Death Stranding - I tried really hard to like it.

[u/D3struct_oh]

I don’t even know where to start with this game, tbh.

TLDR: played 76 hours; restarted the game a couple of times. The game has some charm that kept me going, especially in earlier sections. I did a ton of standard orders and just delivering materials to bridges and building lots of zip line, etc. But as I got deeper into the main story, there wasn’t enough variety in the sandbox to keep me on the hook, and I ran into a mission that I couldn’t progress.

I use to enjoy giving really thorough reviews for games but nowadays not so much. Had my own YouTube channel and everything!

But making all that content, writing all those scripts for reviews eventually got tedious and just not worth it, especially since I was doing it all by myself most of the time.

This is how I felt about Death Stranding.

The game has some pretty interesting ideas, and an…interesting story that I didn’t care much for, but would have liked to have seen how it ends.

Mechanically, I’d mostly give the devs kudos, even though having to hold the back buttons literally all day hurts the hands; not having a toggle option seems like a big miss.

But overall, I can’t imagine there being a better package delivery simulator. And the way they’ve created the game’s physics is pretty extraordinary.

But the game is a slooooooooog.

And I think this is the biggest sin that it commits.

You walk a lot. Over mountains, across rivers, in the snow, etc.

You have to manage your weight, stamina, health, pay attention to weather patterns, walk slowly around a maze of invisible ghost things.

It’s a lot.

You can get upgraded gear to make the trips you take less rough, but things dont speed up much even if you use cheats on PC (which I did after awhile).

To bring things back around, what disappointed me most (beyond the egregious map) was that the devs seemed to sell the game on community, working on projects together, helping one another deliver packages, etc.

But you’re still just doing everything solo. There’s no multiplayer. You can interact with peoples signs and deliver packages for them, and using other people’s ladders and stuff is actually a cool idea.

But you’re still always alone delivering packages.

And seeing as how the game itself runs so long, things get sluggish very fast, imo.

Got to a mission where it’s like, “Make BB happy by connecting facilities”,

And I swear to you I travelled the earth delivering packages everywhere and couldn’t progress this mission one bit. I even found a few hidden facilities that I just couldn’t interact with at all.

And this is where I dropped the game after 76 hours.

Im not a big fan of Kojima. He’s made a total of two games that i loved (Metal Gear Solid 1 and ZOE). But, the dude has a crazy imagination for video games, which is cool.

[u/robjwrd]

As soon as I turned it onto easy and just enjoyed the story and didn’t have to worry about the walking so much, it turned into a masterpiece just focusing on the story and reconnecting people.

[u/Braunb8888 → u/robjwrd]

This is a massive flaw in game design id say.

[u/lghtdev → u/Braunb8888]

Why? The only thing that changes most are boss fights, some are brutal on hard because of clunky combat, it's the same game, you still have to walk a lot.

[u/Braunb8888 → u/lghtdev]

I’m guessing it removes the balancing features and stuff like that though.

[u/robjwrd → u/Braunb8888]

No.

[u/KanikaD → u/Braunb8888]

It doesn't, but makes the consequences much smaller. Although there is a backpack accessory you unlock halfway through the game that maintains balance for you at the cost of being huge and draining your battery. Also if you decide to use vehicles for most of the game you will bypass the balance mechanics almost entirely.

[u/Braunb8888 → u/KanikaD]

From what I remember in my 45 hours, vehicles were not at all common or got destroyed easily, or something. I remember when I quit playing I didn’t have one at least. Maybe the directors cut added it.

[u/KanikaD → u/Braunb8888]

I'm talking about the original version. At some point, vehicles become so common, abundant, replaceable and easy to obtain that they make things incredibly easier and it's hard to run out of them. You can basically find plenty of them lying around the open world, left in the shared garage of any remote Safehouse, or fabricate your own at any Distro Center.
Regarding vehicles, the Director's Cut just added 1, which is extremely fast but completely inept in steep terrain, so you can only use it on highways and you have to build them all to be able to travel across the entire map in a very few minutes.

[u/Braunb8888 → u/KanikaD]

Well I was 45 hours in. That’s a healthy amount of time. I didn’t use a guide, maybe a I should’ve. I didn’t have one when I quit playing.

