Death Stranding

/K/ Kojima Productions
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We have a thread dedicated to life after Death Stranding… but what were everyone thoughts on death stranding itself?

I bought the game late (actually was playing it over Christmas just gone) and absolutely loved it, probably more so due to the way the world is at the minute. It’s sad to say that the game was relatable to a degree - invisible threats that could potentially kill us, everyone connecting via a network rather than seeing each other, couriers being an essential service for people’s well-being etc.

But with that aside, the game play was fun! I’d never imagined one of my favourite games consisting of being a courier and taking packages to folks with my biggest foe being some uneven turf and rain. Sure the BT’s made things tense, but climbing over a mountain without falling on my ass was definitely the fun in the game for me.

My only disappointment is that we didn’t get an IPod once we finished the game so we could get 5 stars with all of the preppers with a bit of background music. If we got it any earlier it would detract from the nice bit of music after a big journey - which was an experience in itself. But I did find it a bit tedious after the game had ended, needed some tunes. I still need to go back and get all of my 5 stars at some point.

I loved how the world changed when you connected a new strand though, seeing all of the structures other players had put down really helped on a lot of journeys. Plus they definitely make you question your routes and encourage you to try different options.

Fuck the bridges though, they constantly got in the way of my ziplines.

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It was a breath of fresh air in terms of gameplay mechanics and overall concept. I really enjoyed every minute of it but the thing i found lacking, except the overall open world experience, was , after you had your way with it, there was no real challenge in the game. My only difficulty came with managing all the stuff in the menus. And that was borderline frustraiton tbh as the layout was pretty confusing to say the least.

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Death Stranding was surreal because I’ve been a delivery driver for years, and the game honestly captures that several hours on the road feel with nothing but you, your tunes, your thoughts, and your road rage. Not to mention the sheer frustration of having to haul dozens of boxes of heavy-ass wine from A to B to some rich old lady who wants to you put all that shit in her garage and won’t tip but you have to anyway.

I really liked the game.

I loved creating my own paths and how the act of getting from A to B in and of itself was the obstacle. Combat was okay, but made infinitely better with how much freedom you have to beat the living shit out of MULE’s and Demens. Like there was something so cathartic about using a sticky gun to steal some bad guy’s ladder off their back, and beat them half to death with it, before snatching the cargo off that guys’ back and smashing the fool next to him with it.

I love the gameplay loop created here. How you start off delivering materials, but once you beat the main game, your focus kinda shifts from deliveries to creating a massive zipline connection as well as rebuilding the entire highway. And that comes not from deliveries, but raiding bad guy camps and fighting BT’s for Chiralium.

If you ever get bored, go to your private room and shoot at Mads Mikkelsen for ten minutes in three really stellar stealth action boss fights.

There’s a lot to this game that really gets you to come back for more and more.

I just wish there was more to its foundation, to give it both more mainstream appeal and a little more longevity once you beat the game and rebuilt the roads. For example, I wish you had more incentive to actually explore the world beyond finding materials. Like, I’d love to scale a mountain and find a hidden level with a whole new BT boss monster inside. Or have to do more with the actual Demens, like them attacking cities with nukes, and having to take them out and disable their nukes. I also really wish the game had more than two human bosses because Higgs and Cliff are some of my favorite boss fights KojiPro’s ever made. So imagine how much more fun the game would be if you had more colorful terrorists in Higgs’ employ that you had to take down, with their own DOOMs powers and unique weaponry at their helm.

That’s why I really hope this game gets a sequel. The foundation can be built upon to do so much more with the core gameplay loop than cargo delivery and occasional ghost shooting.

But otherwise, it was a terrific experience and, in my opinion, one of the only times Kojima’s message actually stuck, since it was conveyed in-game instead of through his well shot, beautiful, but heavy-handed cutscenes.

Also, the soundtrack was amazing.

I was so bummed that many tracks didn’t end up on the OST that I extracted them myself, namely the Lion BT theme:

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I ended up loving it. It was a bit of a slow burn, but around the time I obtained the zipline I was fully into it. The soundtrack was also brilliant, the moments when you are traversing the mountains and the OST would kick in were fantastic. I also teared up a little near the end of the game. I connected to BB so much by that point.

