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.

This game is difficult to assign a rating to, since it's hardly a game. The atmosphere, art, dungeon synth soundtrack and minimalist storytelling are all extremely well-executed.

It's a game where you wait for 400 days. In real time. There are areas in the game that you can't get to for at least a month or two after starting.
You can have the shade wander (slowly walk lol) around the subterranean castle, grow plants in real time, find objects to furnish his bedroom with, read the entirety of Moby Dick (for real), and a ton of other things that I don't want to spoil.

My biggest complaint is that there are ways to increase the flow of time, so that the game doesn't literally take 400 days to play. This isn't clearly communicated, so I spent a lot of time thinking my game was glitched, or the timer was wrong.

A fantastic and atmospheric anti-idle non-game

Paradise Killer is the "not like other girls" of games but in, like, the cool trans girl way, not the internalized-misogyny way? I can truly say I have never played a game like it and I don't know why any of it works. Why is every single character name so cool? (Lady Love Dies! Lydia Day Break!! Carmelina Silence!!!) Why does Doctor Doom Jazz live on a yacht? Why is the soundtrack such a banger, with the most satisfying end credits music I have ever heard in my life? Why does a Phoenix Wright investigation-slash-courtroom sim have fun 3D platforming and exploration in it? I don't even know why cruising around this brutalist vaporwave death cult island is so enjoyable, the collectables are mostly pointless, but there are just so MANY of them (an absolutely bonkers profusion) that no matter where you go, you always feel like you are uncovering something.

That the gameplay works is something of a miracle, but then there's the fact that the story is good. Don't ask me how the developers pulled this off. Writing a good mystery is hard enough, but setting your mystery on a transdimensional island ruled by a cult of immortals dedicated to resurrecting Lovecraftian horrors with names like "Silent Goat" through human sacrifice...presents, uh, another set of challenges, I imagine. In most games, a world this wild would be the mystery, and the whole game would be a boring lore hunt. There is lore in Paradise Killer, but none of it really matters, and once you acclimate to the general weirdness of everything (which is admittedly a pretty steep hurdle at first), the mystery itself is surprisingly easy to follow, although there are lots of layers to it, and even some intriguing ethical dimensions, which are not deeply explored but make the story more thought-provoking than you might expect from a game that initially seems to not be about anything more than its own bizarre dedication to an aesthetic.

I am convinced Paradise Killer must have been made under the auspice of some capricious but temporarily benevolent alien deity, because a game this audacious at every level should not work. I kept waiting for some overreach or misstep to bring the whole thing tumbling down—the quirk that broke the camel's back—but it never came. Playing this game is like watching Icarus gleefully flip off the sun and fly acrobatic circles around it because it turns out actually he's a psychic vampire possessed by a demon trapeze artist or something. It is miraculous and delightful and kind of freaks me out and I'm glad there's only one of them.

The final frontier

Many people wish they could forget the game to enjoy it once again, but I don't believe the game's appeal dissapears after just one time. The travelers will still be there.

I was this close of dropping it in more than one occasion, due to some obtuse as hell puzzles and conditions. I'm glad I didn't, because now my future second playthrough will be more manageable, more focused on the stuff that hit me: the connection, through music or tangled languages in walls.

The physics are omnipresent, space is insurmountable and worlds hold strange secrets. Whenever you may be lost, you can always tune to any planet and listen to someone. You'll talk to them, listen to a banjo 10k miles away from you, and you'll know you're not alone.

If you're following me, you probably know that I found the first God of War to be a big disappointment, with the moment-to-moment gameplay being the biggest sinner. Tedious puzzles and platforming, and an overreliance on QTE's that made the already sluggish combat feel even more meaningless. Needless to say I wasn't exactly looking forward to this second installment, but now that I've played it…eh? It's honestly not as bad.