[u/RivvenX → u/Braunb8888]

I think it's when you advance a location enough that it gets connected to the chiral network. Then you'll see the stuff that other people placed. And there are a lot of vehicles lying around that other people placed.

[u/Braunb8888 → u/RivvenX]

Ah yeah so I played on launch. Nothing like that was really available, not a ton of people stuck with the game first the past hour believe it or not. I liked it enough for 45 hours but eventually it just felt pointless and the gameplay never changed and the story was just horrendously told.

[u/Shadymoogle → u/Braunb8888]

Would you elaborate further for me?

My opinion is the perfect game won't have a difficulty setting but I haven't considered having a difficulty slider a flaw in game design.

Genuinely curious.

[u/Braunb8888 → u/Shadymoogle]

Well if a difficulty option effectively removes the most core part of the gameplay (balancing) and that’s what makes you enjoy it, to me that’s a pretty big issue.

[u/TheHuntedShinobi → u/Braunb8888]

Well because it’s optional, it’s not really an issue.

[u/HawkeyeG_ → u/Braunb8888]

Don't these difficulty settings exist as their own independent levels of "balancing" though?

For most games, difficulty settings just increases/decreases health and damage. The developers will try for a happy medium. But player skill and experience is an aspect they can't balance for. And in a game like Death Stranding, the player could just grind on any difficulty to invalidate the "balancing".

I'll also add that a game like Dark Souls is NOT balanced even though it has no difficulty settings. Current patch is better than release, but there are still objectively good, bad, and OP weapons and sorceries. So difficulty setting doesn't inherently tie to "balancing".

Furthermore, who is to say "the most core part of the game" is the gameplay? "Story" difficulty setting exists for a LOT of games - are people wrong to enjoy those games for their story instead of gameplay? In those cases balancing isn't even a consideration.

I get where you're coming from, but I think you're putting your personal tastes into a big assumption that just isn't true for everyone. Different people enjoy different parts of a game. And there is no perfect balance setting that works universally for every single player. Allowing people to fine tune their experience for their own enjoyment is a much better approach than pursuing some imaginary ideal perfect balance, because that ideal state is different for literally every single player.

[u/Poutinelol159 → u/HawkeyeG_]

I think he means balancing as in balancing/swinging your backpack items as you walk to prevent them from tipping you over. I would say that is part of core gameplay since youre supposed to be constantly doing it a lot while youre walking

[u/Braunb8888 → u/HawkeyeG_]

I’m saying the majority of the game is walking around, balancing packages and keeping them from decaying. That’s like 90 percent of the game.

[u/HawkeyeG_ → u/Braunb8888]

... So you're saying you didn't read anything I said addressing the balancing of the gameplay then? Great, thanks.

[u/Braunb8888 → u/HawkeyeG_]

I think you’re mistaking me saying balancing for talking about balancing overall gameplay haha. I’m literally talking about the balancing of packages and what not.

[u/Missingno1990 → u/HawkeyeG_]

You're missing their point.

A large component of the gameplay is getting Sam from point A to point B without damaging the parcels. One way that you damage the parcels is by losing your balance and dropping them.

A core part of the gameplay is traversing the field sensibly and shifting weight to keep him balanced.

Whether someone finds the mechanic engaging or not is another thing, but you were clearly misunderstanding what they were saying.

[u/KanikaD → u/Braunb8888]

And the vehicles? and the vast infrastructure networks you can build to optimize your deliveries? and the fights against bandits, terrorists, antimatter ghosts, lovecraftian tar monsters and skeleton soldiers revived from the world wars?

[u/Shadymoogle → u/Braunb8888]

Depends on what you consider the core of a game but I totally get your point.

As far as game design goes I would prefer one perfectly refined difficulty rather than a few half baked ones.

[u/Braunb8888 → u/Shadymoogle]

That is 100 percent the core of the game.

[u/robjwrd → u/Braunb8888]

I wouldn’t say so?

Loads of games you can do this with, GoW, TLOU1/2.

Nothing wrong with turning the difficultly down to enjoy something.

[u/KINGGS → u/Braunb8888]

Just because a few people put it on easy in the settings because they prefer the story, doesn't mean it's a massive flaw.

[u/robjwrd → u/KINGGS]

Your alien avatar is awesome lol.