Few people in this industry (or any industry, mind you), are so commited to constructing so complicated narrative paths and rythms, in order to tell the most naive and sincere emotions about human connection.

Won't ever understand those who insist on labelling Kojima as a frustrated filmmaker who turned to videogames and doesn't care about the gameplay. He has proven himself time and time again on both fronts, and Death Stranding's gameplay is inseparable to his aspirations with the game as a whole. Incisive, complex and reaching for new grounds.

The final credits come to an end, with the names of the other porters that have aided you on your journey. There's so much stuff you've built together without realizing.

Although I loved Death Stranding when I played it through on release, I didn't really consider it a contender for my game of the year in The Year of Endless Bangers. I let three years slip by, not even booting it back up on the release of the Director's Cut, before ultimately using my new PS5 as an excuse to transfer the save and bang out a few more deliveries.

So much has changed for me in the intervening three years. Others have written at length about the pandemic and its thematic parallels with the game, so suffice it to say that for me (still largely housebound and isolated, increasingly alienated by the fever-pitch denial of the world at large) being able to enact a world where real people work together to build infrastructure and thereby heal the world has been personally healing in a way I couldn't have imagined in 2019.

My tastes as someone who thinks critically about games have changed as well. Death Stranding's preoccupation with the texture of play—from asking you to viscerally feel the geometry of the ground you walk on to showing painstakingly mocapped cutscenes of every little action in your private room—hits much harder now that I've played through the FromSoft canon which is itself texture-obsessed in a different direction. Coming directly off playing some AAA shlock, I also found myself with a renewed appreciation of this game's dialectic approach to a cinematic aesthetic, with carefully choreographed moments that nevertheless always emphasize play as the distinguishing factor that makes this decidedly not a movie.

I'm setting this down again not because I'm finished with it for good, but because I'm inducting it into the tier of games I intend to return to over and over again. I could happily finish out the DC plots and call it "finished", but what I really want is to create a kind of personal infrastructure I can use to bring myself back to this world, this textural landscape, whenever I need to feel that connection with people that this game so masterfully evokes.

Somewhere in this weird piece of art is an idea for a very good video game, but you have to suffer through monotonous fetch quests, annoying gameplay, and an obtuse story to experience even a hint of that idea.

Death Stranding does that thing that a lot of games do - it throws you into an environment that clearly spells out your limitations before slowly introducing tools to make your journey easier. The difference is it's not like "You could only jump before, but now you can double jump. Isn't that fun!?"
It's more like "You don't know how to walk down a hill because you're a big dumb man baby. Struggle through this for 10 hours and then we'll give you something to make it not suck." Every minute I spent walking around in that world was a constant battle of "Wow this sure looks beautiful I can't wait to explore it more" and "Oh I beefed it again on a pebble while walking up a slight incline".

Every single upgrade or improvement you get in the game isn't to make a fun game more fun, it's to make the game you are playing suck less.
"Walking with a load sure does suck, huh? Here have this"
"Traveling this long distance over and over is boring. Make a road to make it faster"
But you still have to put in a lot of work to even build these structures to make your life easier. So you either struggle to complete your journey or you struggle to collect resources to build a bridge to make it easier to complete your journey. Yay?

The social/"strand" portion of Death Stranding I think is some of the coolest stuff I've experienced in a game. Building bridges, roads, or other structures that you or others can use to make you journey a little easier is a lot of work but also satisfying. The fact that those structures can then be used by other players is very cool, even if it did feel like I was the only one in my world actually contributing to these projects.
I'd spend hours working on these roads and the contributions from others was measly.

I can stomach boring gameplay if the story is at least holding my interest along the way. And while I wouldn't call Death Stranding's story uninteresting, I definitely wouldn't call it good. The vibe of this game consist of characters with goofy names delivering horribly-written lines of dialogue with deadly-serious tone all while Monster energy drinks and ads for Norman Reedus's real life TV show on AMC are in the background. It's a game that simultaneously takes itself so seriously and not seriously at all. Honestly, normally, I think that kind of thing can be kind of funny but every second of this game had me scratching my head and asking "This is the video game mastermind everyone worships?"

+ Gorgeous world
+ Incredible soundtrack
+ Really cool building/social element

- Gameplay loop is just nonstop fetch quests
- Getting around the world is actively not fun until you put the work in to make it suck less
- BT encounters are stressful
- Nonsense story
- Conflicting tone

Death Stranding: Director's Cut marks my second full playthrough of Death Stranding, a game that I invested an unhealthy amount of time into on the PS4 original. My review comes from a perspective of someone who has a mostly clear mental image of the game's map, and is familiar with most of the game's quirks and mechanics.

For people who are new to this, Death Stranding is an uphill climb (both literally and figuratively). The gameplay is a more deliberate "walking simulator", with an emphasis on maintaining your balance, choosing routes with less difficult terrain, or forging onward on rough territory by using tools and structures to your advantage. The other defining trait of Death Stranding is being a "package delivery simulator". You take what people need to them, and bring everyone onto the "chiral network", in an attempt to bring America back together in the aftermath of an apocalyptic event known as the "Death Stranding".

