Death Stranding is a game that is hard to describe, not because of its complexity (of which there isn't much), but because of the sheer quantity of elements and ideas present. But if this game proves anything, it's that more can often be less.
While its main idea of traversing through the mostly empty open world in the most efficient way possible has potential, even if not terribly original, it's pretty much bogged down by everything around it. Not only are the physics really inconsistent and very easy to exploit, but the game itself does its best to undermine the walking the most it can by introducing all sorts of ways to not actually engage with the game on that level: vehicles, ziplines, fast travel, you name it, the game eventually becomes more about parsing through boring menus than having a better understanding of the layout or the game mechanics. There's also some action segments which are both really out of place and really basic, and not even worth mentioning outside of what I just said.
As with every Kojima game, Death Stranding also contains a ton of story to it, mostly told through endless cutscenes. Your mileage may vary on his writing as always, but what I will say is that I don't think having such a convoluted and character-centric story added much to the game, but if anything detracted from it. The last few hours especially really drag, with the game mostly tying loose ends of events that already occurred and that you might or might not even be interested in, depending on how long ago you went through them and how invested you were to begin with.
Death Stranding is a man's unfiltered, complete vision, and while it might look like a mess to me, I'm sure it made a lot of sense to him. And that's the reason why, despite not thinking much of most of it, I'm glad I played it to completion: it's almost unheard of to see a modern AAA game that has an identity and sticks to it, regardless of how controversial or unpopular it may be. It's probably more of a statement of how dire things are creatively in the game industry, but I ultimately found Death Stranding to be a mildly interesting game. Whether "mildly interesting" is worth going through 35 hours of a game that takes way too long to start and end in the first place will be up to the individual.
While its main idea of traversing through the mostly empty open world in the most efficient way possible has potential, even if not terribly original, it's pretty much bogged down by everything around it. Not only are the physics really inconsistent and very easy to exploit, but the game itself does its best to undermine the walking the most it can by introducing all sorts of ways to not actually engage with the game on that level: vehicles, ziplines, fast travel, you name it, the game eventually becomes more about parsing through boring menus than having a better understanding of the layout or the game mechanics. There's also some action segments which are both really out of place and really basic, and not even worth mentioning outside of what I just said.
As with every Kojima game, Death Stranding also contains a ton of story to it, mostly told through endless cutscenes. Your mileage may vary on his writing as always, but what I will say is that I don't think having such a convoluted and character-centric story added much to the game, but if anything detracted from it. The last few hours especially really drag, with the game mostly tying loose ends of events that already occurred and that you might or might not even be interested in, depending on how long ago you went through them and how invested you were to begin with.
Death Stranding is a man's unfiltered, complete vision, and while it might look like a mess to me, I'm sure it made a lot of sense to him. And that's the reason why, despite not thinking much of most of it, I'm glad I played it to completion: it's almost unheard of to see a modern AAA game that has an identity and sticks to it, regardless of how controversial or unpopular it may be. It's probably more of a statement of how dire things are creatively in the game industry, but I ultimately found Death Stranding to be a mildly interesting game. Whether "mildly interesting" is worth going through 35 hours of a game that takes way too long to start and end in the first place will be up to the individual.