Also, Troy Baker was obviously loving his role as Higgs. I thought the boss fights were great.

I’m hoping they make a PS5 patch for it. I would love to replay it at a higher framerate and other graphical improvements. Also my PS4 Pro fan would go crazy during the cutscenes so it would be nice to play it again without so much noise during them.

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I still haven’t played it, I really would like to but a big part of me is telling me to wait for either a particularly big discount or for it to go free on PS+. I don’t even know if it’s my style of game but I’ll certainly be interested to see.

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I loved it but it’s not a game I’d recommend to everyone.

It demands a lot of patience from the players and the basic gameplay loop is a walking simulator. But it’s a deep walking simulator, since you can’t just push the analog forward to traverse. You need to consider terrain, cargo weight, cargo fragility, the weather and the time you have left to determine how you’ll travel.

Also I love how the community all work together to change the map dynamicaly, making deliveries easier. It makes you want to do your part nd help out too.

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Bit the bullet and played it. Thought it couldn’t possibly be as bad as it’s made out to be, and I’m wrong. It’s hot garbage.

Every defense of the game talks about its innovation and how one of a kind it is but that is absolutely meaningless when this New and fresh idea is pointless. The gameplay loop in itself is garbage (an expensive DHL simulator with shoddy action mechanics here or there) and the execution is worse. Everything is fundamentally unpolished snd not tuned to the fullest extent.

Sony bet on the wrong horse.

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It’s a game where, ultimately, it’s gonna be case by case. I honestly think the best way anyone can determine if it’s for them is to watch a few gameplay videos. If the gameplay looks dull as dirtwater, steer clear. If it looks like something you’d be into, check it out.

I’m of the mind that I really liked the game but see everything wrong with it and know exactly how it could’ve been infinitely better. Deliveries shouldn’t have been the only part of the gameplay loop. More should’ve been done with both the Demens and MULE’s, and there should’ve been more levels like the snowstorm mountaintop, that force you to really get smart about navigation. And more actual secrets worth a damn to go out of your way to find like in BotW, things like hidden levels with secret boss fights, secret weapons to uncover, more than just cargo.

There’s a truly excellent foundation to this game that I believe is worth expanding on, by tightening the controls the way MGSV did, with way better enemy AI than what this game has, more varied boss monsters that you see you doing more than shooting nonstop, and more human enemies like Higgs and Hannibal.

It all goes back to what I’ve been saying about Kojima since MGS2:

Does something need to be polarizing to see the creators vision through? And at least when it’s come to Kojimbo, the answer has always been “no, but he does it anyway because shortsightedness.”

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I loved it a ton.

Look I get it, this game really isnt for everyone. Traveling around like that could get very tedious especially since I plated the game. It’s truthfully a game i cannot recommend to anyone, its something Kojima fans all have to try for themselves since we all come to this series for tons of reasons. I was in for the story though and getting from place to place the first time was the real enjoyment of this game, first time through the snow and the BT territories was hell. As much as i love it i do feel we could have got a little more comabt in it, considering how much I loved all the war segments. Koj could have had a fan fav on his hands but this game is hard to crack you know. I was into higs, the Egyptian after life stuff, everything.

Will I replay this game? No but i loved my experience with it. it came at a time where i was fed up of gaming and keep me interested. Next time though koj, if you make a part 2. let me atleast be able to run acorss one other Porter(online) it’d be cool to see someone out there doing his own thing.

