Kojima's games are proof that even in the triple A sphere video games can be art. That said, Death Stranding was rough for me, the gameplay was definitely not to my taste,, eventually forcing me to quit after 8 hours of play and watch the rest of the cutscenes on youtube - But I found the sci-fi world and concept as well as the story itself to be pretty good.

Having now actually played two Kojima games (namely MGS1 & 2) I could easily recognize the Kojimaisms. Characters talking like they never communicated with a human being before, really in-depth backstories for the characters, whacky humor, heady sci-fi concepts and of course the occassional fourth-wall break. I kinda liked it better here than in the two MGS games I played, maybe because the whole concepts of the afterlife, beaches and the general more surrealist and slightly horror related imagery making it less realistic (despite the effort of stuff like motion capturing and keeping the likeness of famous actors) and consequently more cohesive as a whole.

I still feel weird about Kojima's never-ending boner about the USA, but here I felt the criticism more clearly than in MGS2 especially in the commentary on Trump's slogan "make america great again" through Bridges' slogan "make america whole again". A lot of characters obviously comment about how america has always been a lie and never a union of free people or anything of the like, but overall the sci-fi concepts of life and death blending into each other and the discussions of beaches as ideologies and personal world views again took a precedent over any material analysis of how the USA is just not a great place to live in especially as as a worker, poc, indigenous or queer person or any mixture of these.

What I'm mostly not in line with however is the gameplay. If I was being reductive and mean about it, I would just call it an endless series of fetch quest, making you track endlessly across an open-world. But it's kinda more than that. The walking mechanic and you having to watch you every step and really think about not loosing your cargo is kinda neat, I guess, but definitely not my cup of tea. For me it felt a bit like the game was resisting to be played, making every track across for the deliveries feel like ardous work (On two play session I actually felt like I had just finished a tough day at work and just lay there trying to recuperate from that alone). I have felt this way before when I played games like Shadow of the Colossus or Ico, though this game's system are definitely better thought out than the aforementioned games. In short: clunky controls wasn't the point here, but just the challenge itself was really grating for me.

All this made me think about video games as an artform and how inaccessible they can be. Like a movie you just need to watch, of course being familiar with tropes, stroytelling and understanding what a cut is supposed signify will help, but you will get around this quickly and if you have watched over 400 movies, you might still find one you can't wrap your head around, but you will still be able to engage with. The same goes for books, of course reading a romance novel has different conventions from reading a high fantasy novel, but it's not as high a wall to climb to get over these differences, if you have read a lot of stories. But with video games? I've played over 400 of these and I couldn't really play Death Stranding properly. The interactivity of video games really is a the strong point of the medium, but it can also be its weakness. You might be really into a concept for the narrative or world, but if you just can't deal with the gameplay, then you're just fucked. (Yeah, I tried playing around with difficulties, I still couldn't enjoy it. And yeah, that makes me sad too, which is why I'm writing this in the first place).

I don't really have a solution for this problem, other than implementing maybe more accessibility features like Celeste did, even if that means that a player could theoretically bypass all of your mechanics if they really wanted to. Maybe someone will come around and have a better idea someday.

P.S.: This is the first time I really liked the cast of a Kojima game. Deadman is a comic relief character for a lot of moments, but he's great. Cliff was really cool and I was actually kinda tocuhed by the backstories of Mama and Heartman. Higgs was also an incredibly entertaining antagonist. Ironically, the only character I found to be a bit bland was...Sam. But well, shit happens.

For a licensed game based on a TV series it's pretty good. The combat is surprisingly fun and kinda intuitive if you watched the show (like needing to stake vampires or being able to use shovels to fight them and even stake them with it).
I generally preferred the more linear levels as the puzzles in between fighting can get a bit "point and click" like, like needing to find the right item and then use that to blow something up or recording a voice to get by a security door or something. In the less linear levels I found that to be a tad tiresome. Sadly, the bosses in the later levels are also not the best, as most of them just spam adds at you and you constantly need to de-activate or destroy something to get to damage the bosses at all.

The real appeal is definitely just the amount of love put into this. Not only can you play as many different characters from the cast (though my best gal Faith only got a single level, which is definitely not enough), most actors also returned to voice their characters in-game, paired with the quippy one-liners from the show this was definitely a highlight in presentation. The title screen also starts with the classic Buffy intro music and the menus in general definitely have that Buffy flair.
There is also a plethora of bonus content like interviews with a lot of cast members or even the whole fucking ass comic that this game's story is based on. Imagine getting something like that in modern game!

All in all you will enjoy this game if you're a) a Buffy fan or b) really into retro PS2 games. Luckily I'm both so this was really nice, while not the absolute pinnacle the system has to offer.