I actually love this game a lot. That's because of one basic reason, the feeling of going on a journey.
It's keep changing the environment and atmosphere while Patrick Stewart is narrating the story with his amazing voice.
Such an unforgettable journey.

I have over one hundred hours in this Death Stranding, I like it a great bunch. That said, I'm very critical of it's flaws.

For one, the plot is a over-expositive convoluted mass of themes. Wide as the ocean and deep as a puddle, playing this game can feel like a philosophy undergraduate trying to explain the meaning of SOCIETY in one long and badly estructured essay. Kojima really needs to dial it back a tone or two on that.

On the other hand, this game is a superbly unique aesthetical experience. There is nothing in the world like trecking through the inhospitable wilds of post-apocalyptic USA. This is a game for hours of deep, relaxed introspection.
I also need to applaud the audacity of picking the most hated design trends of gaming and turning them over their head to make them enjoyable.

Take, by example, the idea of the 'walking simulator'. It is a poor choice of words to call Gone Home, Dear Esther or Protheus walking simulators, even though that's what they're mostly referred to. I say that because, even though you walk a whole fucking bunch in those games, what you're doing is mostly mindlessly pressing 'W' while paying attention to other stuff. Walking is just the invisible means through which you interact in these worlds.

Death Stranding, on the other hand, is a literal walking simulator. It's a near perfect, gamified simulation of walking through the interaction of various systems. And it's fucking good.

11/24/19: Definitely a Kojima game; where he thought of a premise that makes very little sense in a practical world. It could just as easily be a game about being a postal worker in 2019 who encounters ghosts on his route, but it has to be the most overly complicated nonsensical plot ever. I've played every single Kojima game (MGS and MGS4 being my all time favorite) and there is usually a sense of accomplishments between the gameplay and the overly long cinematic and dialog trees... but this game feels way more tedious in the ladder. He nailed the presentation aspect though; that opening gameplay segment with the music (low Roar "Don't be so serious") playing as you're running through the green open fields. That was beautiful. I just fixed up the bike, so my route's between bases will be quicker. But god damn it's still a game about delivering packages.

I found my Vita yesterday and eventually hooked it up to remote play to my PS4... so I think I'll be able to play this a lot more than I originally thought.

11/25/19: I just reached episode 3, right after you are thrown into the most convoluted, obscene boss battle ever convinced by man, and my game is hung on the loading scene. Time for a break I suppose.

Oh and protip, don't try and ride your bike through a BT area. Doesn't work.

11/26/19: This game is a metaphor to everyone in cinema saying we need more original ideas and less super hero films. In 2019, this game is equivalent to Under the Silver Lake.

The annoyances start to shine through- I still find it fucking hilarous that after I travel what is equivalent to 1/10th the distance across the United States (it's only refereed to as "America" in the game, which is also hilarous), plop my delivery down on the conveyor belt as it gets processed through a bunch of elevators and hooks, a nifty little hologram boots up and tells me how valuable I am to rebuilding "America"... I look around these giant delivery facilities and realize there isn't another soul in these buildings. Everyone is communicating to me remote via hologram or codec (gee Kojima, still can't get past the codec from MGS eh?) . Like, we have the technology for holograms, for these BB devices, giant beautiful structures, weird ass vehicles, but can't figure out how to deliver supplies across the country unmanned? They do reference drones at one point but I forget the reason why they stopped using them.

11/27/19: The more I play Death Stranding, the more I feel like the game was designed so Kojima could see what he could get away with in a game.

There's a lot to be annoyed with...

Like the self-congratulations after delivering a tiny package is comical; there's like 37 different lines of measure you see every single time, that you eventually just skip through it all. From the dialog of the guy accepting the package to whatever you are being graded on; Quality of the package, time it took you to deliver, which THEN translate to your rewards and ranking system- which feels never ending. Normal ranking systems have what? 1-30, 1-60? With Recruit, Captain, Colonel, General etc etc? Not a Kojima game. It's ranking system goes from 1- infinity+... from all kinds of different names like Veteran Porter, Expert Hiker, Expert Transporter... etc etc. I can't remember most of them because you can breeze through them with one large delivery.

If that wasn't complicated enough, lets make every city have a similar name so you can never remember which is which or where you are or where you need to go without looking at the Arial map, which btw is completely useless. You can't tell the different between a huge canyon or a giant mountain so good luck traversing until you come across an obstacle you wish you were aware of before you started on your journey. The names of places are: Capital Knot City, Mountain Knot City, Waystation Knot, Edge Knot City... wtf is this shit?

But hey... I'm still playing it I guess.