The first game was almost entirely carried by its story and setting. Such a delightful tale of revenge and sorrow set to the backdrop of gods and myths. It's hard to make a followup story that continues in the same vein, and overall I don't think they did quite as good a job in this game. Whereas Kratos's motivation in the first game was a "You made me your humble servant and dealt me irreversible emotional damage, therefore you have to die", in this game it's more "You made me angry by playing on my hubris.", which isn't nearly as compelling. The story in general feels way more like generic here, and it's not helped by the abundance of greek myths present. In the first game, every mythological element served a clear purpose, but in this one it kinda feels like they just threw as many in as possible to make the story feel grander, a tactic that didn't really click with me.

While the story in GoW 2 is notably weaker than in GoW 1, the gameplay has had some very important upgrades. First of all, you now get an item that lets you parry with every weapon, and that's honestly a godsend. One of my biggest complaints in the first game was how the slower weapon was basically useless against multiple enemies because you couldn't parry with it, and I'm glad to see it was fixed here. Granted, there is a little stretch after you get the hammer but before you get the fleece, but the second half of the game had infinietly smoother combat than the first game. It's not just that though, I also got the feeling that the enemies weren't as tanky, and I certainly had an easier time against smaller foes. Unfortunately, while it does improve on the first game's combat quite a bit, there are still imperfections. The QTE-heavy bossfights are still there, and the hitboxes are still really janky. Still, it's a vast improvement over the nightmareish grind the first game threw at me, so overall the combat is a success.

There are other improvements as well, most of them being small, but together they accomplish quite a lot. The way you progress in this game feel way more fluid, the levels loop back around more often, and every task feels like it has purpose, as your goals are typically tied to finding a path to the next areas. I also really liked the wings you get, they make the platforming a lot more managable. The puzzles are better in this game as well, I didn't get stuck nearly as much. Granted, there were still a few times where I had no idea what to do, and often it was tied to the game being really bad at communicating what parts of the environments can be interacted with. This has mostly to do with some blurry visual designs, but it's a shame that some conceptually clever puzzles were butchered by some pieces blending too much in with the environment.

Other random thoughts: I like how a lot of the items are taken from bosses, it makes them feel more grounded in the story, rather than just being given to you for plot convenience. The game has a similar difficulty spike problem as the first, with some late game challenges being absurdly hard and tedious to do. The ending suffers a lot from being in the second game in a trilogy. I assume the somewhat meaningless elements in the finale was added to avoid clearing up too many plotlines before the third game, but at the same time the ending didn't really get me that interested in playing the third game. Too many characters have reached a logical end to their arc, and that left me feeling disinterested in the story moving forward. Still, I am somewhat curious as to what happens next, so I suppose the game did its job.

I don't have much else to say, just that I was very happy with how this game turned out, it's much better than the first in most ways, and I actually feel optimistic regarding the later entries in the series. Time will tell if my interest is misplaced, but for now I don't care.

Holy crap. One of the most unique games I’ve played in years.
It’s rare to find a game that delivers this level of immense satisfaction upon finishing it.
Getting that last confirmation that you have correctly identified every passenger on the ship and their cause of death is a tremendously satisfying accomplishment.

The game delivers on style, music, an intriguing story, and satisfying gameplay.

My absolute only complaint about the game is that going back and reviewing previous memories can be a bit of a pain. Especially when they’re nested a couple memories deep.

Makes sense that most of the communist-chanting options are played almost as jokes, because no one believes those grand statements anymore. More than that, they can't believe. They almost lost their meaning. This town is more complicated than all of that.

The sense of longing and the pain that comes from nostalgia are not enough: the world, the people, society, they have layers and layers. Reality is broken, and the past holds too many traumas for everyone. But you can still peel most of those layers, and get to the bottom of the heart. It doesn't feel like a task or a chore in any moment, it's like the answers are always driving you forward in such a small and concrete environment. You HAVE to keep going!! Be the detective, untangle every mess in your life and roll those dice!!!

(5-year-old's review, typed by her dad)

You get to Mine and Craft! And also you get to meet Villagers in a town! And sometimes they trade, and also there's lots of Mobs, you get to fight them. You can get Wolves and you can tame them with bones, and if they get hurt, you can feed them with ROTTEN FLESH.

LONK!