This is a Super Nintendo game that was somehow compressed to work on the Nintendo Entertainment System. The graphics feel next-gen, the design was innovative, and it ultimately defined the Nintendo charm that the company still relies upon today. Truly, the pinnacle of two dimensional platforming. Play the original Super Mario Brothers for fifteen minutes, then put this game on and just sit with that experience for a while. Think about how much the developers were able to pull from that original concept and perfect it. Think about how every Mario game since 1988 seeks to recreate this experience. Think about how many non-Mario games also took influence from this title. Oh yeah, I guess it is pretty fun too.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of video games sounds like a perfect idea on paper. Have you seen the film? It would not have made a great game in the early 90s. Even now, it would have to rely heavily on its style and cut-scenes to create the sort of tension required to do that title justice. Instead, my younger self had to be satiated by Sunset Riders--the Young Guns of video games. Young Guns was a brief western romp starring the likes of Emilio Estevez and Kiefer Sutherland. It’s an awful movie. It takes itself far too seriously, the action sequences have no real tension, and overall it’s a tedious film. One of it’s saving graces is a drawn out scene where the regulators, Emilio Estevez included, take peyote and yell at some unseeable celestial being at the edge of some cliffs. That being said, it makes an amazing game.

This is Norman Reedus. There are many like him, but this one is mine.

Norman Reedus is my best friend. He is my life. I must master him as I must master my life.

Without me, Norman Reedus is useless. Without Norman Reedus, I am useless. I must navigate Norman Reedus true. I must navigate straighter than my enemy who is trying to catch me. I must navigate past him before he catches me. I will ...

Norman Reedus and I know that what counts in war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our burst, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is the journey that counts. We will journey...

Norman Reedus is human, even as I, because he is my life. Thus, I will learn him as a brother. I will learn his weaknesses, his strength, his parts, his accessories, his sights and his bb. I will keep Norman Reedus clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will ...

Before God, I swear this creed. Norman Reedus and I are the defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life.

So be it, until victory is America's and there is no enemy, but peace!

---

Honestly though, in some ways I think this game and Breath of the Wild are two separate solutions to the same design problem. Both developers recognized the stagnant nature of open world games and sought to change the player’s incentive on a fundamental level. Where Breath of the Wild incentivized exploration in terms of getting from point A to whatever you define as your own point B, Death Stranding incentivized exploration in terms of how you get from point A to point B. The challenge of Death Stranding is the traversal itself, and I completely understand why it receives criticisms of being a walking simulator. It is a walking simulator by design, that is its strength. It’s a beautiful game, not only in that its message to the player could not be more poignant in 2020, but also in how it ‘gameafies’ every last morsel of interaction, from how you converse with individuals, and how you load out your character, to how you choose a path, and how you choose to press on... despite the odds. Leading up to Breath of the Wild, it felt like a lot of games were going open world just because they could. Many complained about the ‘ubisoft-ification’ of the genre. Series like Assassin’s Creed and Red Dead Redemption took the open world genre to its natural conclusion. Death Stranding shows that the genre still has a lot to offer.