fed Ex courier who ever lived.

- It's a unique game about the very act of traversal. You have to consider your carry-weight, your chosen route, the terrain's surface, terrain-height, enemy-occupied zones, etc. This is not a Ubisoft checklist, this is a chunk of America you have to learn like the back of your prematurely-aged hand.

- It is highly cathartic later-on to S-Rank multiple deliveries at once later in the game. Being able to learn not just the landscape, but every little mechanic, is more rewarding than any XP or rare loot.

MIXED

- It's not worth doing any side-content until you unlock the zip-lines and vehicles. Progressing the main-quest enables a drip-feed of upgrades that makes your day easier. Trying to deviate from the main-path before then would be like Mario trying to rescue Princess Beach without once pressing the jump-button.

- The boss fights are pretty bland. Every once in a while a giant health-bar pops up that you must dispatch by tossing a bottle of piss at it. A particularly jarring moment halfway through is when Mads Mikkelson challenges you to a gunfight, when there had been no gunplay until now.

LOWS

- Kojima needs a collaborator or an editor. So much exposition is repeated ad nauseam and so many metaphors are bluntly hammered down. Supporting characters blend together because their main purpose is to spout exposition instead of providing character or flavour. The bulk of the story happens at the very beginning and the very end of the game, leading to a slow first-impression and a sluggish last-act. Horizon Zero Dawn far exceeds this game in terms of story-telling. It was better-paced and more economical with its cutscenes. I thought the use of real-life actors was distracting as the material given to them did little to make their characters interesting, unlike Lance Reddick's Sylens in Horizon.

- There are a ton of menus, menu-cutscenes, and hold X to continue prompts. I know this title is complex but I feel there should have been more options to shortcut past the mechanical formalities.

- I called it a day and put the game down for the good after seeing the true ending. I really do not want to go back to that snowy mountain zone. It's telling that in a messed-up world of psycho-postmen, acid-rain, and oil-slick ghosts it's the prospect of a White Christmas that makes me groan.

CONCLUSION

Death Stranding is Kojima unfiltered and unrestrained. The gameplay is genius for making a fun loop out of such a mundane activity, but the plot suffers for being non-existent in the middle 80% of the game and most of the cast are ciphers instead of interesting characters. For his next game Kojima could stand to move out his comfort zone using such familar tropes as the gruff loner, the nerdy CO team, and the fecked-up supporting female cast.

Death Stranding is a game I recommend you play from beginning to end, and then move on with your life. 8/10