There's a lot of micromanagement involved in controlling Sam. For the record, due to story reasons, Sam doesn't actually die. He can revive an infinite amount of times as a "repatriate". What can die is your cargo. You need to always be using the left/right triggers to shift Sam's weight in real-time. By using your Odradek to scan the terrain ahead, you can plan out the safest route ahead of you, so as to not trip on a bunch of rocks like a dumbass. Sam has a stamina meter that drains as he exerts himself, whether it be due to carrying excessive amounts of cargo, walking on rough terrain, climbing up cliffs, the list goes on. The fetus in a pod attached to your chest isn't just there to be "trademark Kojima weirdness", it's what enables you to see BTs, ghost-like creatures that roam where timefall occurs (think "rain that accelerates aging"). Sneaking around ghosts is probably one of my favorite parts of the whole game. The flitting of your Odradek accelerating as you approach these invisible threats, Sam holding his breath so as to not be heard, the atmosphere in these areas is as haunting as it is daunting. Getting your delivery from point A to B completely intact and hearing the praise of the preppers is a surprisingly gratifying feeling, and your efforts are repaid in turn with access to more tools with the potential to make your life easier. After a certain point (probably ziplines), the game transforms into something completely different. No longer content to walk everywhere, you'll create your own vehicle routes, build structures exactly where you need them, and take on upwards of 10 orders at once, aiming for top marks on all of them. Or maybe that's just me.

The new content in Death Stranding: Director's Cut is mostly extra, in my opinion. The game would be fine without it (like it was originally), but I'm glad it's here. You have a literal racetrack that you can rebuild, new structures to try out that can make your life much easier, and even a firing range to test weapons in, with trials akin to those of Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance's VR Missions. The game also hosts a variety of ranked challenges for races, delivery challenges, boss rematches, and the firing range trials. None of this needs to be here, but I find that it helps further build the game's sense of community. There's also a fair amount of quality-of-life changes, such as introducing a few new tools early in the game, to make people's gameplay experience a bit more pleasant as they make their way through the "tutorial area".

Death Stranding is the most fascinating example of asynchronous multiplayer I've ever experienced. Once you bring a facility onto the chiral network, that portion of the map is filled with the online structures of other players. Any structures that you create have a chance of popping up in other players' games as well. Despite the fact that in-game, you're the only one out there trekking across America, you never feel truly alone. There are others doing the exact same thing as you, whether you get to see them or not. You can share copious amounts of "likes" to structures that you really want to praise. I genuinely believe that the joy of feeling like you're helping others is the biggest draw for me in this game, the satisfaction of a virtual job well done. Watching likes go up isn't satisfying because "big number get bigger", it's because it shows "hey, people are using the things you made. it makes your life easier, and theirs". I couldn't care less about the counter itself; sharing likes is simply your method of sharing gratitude with these other Sams that you'll never actually meet. That, and helping out in more explicit ways: delivering cargo that others ended up losing/entrusting, sharing excess tools/materials in the share locker, etc. You can even call out if you're in a boss encounter with a giant BT, and mannequin-esque Sams will rise up from the goop and toss extra supplies at you.

I'm conflicted on Death Stranding's plot. I was originally going to say that "I only began to get truly invested in the latter third of the game's story", but that's not entirely true. I love the individual development that each member of Bridges gets. Most of all, I love the mystery surrounding Sam, BB, and the man he keeps seeing visions of every time he plugs himself in. I think my lack of interest in the overarching plot comes from the disconnect that occurs when I fuck off to deliver an extra 28 packages in between the intended story beats. The other thing that may make or break the story for people is well, Hideo Kojima's role as director. Anyone who follows Hideo Kojima in any capacity knows that he is obsessed with film, and the cast of actors definitely reflects that. Pretty much all of the actors are famous people that Kojima knows and/or loves, and he wanted them to be in his game. Anyone who keeps an ear to the ground in terms of pop culture is bound to recognize several of the faces in this game, to the point of it being actively distracting. Kojima's idea of "symbolism" can also be so blunt that you'd swear it borders on parody at points. But on the other hand, the man knows his cinematography damn well. His primary choice of non-game soundtrack, Low Roar, fits Sam and the atmosphere of the world immaculately. The art direction of Yoji Shinkawa never misses; I love the design of the technology, the BTs, the characters, the world. For everything that you could point and laugh at in this game, I see it as a fully realized vision, flaws and all.

Death Stranding is not a game for everyone, but there's nothing quite like it out there. When it was first announced and Sony gave a big fat blank check to Kojima, saying "make one of your critically acclaimed masterpieces for us", I'm sure they were completely horrified when they were shown gameplay, and Kojima was like "you walk and deliver packages". It sounds boring on paper, but in practice, apparently it's all I've ever wanted, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

Fostering those connections

If you want to know my thoughts on Death Stranding, please click on this as I'll mostly be going over my thoughts on the Director's Cut additions in this review.

It's really funny when you give Death Stranding a director's cut considering how much Kojima himself said that what we got was what he envisioned and more just corporate speak for a definitive edition of the game with better graphics and new gameplay additions that are pretty popular during the console generational leap going on right now and the past few years.

We can ignore the usual suspects: better graphical tech, quality of life stuff, extra cars and mission to focus on the big additions.


The new ruined factory area and missions are pretty cool additions as I've realized that you mostly always fight and operate in these outdoor and open spaces and being an actual indoor location brings some much needed variety in the folder with a pretty good arc and conclusion.