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I got this when it released. Honestly I was a bit unsure on it at first, but I did enjoy the trailers and was intrigued. I was intrigued by a game that was the first free run Kojima has had since… well maybe ever, realistically. Sure he directed his first Metal Gear game, Psychonauts, Snatcher, but this is his first time after being with Konami for so long and having set up amd continued such a beloved and huge franchise. I ignored most of what I could which is what I tend to do these days as I find it more enjoyable. I actually really enjoyed my time with it but I only put in maybe 6-8 hours and stopped. The weird part was that I wasn’t not enjoying it. I actually expected I wouldn’t dig the gameplay much but I actually did quite a bit. I don’t know if it’s Kojima himself or whoever has been primarily working on gameplay design and controls but the man always makes games that feel excellent and this is no different. Managing your weight and the spread of it over your body, the feeling of trying to climb a steep hill and avoiding rolling one way or another was just perfect. One of my favourite features of ICO is that when you’re travelling with Yorda and you hold her hand, you can feel a little bounce in the controller, and as you walk you feel that extra weight that you feel when you walk as you’re holding hands with someone, that drop you feel if that person steps down or up when you don’t. That small touch was one of many that made me love ICO and those delicate touches in DS are similar. But I stopped as I felt like it just wasn’t something I could play at the time. I’ve struggled to play long games in the past few years with a few exceptions and really it is probably a fault of my own. I can be a perfectionist with games and I tried doing too much too soon in it and too much at once. I also will say I didn’t love the BT encounters and they did disappoint me. It looks like they get a bit better later on with more options for dealing with them but I was hoping for something different as the horror / survival aspect is what I was most interested in.

A few days ago I decided I’d finally watch all the scenes and dialogue. It’s not something I do much, or ever really. But I felt like I should with this rather than just leave it unfinished. Honestly I really liked it. I can’t judge the gameplay overall I guess but the video I watched had all major encounters and still featured pieces of gameplay and I know what the core loop feels like. It’s different and unique but honestly this game in general has given me a new layer of respect for Kojima and has made me feel guilty for thinking he was just phoning it in with MG over the last few games and that he was happy to do it. Yes it still has a lot of exposition, yes it still has a huge cutscene / dialogue runtime, and yes it still has some of his slightly bizarre narrative traits, but he tried something very different to what he has done before and to what the vast majority of games these days do.

I can’t say I was surprised by certain plot points like Amelie (honestly something along those lines from the very start), but I felt Cliff and BB’s story was done very well and honestly moved me quite a lot. Being a new father is naturally a part of that. But even Sam was someone I can relate to a lot. Before I met Leah and we had Thomas I can honestly say I didn’t really care for or feel connected to anyone in the universe apart from my nieces, and even now apart from those, I feel very detached from people. I don’t like people, I’ve never liked people or being around them and disregarding everything negative about the pandemic, having to deal with less people over the past 18 months has made me feel in my element. I feel like this is quite a hopeful story in what can be a very bleak world and reminds us of some very simple but core elements of life and what makes it worth living. I generally feel like if a piece of media can keep me thinking about it days after I’ve finished with it and makes me think a little bit more about the nature of life and existence then it’s done a good job.

I don’t know if the rumour regarding Kojima making an exclusive game with Microsoft next is true but I’m sure I’ll be there for that one way or another.

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I really enjoyed the story of this game, maybe it’s not great to some folks, i get that, but i do enjoy being wrapped up in a universe, lore characters etc. I thought it was strong, I really do wish there was more to do beside deliveries. Cliff’s sneaking cutscenes are so reminiscent of metal gear, it’s really all i want Kojima to do sometimes, he does spooky military games right. Koj does need an editor though, raw kojima is just too much for the general fanbase. if it wasnt for the fact that i was burnt out on shooters at the time i may have never stomached it.

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Death Stranding Directors Cut announced for PS5. And I sincerely hope this trailer signifies what to expect from the actual gameplay additions because actual stealth missions or an expanded core gameplay loop could do wonders for this game:

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Great, 12 hours of extra lens flare riddled closeups of Darryl’s dick.

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That’s secured my preorder

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Instabuy, if only I had a PS5 lol

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They knew what they were doing with this trailer and it was very mean lol

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Kojima is such an asshole its unreal.

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Thats what y’all think, this man is being coy, just watch who’s working on a new mgs game! Love this new trailer tbh, I probably WONT replay it anytime soon but i bet it looks amazing in 4k

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Directors Cut is coming out September of this year and it is exactly as I was hoping: new boss fights, new combat, new story missions, new gadgets, new weapons, new means of traversal and a racing track, among other things.

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So uh…i know i said i’d never replay this game …, Kojima you’re a real piece of work. I enjoyed your game so there better be a save TRANSFARRING. i really dont want to out a million hours into this game cause my OCD