More so than any other Hideo Kojima game, this sees a divide between his talents as a video game developer and his original aspirations to be a film director. As a developer, I don't think he's ever been better. The gameplay loop is fantastic, creating a lonely world to be explored and populated by the ghosts of other players. The physics of parcel carrying are gratifyingly complex, and the environmental design is organic enough to make every journey and route feel original without ever becoming overwhelmingly dull or lacking in variation. The boss fights are unnecessary, but I think Kojima knows this - as it's such a leap into new territory, some elements of third-person action game design have been retained as a kind of compromise, to entice players who would never play an "art house" game.

Cinematically, it's more of a mixed bag. Along with Avatar: The Way of Water, it's certainly some of the most interesting use of motion capture I've ever seen. Léa Seydoux and Margaret Qualley are incredible, using their unique screen talents (Qualley used to be a ballerina, Seydoux is perhaps the most exciting actress to emerge in the past decade) to lean into the peculiarities of the process - treating it like black box theatre. And then there's Nicolas Winding Refn, giving an absolute void of a performance as Mr. Exposition, and Lindsay Wagner, whose thanklessly boring character the entire narrative hinges on. The Metal Gear games were appealingly episodic in their narratives, gaining a lot from the incongruous comparison between them and the American action movies that inspired them. Death Stranding is at its strongest in its early, individual character-focused chapters, but at a certain point it gets too lost in its own mythology, and Kojima's penchant for dream sequences overwhelms to the point of incomprehension. Still, easily the most singular and inspired game of its console generation. Bring on the sequel.