Open world additions like new roads being able to be built and new structures like jump ramps, cargo catapults and chiral bridges bring a bit more versatility into the fold granted I never understood the use for cargo catapults as much.

One of the most surprising ones is an actual racetrack in which you do time trials in an effort to unlock the cool and click roadster which looks like an expensive car that goes really fast but completely awful for rough terrain so only good on roads. A few new additions like a firing range to test stuff out and drills for more opportunities to actually use guns in general.

Apart from new enhancement to already existing gameplay systems such as better melee, being able to replay certain moments, new regular orders. This is pretty much your run of the mill definitive edition with extra content in which I feel that you will probably appreciate the quality of life more than the actual additions but considering that this version is the most accessible, it's the best version of Death Stranding barring some performance issues.

one of the best games ever made is in here somewhere, but as it stands, it's just... good. REALLY good, even, but with a project as wildly ambitious as this, it's only natural that it would get in its own way by trying to do too much. it's a free-roam open-world experience in which you're at liberty to explore at more or less your own pace and approach difficult scenarios as you see fit, BUT ALSO it's a restrictive cinematic experience that you can't influence at all, largely comprised of cutscenes in which stilted side characters exposition at you about overwrought plot bullshit that happened off-screen while you sit there wondering how long before you'll get to pick up your controller again.

for a game about the importance of people connecting and forming bonds with one another in the face of existential loneliness, it's a shame that its best moments are when the characters you're supposed to feel connected to finally shut the fuck up and let you out into the world to freely roam, alone.

It's weird, dreadfully weird, enduringly weird, it doesn't work all the time, and it won't work for everyone, but it worked for me, and I feel very fortunate. From a presentation standpoint, it's perfect. The visuals, the score, and contains probably the best ensemble cast I've ever witnessed in a game (but how Mads and Norman got the nomination over Tommie I do not know). It took me a long time to finish- starting on pc, then restarting on PS5 with the new edition. But Kojima definitely crafted something so unlike anything I've ever played before that I feel like it's something you have to try at least once. I am so glad he is able to continue to make weird shit, and while Metal Gear was always somewhat based in reality Death Stranding throws proper nouns at you from the start and expects you to remember it all, and it rules for that. I hope he can continue to do this. Docked points because I cannot safely play this game with a beer in one hand without risking dropping all my cargo.

One of the most intelligent, unique, and beautiful game ever made by none other than Kojima himself. The ability to make a game that’s “deep” that’s often held back because of the story and gameplay is very difficult but not for Kojima at all. I’ve been letting this game marinate in my mind as I’ve find it not difficult but just too much to describe in its entirety to talk about death stranding especially with how the finale was. The message is so simple that Kojima portrays but the way he does it in this format of video games is an art within itself. I feel like the people don’t understand this game, it’s just really difficult to see that because of how this game calls out humanity and a lot of current problems that we a whole need to do and that’s to connect with each other because together, we are stronger.

Being able to grow up and accept yourself, accepting your own emotions, reconnecting with people and not isolating yourself. No matter how scarred we are as a person, no matter how much trauma or what we are going through, there is always a light at the end of tunnel to keep on keeping on. Connections matter and we can do anything as we are stronger together. That final stretch of the game was one of the most unique experiences ever and I absolutely love Cliff, Sam and Lou. "When I found out I was going to be a father, I was so scared. I had to be there for you and your mother, no matter what. I couldn't just go off and get myself killed anymore. But I had it wrong. Being a father didn't make me scared, it made me brave.” This game is just generational for everything it does from story beats, to emotional feelings, to the gameplay, etc. I could go further into depth about this game but it’s way too special to even describe and even if I did, you really should experience it for yourself.

“Keep on keeping on.”

Death Stranding is a breath of fresh air in the AAA open-world genre whether it clicks with you or not. Me personally, I loved planning out how to get from point A to B, focusing on traversal and inventory management, as there were so many ways that any delivery could go wrong. Rough terrain, massive amounts of cargo, enemy placement, all the focus of the gameplay is on getting to a new place. I especially loved the asynchronous multiplayer of this world, where once you've gotten to a new place and hooked it up to the 'chiral network,' you can now see a lot of other players' structures, decreasing a lot of stress in future trips.

The story isn't as focused or sensical as it could be, but I still found myself tearing up towards the end, especially with the exceptional performances by Norman Reedus and Mads Mikkelsen. Troy Baker's performance was the stand out for me though, he chewed the scenery as the campy yet still scary terrorist. It's also just a beautiful game, especially on PS5.

Death Stranding isn't going to work for everyone, which is fair enough, but I do think it is a game that everyone should play. Far more interesting to think about than the universally loved open-world games like Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring, Death Stranding doesn't make the open-world feel exciting and filled with content like those games, but instead turns the genre inside out by making the very act of walking the focus. Give it a try, stick it out until chapter 3 when the world really opens up, and experience a game truly unlike anything before it.

Once, there was an explosion, a bang that gave rise to life as we know it. And then, came the next explosion. An explosion that will be our last.

Those words from the opening of Hideo Kojima’s epic Death Stranding sat in the back of my head for the nearly 70 hours I spent playing the game. Kojima always has an underlying message with his projects and for some reason, those lines, among the hundreds of others within the dialogue, were the ones that stuck with me.

