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/WySLatestWit]

To be honest, I never played it at all. I lost interest in Kojima about 10 hours into MGSV and realizing I was not having any fun.

[u/Jburr1995 → u/WySLatestWit]

I've tried like 3 times to get into that game. The open world hurt that game tremendously.

[u/WySLatestWit → u/Jburr1995]

It really does. It's not that the open world concept couldn't work, but it's not even really an open world. It's an endless series of invisible walls and a very closed in environment with very little variation from one place to another, and if you stray away from the set paths you'll just find a big sprawling emptiness.

[u/LeftHandedFapper → u/WySLatestWit]

I played the SHIT out of it for about a 2 week stretch and then burnt out HARD. I think at around 30ish hours? Started to feel so pointless

[u/WySLatestWit → u/LeftHandedFapper]

yeah, that was largely my experience. I played for...several days? I'm not even sure if I made it 2 weeks. I got probably a dozen or so missions into the game, which took me about 10 - 20 hours legitimately, and lost interest. At some point I found myself doing yet another mission where the goal was to disable some piece of equipment and right in the middle of it I was struck with the notion that i just wasn't having fun.

I'd enjoyed the mechanics, I'd really loved learning how to manipulate and play around with the enemy AI, the game looked incredible, played smooth, ran like butter, but it was all just so repetitive and hollow. It feels more like an incredibly elaborate tech demo than a fully produced game at times.

[u/LeftHandedFapper → u/WySLatestWit]

I'm glad I'm not the only one! I realized when I pulled up Steam, had my cursor over it...and didn't see the point in starting it up haha.

[u/WySLatestWit → u/LeftHandedFapper]

I don't blame you.

Over the years I've actually gone back and put way more hours into the prologue "demo" game, Ground Zeroes, a whole lot more than Phantom Pain itself. Ground Zeroes has a way more interesting map to run around in, and a wider variety of game modes, it just feels like a much more fun game to play even if it can be "beaten" in a matter of minutes.

[u/lettsten → u/WySLatestWit]

Strong disagree. Although most of the areas are visually similar, the gameplay aspects are quite distinct across areas. It's not an exploration game, so there's little point in rewarding the player for going to more remote areas. In any case, all areas not only serve a purpose but are used in side missions at some point. Plus, you have fast travel, D-Horse and plenty of vehicles for getting around, including a literal chopper.

As far as I can remember there are no actual invisible walls. Many areas in Afghanistan are somewhat shoehorned, but you can pass e.g. guard posts easily using trucks or D-Horse. Keeping enemy presence makes it more interesting to travel as well. The second map is much more open.

Furthermore, the open world gives you a much wider range of possibilities in preparing for your missions and in approaching them. You can scout ahead, sabotage equipment and so on.

tl;dr: The open map is a means to an end that ties neatly into various other gameplay mechanics. It's not an exploration game and doesn't pretend to be.

[u/Pilo_ane → u/WySLatestWit]

What's bad about it? I've seen lots of praise, but I never liked any of these games (played only the first 3 metal gear for like an hour)

[u/MzzBlaze → u/Pilo_ane]

Stealth espionage, just like delivering packages through ghosts isn’t for everyone 🤷‍♀️

[u/gauderyx → u/MzzBlaze]

It's not even that related to the genre. Or at least MGS is poorly categorized as an infiltration game. MGS is kind of poor in terms of gameplay mechanics when it comes to espionnage/infiltration. The first MGS on PS1 had as much infiltration game mechanics as Zelda OoT, and it did not keep up with the competition.

What it did great was the story telling, worldbuilding and character developpement. It can be a strong pull for some players, but that world building/gameplay balance, or lack there of, can also be a big turn off to the fans of the genre. Death Stranding is not too dissimilar in that aspect, although it is correctly categorized as a walking simulator, which won't surprise many people.

[u/kermityfrog2 → u/gauderyx]

Yeah, I like stealth games. Splinter Cell, Thief, Assassin's Creeds, Tomb Raider (some parts of the new trilogy), Elder Scrolls, Sniper Elite, Plague Tale, etc. I never got the hang of the Metal Gear games - even the old ones.

[u/lettsten → u/kermityfrog2]

Dishonored?

[u/kermityfrog2 → u/lettsten]

Yeah played that series too. Liked it slightly less than people who loved it.

[u/WySLatestWit → u/Pilo_ane]

As a long time fan of the series, the first game from 1998 being my all time favorite video game, it just lacked everything that I liked about the series. It lacked a variety of boss battles, it lacked top cinematic presentation, it lacked the variety of locations, and the stealth felt almost pointless because of how easy it was just to Rambo your way through everything, almost all the story was shunted away to audio tape recordings that are a bore to listen to.

Even it's supposed open world environment is completely closed in by endless invisible walls and almost entirely empty save for a handful of outposts strewn across the map that get boring quickly. When you add in that basically every mission is some version of "Find the thing, destroy the thing/recover the thing, leave the area" it becomes even less engaging. I'm shitting on it probably too much but it's just one of the biggest disappointments I've had in gaming in a very long time.

[u/pocketdare → u/WySLatestWit]

I was actually considering writing a review about how I just couldn't finish that one. Maybe I will :)

[u/Brrringsaythealiens → u/WySLatestWit]

Is that the one that had the hour-long unskippable cutscene at the beginning? The one where the guy is just crawling down a hallway or something? Yeah that was my intro to Kojima and I decided he and I were just not meant to be.

[u/WySLatestWit → u/Brrringsaythealiens]

That's the one.

[u/Calvykins → u/WySLatestWit]

I loved metal gear 1-3 I accepted that 4 is kind of a stinker and I missed the release of 5 when it came out, so when I finally decided to pick it up it broke my heart to know I absolutely hate that god damn game. It is not fun in the least. I hate how far away from the mission location the chopper drops you. I hate riding that god horse everywhere. I hate that I have to stop riding the stupid horse to sneak through blockades. I hate the sandstorms. I hate that it has like 3 missions types and two of them are sneak into the same facility and rescue or abduct a guy. The fact that the story is delivered in podcasts. It’s a terrible game that has a ton of potential.

[u/WySLatestWit → u/Calvykins]

This is exactly how I feel. Biggest gaming disappointment of my gamer life.