Even after getting the gist of the game's message midway through, it wasn’t until the game reached its twilight moments that I fully comprehended this quote’s gravity.

Death Stranding is a game that has been divisive for many reasons. Some won’t find anything appealing about the “Fed Ex simulator” as it has been mockingly reduced to and some find Kojima’s ego grating. Those are all fair assessments, but I think some people may be missing the point.

In this game, nothing is superfluous. In many open-world titles, which have littered the release windows this generation, all the emphasis is on the destinations. Rarely is time given to contextualize the game’s world. Open worlds merely serve to artificially extend the experience out, a sandbox that exists instead of thoughtful level design.

This couldn’t be further from the truth for Death Stranding.

In Death Stranding, gameplay consists of delivering items between destinations and encouraging denizens, existing in the wake of an apocalypse that has destroyed America, to join a new nation and become part of a connected network. You must efficiently adjust your inventory for optimal weight distribution while simultaneously traversing through hazardous territory that can range from swamps, rocky hills, and blizzard-laden mountain peaks that would make Everest shudder.

What happens at point A and point B is important, for sure. The people you make deliveries to are grateful for and eventually join the network you’re creating during your trek from the East to the West Coast of America. But the real meat and potatoes of the game is the experience of what happens during the journey.

Whereas navigating worlds in other games is often an afterthought — a way to artificially extend the experience — it is the game in Death Stranding. Some have compared it to walking simulators like Gone Home. But even in those games, the walking only serves to vector the player between items and points of interest. All of the exposition will occur when reaching these locations but nothing really occurs between them.

Every aspect of the gameplay is methodical. You have to plan ahead and decide what tools are most important since they take up weight just like the cargo you will be carrying. You can be thrown off balance by rocks, slopes, or water. You can run out of stamina while trying to balance your load and end up dropping and damaging it. Mercenaries can try to steal it or even kill you. Every moment of this game demands your attention and engagement.

I expected Death Stranding to be a statement of games not needing to be fun to be good, like Spec Ops: The Line or Depression Quest. But that wasn’t the case.

Death Stranding is a blast. All of the game’s meticulous mechanics and contextualization result in an addictive, rewarding gameplay loop that shaved hours off my days before I realized it.

When playing Death Stranding, The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus came to mind. Camus’s central argument is that in the face of overwhelming adversity and the apparent insignificance one person’s existence may have, shouldn’t individuals just kill themselves? Get it over with? If there’s no purpose, if the universe is apathetic to our struggles, then why bother? What’s the point?

Camus analogizes this futility with the Greek tale of Sisyphus, a being who is cursed by the gods to carry a boulder up a hill by day only to have it fall down at night. Then to do it again every day for eternity. Given the burden he incessantly carries on his shoulders and the futility of his actions, one could assume him miserable.

But in rejecting nihilistic thoughts and finding purpose in the actions he can control, defining his own existence, and moving forward even when something might seem fruitless, one can imagine Sisyphus happy.
Comparatively, when Sam Bridges, the player character, feels what he is doing may serve no purpose, he carries on. He also does so in the face of nihilistic antagonists such as Higgs, who is aware of a systematic disaster that will end all life. His motivation is to expedite humanity’s extinction in the face of its inevitable end.

This brings us back to that opening quote. Near the end of the game, I realized Death Stranding was a commentary on the global climate crisis – that this seemingly inescapable calamity facing our planet means we should probably just not care.

But Death Stranding says otherwise.

There is a purpose in the struggle. Purpose in the moment-to-moment decisions we make. Purpose in the relationships we build with those around us.

One of the core gameplay mechanics is asynchronous multiplayer. If I reach an obstacle, I can use one of my tools to build a bridge to cross a ravine or drop a rope to rappel down a cliff. These things you left behind by you will appear in other players’ games to offer them relief if they don’t share the same tools to build what’s necessary. It speaks to a level of communal effort.

This ties into the game’s social system of “likes.” Players can click a dedicated like button, resulting in positive reinforcement and doubling the same appreciation that non-player characters have for Sam and the player by extension.

Norman Reedus’s performance as Sam and Mads Mikkelson’s as Cliff Unger are outstanding. Well-acted and voiced, the characters all feel human. Kojima’s camera work rivals that of some film directors, and the attention to detail is staggering.

The relationship with BB, your infantile companion who can sense the BTs (who are made of a substance very similar in appearance and viscosity to oil), the game’s main antagonistic force, was genuine. I ended up caring about BB as if they were a real person. One of the most poignant moments in the game involves the culmination of Sam and BB’s relationship, which came after the narrative climax and had me reaching for tissues.

Death Stranding is flawed, as all games are. The script can be clunky, and Kojima’s penchant for convoluted character development still remains. However, the genius of Death Stranding is in its confrontation of existence which captures the essence of the digital age by using gameplay to manifest our collective pathos.

What I took from this game is that though things might seem bleak, none of us are alone in our struggles. We have to take things day by day and work together towards building a future and that a better world is always possible.

Nothing is truly futile and all we have is us.

Death Stranding aka Norman Reedus and the Funky Fetus is a sort of mixed bag of highs and lows, though with enough strengths to make it a solid game that I enjoyed. The game strongly ties in its unorthodox for the AAA scene game mechanics of delivering packages with its narrative themes. Having other players help you through their structures they built and you in turn paying them back through your own creations is a great feature that ties into the game’s themes of community so well. Going around delivering packages is also nice though I wish the bike controlled a bit better and there was slightly less rocks, it’s sometimes a bit of a janky pain to maneuver. The combat and the BTs drag the game down though as they’re just sort of a slog to deal with and the game initially loves just throwing them at you in chokepoints where you can’t just maneuver around them. And it’s even more annoying in endgame when a couple of giant BTs will just spawn out of thin air at you so you have to slowly run away from them. Combat with bandits is okay, but one boss fight just sucks and feels really jank. This game is definite proof to me that Kojima needs an editor or the like to reign him in though because he genuinely does have a good grasp of integrating themes with the gameplay as I said, but man is this game’s narrative rather bogged down in goofy technobabble and mostly adhering to the Garth Marenghi’s school of subtlety. On the other hand though it does have some genuine narrative highs and manages to nail the moments that really matter.

I think the ending is the best example of the dichotomy of the game’s hill and valleys as it’s paced like shit and really needed a second pass, but it also has some of the best parts of the game. The first half is just a total slog with you primarily trudging along a wasteland as the credits slowly go by interspersed with some exposition cutscenes; it’s something that desperately needed to get cut because it just an absolute waste of time. But then the second half kicks in and there you start really learning the truth of what happened and this is where the game pulls off its best narrative moments with genuine emotional gravitas. I’ve seen people mention it before I played this and I have to agree, Tommie Earl Jenkins goes hard, holy shit.

Overall a flawed, yet interesting game that manages to nail the parts that matter to make a worthwhile experience. I’m up for Norman Reedus and the Funky Fetus 2: Electric Boogaloo.

When I saw the first trailer for Death Stranding, I wasn't impressed. It looked like a walking/cargo delivery simulator and that seemed like the furthest thing from my own interests in gaming at the time. I quickly brushed it off and put it out of my mind.

Fast forward to the game releasing - I decided to watch some gameplay since it seemed to be a polarizing game and was once again unimpressed. My suspicions had seemed to be confirmed - this looked exactly like a walking/cargo delivery simulator. I couldn't fathom how anyone could possibly enjoy this game; where was the fun in just walking around? I couldn't wrap my head around it.

Fast forward again to this past year - I started playing the Metal Gear Solid series after hearing nothing but glowing things about it. I slowly made my way through each game, admiring the vision and passion that Kojima and his team put into each project. I became fascinated with Kojima specifically, and wanted to understand how he could create something that felt so fresh and inspired.

After beating MGSV recently, I felt a hollowness - it felt like nothing could fill the void that finishing the MGS series had left. I knew Kojima had left Konami to create his own studio and put out that weird game Death Stranding I had seen a couple years ago - could it be as good as what I considered to be his magnum opus?

After roughly 52 hours with Death Stranding, I can confidently say that this game stands next to Metal Gear Solid as a once-in-a-lifetime gaming experience. I don't think one is better than the other; on the contrary, I think both complement each other perfectly. Kojima's ability to tell deeply complex, philosophical stories with nuanced characters and an absurdity that borders on the inane is unmatched. I found myself far more invested in this story than I ever expected to be, and as I write this review I feel the same sort of hollowness that I felt when I completed MGSV. I knew I had experienced something truly special, and I know that very few games, if any, will be able to capture this specific feeling ever again.

Playing this game felt strangely calming a lot of the time; I often get pretty tired of traversing open worlds in a lot of the games I play and will opt to use fast travel to speed up the experience. Walking around the world of Death Stranding felt serene - it allowed me to sit with my thoughts while walking between point A and point B, and rarely did it ever feel like a chore to get where I was going (with a handful of exceptions but they never ruined the experience outright).

The vocal and facial capture performances in this game are absolutely top notch. I can't think of a game, apart from maybe The Last of Us Part II, that looks this good and has characters that felt this real. Every tear that ran down a face, every subtle facial expression - they all felt so genuine. The casting in this game was also bonkers - I knew Guillermo del Toro had a role but had no idea Troy Baker, Margaret Qualley AND Conan O'Brien would show up as well. The fact that Death Stranding has such a star studded cast speaks volumes about how influential Kojima is as a creator and just how much of a cool opportunity it must be to work with him.

The weakest part of this game is probably the combat - it felt tacked on a lot of the time and often took me out of the experience while playing. I'm guessing that it was included to cater to a larger audience since a game just about delivering cargo probably wouldn't sound like a fun video game to a lot of people (myself included when I first heard about it). Thankfully the combat sections make up a small portion of the overall game and don't detract too much from an otherwise stellar experience.

I think this is the longest review I've ever written on this site but it also feels like I could write pages more about this game. It's insane to me to think that this game exists at all; if I were in a board room hearing Death Stranding pitched to me for the first time I'd have thought that Kojima had lost his mind. But I'm also immensely grateful that he was given the opportunity to tell his off the wall and absolutely unhinged story that resonated so deeply with me. I distinctly remember seeing the trailer for the sequel at the Game Awards last year and thinking that it was wild to me that they were making a sequel to that weird walking simulator game - now, I cannot wait to dive back into this world once again.

The best way to describe this game is that it really isn't for everyone, it's not just the fact that it's focused on making deliveries, but also how you have to focus on keeping your balance and not losing your packages, something that requires a lot of patience. With that said, it fits my taste surprisingly well, it reminded me of being a trader in Elite Dangerous, focusing on what routes to take, which were the least dangerous ones, how much cargo could I carry, etc, so playing DS felt right. The main gameplay issue I have is that once you build the roads and ziplines that you need it gets uninteresting since it becomes even more just going from point A to B, without any real threat.
The story is also pretty interesting but, while it has great emotional moments and some of the plot points are very interesting, I would say that its biggest flaw is how huge it tries to be, it wants to be interconnected with all of these characters and all of the context of what happened to the world, and it ends up being too much. In other words, it wants to be as bombastic and complicated as something as MGS4, but that game is already built upon 3, technically 6, different games, meanwhile this is just the first game in the series.

Death Stranding is the best 6/10 game I've ever played. A genuinely unique title that everyone should experience for themselves, yet at the same time one that constantly gets in the way of itself any time it tries to become something truly great. I think it speaks volumes that the best time I had with this game was after I had beaten it; when finally given the freedom to explore and create infrastructure, as well as do deliveries unimpeded by awful story, overwrought characters and uninspired combat. That ability to build out the world for yourself and your fellow porters and enjoy the fruits of your creation is what really makes this game shine, but the amount of work it demands you do to achieve that is so absurd I wouldn't blame anyone for not wanting to put in the time.

Hideo Kojima is my favorite video game director, this much was made evident to me before I even completed a single Metal Gear Solid game and all I had to go off was Death Stranding. I found myself in a bit of a slump when it came to games in my later high school and early college years, I simply do not remember playing or at the very least enjoying anything for about 4 or 5 years of my life so I never thought to upgrade my PS3 to the next generation. Even when Death Stranding came out in 2019, I wasn’t rushing to get a PS4 because of my pretty drab associations with games at the time. The covid lockdown happened a few months later and I found myself returning to several mediums that I had grown distant to because of school, and video games were one of them. After talking to several friends about what games they did or did not connect with, I was pretty dead set on playing the “boring walking simulator” game as soon as I could. I went out and bought a PS4 pro and a copy of Death Stranding as soon as I had the money to do so, and this combination of stellar hardware and a beautiful game almost single-handedly revitalized my interest in video gaming, especially ones that attempt to push the boundaries of what the medium can do artistically. No more were the days of lazy shooters, RPGs, or platformers as I ventured out to see what games truly had to offer.

I don’t think any game had spoken to me the same way that Death Stranding did, even before coming anywhere close to completing the game. I was immediately drawn into its incredibly unconventional control scheme and its ability to balance its earth-shatteringly large scale with such tender moments of genuine human emotion. Death Stranding was the first game I had ever played that felt truly important, and beyond that I just enjoyed playing it. Its slow-paced and very deliberate mission design as well as a multitude of menus and meters to constantly keep under wraps made the very simple act of walking in a video game feel significant, something I have never seen focus attributed to in even the best of platformers or Bennett Foddy games. Naturally, when my favorite video game director began hyping up an extended cut of my favorite game ever, I became excited to experience this truly unique work of art again on an even more powerful system.

Unfortunately, this game was not made with me in mind.

I will preface this by saying I did not actually complete the game again from a new save file, I got about a quarter of the way through the game before I understood it’s trajectory and ported my 100% completion save file to this updated version of the game. Something I noticed immediately is how much better the game looks and runs than its PS4 original. A higher stable framerate of 60fps made the game feel that much more fluid when exploring, the adaptive triggers gave resistance back to you when you were holding your straps and bearing a heavy load, and the intricately designed vibration allows you to feel which foot Sam is planting down and how sturdy of a place that is. These are all the biggest strengths of this Director’s Cut, the ability to raise the stakes of simply walking from A to B even further by stretching the console to its absolute limit. For the first 3 or 4 hours of the game, I was really enjoying being sent back to square one of this world that I had all but perfected, which made me have to consider my paths and my gear much more in-depth than I would if I was still in PS4 post-game. It was exciting to be vulnerable again, able to make mistakes due to a lack of gear, and able to forge my own paths again instead of following the one of least resistance. It really did feel like I was playing the game for the first time all over again, until I got one of the new missions. Die-Hardman handed me a gun and asked me to sneak into an enemy base and retrieve cargo. This did come after the first stealth section of the game where I needed to sneak into an enemy base and retrieve cargo, but the game treats these first few enemy encounters as microcosms of survival horror. You are woefully underprepared and must rely on pure stealth or melee if you get caught. No big deal right?

Along with this new mission where a non-lethal gun is put into your hands come an avalanche of things I really dislike a lot about this game. For starters, there is a new way of playing levels that rotate throughout the day. If you pick certain deliveries, there is an option to compete with other porters around the world and receive bonuses for things like perfect stealth or ammo conservation, and the winner gets a medal and bragging rights. I think this is a pretty terrible way of getting people in this game to all do the same thing as each other. The way structures, paths, and signs are laid out by other players are ALWAYS helpful and will point you in the right direction if you are feeling lost. Not only does this encourage Dark Souls-tier levels of trolling in a game about unity, but this tears away from the strand-type gameplay I have come to know and love. Beyond the fact that this makes absolutely no sense within the text of the game itself, its subtext urges players to complete deliveries and mission for the good of themselves and NOT the good of the delivery or the recipient, something I found to be powerful my first time through since your reward was almost always intangible “likes” that exist to make you feel good about what you have done. Perhaps a competitive medal could do the same for other players or would work better in other games, but it makes completing missions feel disingenuous to me.

I don’t have much to say on the reworked combat or stealth systems this game has to offer. I can count how many MULEs I knocked out with rubber bullets on one hand and after playing through the entire MGS series, I don’t have any problems with sneaking around to complete objectives. Kojima is obviously a master at directing this sort of action, so it really doesn’t make sense to harp on how it feels because it feels good, it functions as intended and there is a weight to how you knock out enemies. I do not like how this violence is encouraged and implemented so early on in the game. Like I mentioned before, these encounters with MULEs and terrorists have screeching scores and dangerous weapons attached to them which give off a very uneasy feeling that make you want to get through there as quick as you can. The base game does give you a lot of weapons to use at your disposal, but it severely punishes you for killing in the form of voidouts, so non-lethal is always the way to go...when you have to. Setting aside the powerful anti-violence subtext of this and all of Kojima’s games, sneaking is almost always more fun and rewarding because it greatly reduces the risk of damaging your BB or your cargo which is entirely how these few of many systems are meant to be micromanaged. The first two of the three missions could be completed entirely using stealth, but the very last mission has you neutralize all of the enemies in an area to advance. Putting such a high stakes, high violence mission so early on in the game not only sets players up for false expectations, but warps their perceptions of how Sam could and should act. I don’t think it's much of a stretch to say he would much prefer to deliver and be done with it, connecting people along the way, then he would to come into a camp blasting at everything that moves.

The reward for completing the VERY FIRST one of these very early extra missions rewards you with many things. The first and less notable one is the firing range located in any facility with a private room. These act as MGS VR missions and allow for Sam to show off his FoxHound skills against unsuspecting computers. I can understand the need to allow players to practice with weapons and stealth in this way, but I really do enjoy the way each mandatory boss or enemy encounter plays out. Even from the very first one with Higgs which comes in a strange place and time, it's clear that you need to think on your feet with your slow drip feed of anti-BT weapons. There is even a line poking fun at people who just wanted another epic big Kojima fight fest (as if MGS games were ever that to begin with...) when Higgs says “Aren’t you getting tired of the grind? Isn’t this what you’ve been waiting for this whole time? A game over?”, a multi-faceted line that challenges Sam and his purpose as much as it does the player’s. The very slow and deliberate structure of this game has come under a lot of criticism by impatient gamers, and it’s pretty clear that Kojima understands that and taunts players with a very one-sided boss encounter where you don’t quite understand the controls or weapons. I find this to be incredibly bold and challenging, but many may find this annoying so a firing range isn’t an inherently bad idea, it just robs the encounters of their true potential before the first one even happens.

Another reward for completing this early violent mission is a support skeleton. Now, these support skeletons do add another layer of strategy onto a game that is brimming with systems and mechanics, so I do love this addition...later in the game. You do not normally receive a skeleton until you meet the Engineer who builds them, and even then they are very limited in what they can do and often specialize in one stat like cargo capacity, speed, or climbing. The support skeleton has a decent sized battery that makes every single one of these stats better far too early on in the game. This completely robbed me of that feeling of progression and power that I was talking about earlier since the rest of the game (that I played up to) feels far too easy and uneventful now. Sure, you can still take tumbles and timefall is an always present danger, but giving players such a great piece of equipment out of sequence with the other equipment feels strange. These early sections of the game are a cakewalk, and once you get to the other skeletons (much faster than previously might I add), it feels as though you didn’t even earn them by befriending Junji Ito, it just feels like an unearned bonus to make the game feel even less like it already does.

Scattered in between missions and areas are also the three new structures that can be built with PCCs and a new support buddy. These are all unlocked much later in the story, but are still available in the story, and two of them change the game in ways that I dislike tremendously. The worst offender is easily the buddy bot. This thing can traverse nearly any terrain, carry mounds of equipment, and even carry you to your destination. Sure you might need to get off every once in a while for course correction, but the world is quite literally NOT in your hands anymore. An inhuman robot, one that is nearly infallible, can handle your deliveries for you, completely ruining any sense of importance and thematic relevance to Sam’s arc as a human being. Another terrible edition is the cargo cannon, wherein you can launch cargo to a predetermined spot far away on the map so you no longer need to carry it by hand. The entire point of this game is to bear the weight of deliveries and use every tool at your disposal to carry it throughout the map, whether is be a cart, car, or skeleton, but these two completely remove the human element and fun factor of each delivery. It is possible to complete deliveries WITHOUT using these elements of the game, but playing on Very Hard difficulty and going for the highest Premium Delivery orders all but requires the use of everything at your disposal. Attempting to perfect the several new deliveries and incredibly difficult new challenges Legend of Legends of Legends has to offer is possible without this equipment, but it also feels like it was made with it in mind, at least as a last resort. Unlocking such powerful abilities that allow gamers to bypass...the...game...seems to be a step too far for my taste, especially with how it clashes with the game’s own aesthetic and values. The bonus Half-Life and Cyberpunk missions are fine, nothing noteworthy at all but I thought I’d just throw them in here because I did spend time completing them for the new items that are almost entirely just for goofing around. The racing is also sub-par, if you can believe that.

None of what I just listed is necessarily a bad thing. Almost all of it is optional and, when it isn’t, it only serves to make the gameplay more conventional and satisfying for a wider audience of people. I have severe issues with how most of these reworked systems and new items are inherently compromising the game’s very core. Words like boring and drab get thrown around a lot when describing what you literally do in the game, but what makes Death Stranding a truly unique work of art is how it builds on top of that in such bold and beautiful ways. The asynchronous multiplayer aspect of this game makes you never truly feel alone on the journey and connect players together. This directly mirrors how Sam is laying down paths for both seen and unseen NPCs, ones that exist only to do the right thing. Adding in competitive time trials for missions turns the game into one about mechanics rather than one about meaning, and while the mechanics are still one of a kind and incredibly solid, it just doesn’t carry the same weight the game did before. Allowing players to circumvent difficult ways of travelling or even carrying cargo in the first place shouldn’t even need to be analyzed to determine how detrimental to the very core themes and gameplay loop of this work are. Giving in to player’s violent desires to see Kojima shine in directing stealth and action also negates a lot of what this game is trying to say about violence and people at large, something that comes to a head beautifully in every Higgs and BT boss fight in this game. Prompting players to destroy and hurt feels very contradictory to what this entire game is about, and is not a welcome change from me.

Which leads me to my ultimate verdict...this is not a bad game. Underneath all of these horrid modernized artless changes to such a tranquil and patient game is still a game that demands to be treated with care. Had this been an expansion on the post-game and not a fundamental reworking of the game at large then I would’ve been more on board with it, but this game is unfortunately not made to please me. Creating such a passionate, unchallenged, unique, and, for seemingly the first time in his career, streamlined and unaltered version of his vision only to have the most criticism piled onto him must’ve really bothered Kojima. Since he is such a passionate and caring man, it would make sense that he would want to please as many people as possible with his works, something he did seemingly effortlessly with MGS games. It is definitely not a bad thing that he wanted more people to play this game about the good humanity can achieve through unity, but it has to sting at least a little that this was by and large rejected and ridiculed for being something new and demanding in a completely foreign way than most games. The changes to make this game less strand-like and more conventional are felt far too often during the story mode, as these are inextricably woven into the very fabric of the game. This is not just a lazy port with DLC, this is a reworked game meant to bring more people together than before by appealing to their very short-sighted and impatient interests. However, Kojima himself put it best when he said that games are not artistic because they often try to appeal to everyone without any specific person in mind. I was that person for Death Stranding. I am not that person for Director’s Cut. This is the first and hopefully last time he disappoints me.

Que jornada emocionante.
Se você se sente ou já se sentiu desconectado, esse jogo é para você.
Não só em um sentido literal, mas após 2 anos de pandemia, é difícil não sentir que algumas conexões foram partidas e até algumas pontes quebradas. É difícil não se sentir até diferente depois desses 2 anos.
Death Stranding compreende as desconexões físicas e metafísicas em uma obra absurdamente consciente em cada passo que dá.
Em qualquer camada que você possa vir a pensar, Death Stranding trás uma abordagem fenomenal sobre o tema de conexões em cada uma delas.
Sobre estarmos sozinhos, o quanto sozinhos realmente estamos? E se estamos sozinhos de verdade, como nos conectar?
A dificuldade, o esforço e a dor, quanto mais conexões fazemos, quanto mais percebemos que não estamos sozinhos, mais fácil o caminho vai ficando.
E, com o tempo, aprendemos a gostar do caminho. Aprendemos a construir pontes e começamos a fazer disso nosso objetivo.
Sabemos que ao fazer nossa pontes estamos facilitando alguém a se conectar também, afinal, cada ponte tem dois pontos.
E no fim? Se tudo for em vão, nós vivemos e fizemos valer.
Death Stranding fez valer.
Absoluto.

"If you are not scared of death, how can you value life?"

Hideo Kojima is a name that almost everyone who follows the industry knows, but i didn't know why. After MGSV i thought he was just a crazy director who wanted to do movies. I played Death Stranding expecting a meme game about deliveries, and in the end i finally understood why Hideo Kojima is one of the best game directors we have.

The delivery is just a small part of what makes DS special. The game is about connections. I am part of the people who defend that games must be played, not watched. A game with a lot of cutscenes and where you, as a player, don't matter to the narrative, sorry this is not a game, is a interactive movie. I thought DS was that kind, because he does love very long cutscenes. I was wrong.

It is not Sam that is delivering packages across the entire country. It's you. You, as a player, must feel the loneliness in a empty, but yet alive world. You must feel that people suffer and that's why they made a bridge, so you can pass. If it was a movie, you would call it cliche if Sam found an bridge or a generator just before his battery was about to end. But it was you who found. You fell and made the bridge so other players don't fall like you.

I could talk about how Death Stranding is special, and how is Kojima's Magnum Opus, or complain that the truck's controls are horrible, but i will not. All because i am stuck doing deliveries, making roads and ignoring the main story.

"Living is not different than being dead if you're alone."