Death Stranding is one of the weirdest games I’ve ever played. Actually, it’s one of the weirdest pieces of media that I’ve ever consumed. A game that’s stripped back its game-play to be about something that’s taken for granted and whose main mission type is one that in other games is just boring filler. A world filled with A-List actors playing characters with names so on the nose and cheesy it just works, in a world somehow pre and post apocalyptic filled with ghosts or BTs. Oh, and you carry a baby around that you connect with that allows you to see these BTs. A weird game like this that perfectly marries or connects game-play and story is a really a feat and an anomaly that only Kojima and his team could produce. After over 2 years of owning it, I finally beat and I’m on the way to getting all the trophies. All I can say in short is, I loved it. Like many others who also love it, it connected with me.
Connection is it. It is everything in this game. The goal of this game is for Sam to reconnect America. Sam grows as a character by connecting with people he meets along the way. The game is psuedo-multiplayer, in which we as players connect with other players through building structures that can show up in other people’s worlds. It’s joked about how this game came out right before the pandemic and Kojima predicted it and he predicted how important and essential delivery people would be in such trying time and how much human connection is important.
Let’s talk about game-play first. The main thing you’ll be doing in this game is going from one terminal to another somewhere across the map, delivering supplies and connecting each station. Mixed in with that are some retrieval missions and also a fair amount of combat missions. So if the main you’re gonna be doing is delivering, how’s the movement? It’s good with some caveats. There’s different terrain and levels of intensity. You’ll be managing your footwear, cargo weight, and crafting things that’ll make life easier as you progress. Sam moves very similar to Snake in MGS:V but sometimes his momentum and the way it interacts with terrain can be annoying and lead to some funny moments where he just seems drunk. That part is funny most of the time, what’s not is the vehicles. They suck. There are different variations of bikes and trucks, both with pros and cons, but man do most of the time they seem to have a mind of their own. I swear you can break or come to a clean full stop. They’ll just keep going. Good luck driving either on anything but flat surfaces.
Continuing on with my gripes, it’s the combat sections and BTs. Good news first. For the most part, the combat is fun with the tools they give you and at first BTs are scary and seem to pose a threat. That threat quickly turns into annoyance. BT areas made me roll my eyes every time after the early game. They pose no threat whatsoever, the animation that signals you’re in an affected area is annoying and stops the game every single time (and it’s not needed), and the eventual BT boss fights are just easy bullet sponges where the only hard part is Sam acting like an idiot randomly and being slow to swap weapons. Easily my least favorite part about the game, the other combat encounters are fine but BTs are just annoying.
But that brings me back to the beauty of this game and its central theme. If you play online, you’ll see other people’s structures, warning signs for the area, shelter, zip lines to bypass areas, and even if you play offline the tools that you get by connecting each knot will help vastly with bypassing all of this. What can be an annoying problem is solved by connecting with others and I love that.
This story is weird but not hard to follow at all. The names are so on the nose and cheesy and the cut-scenes are so extensive (and very well acted) that it’s hard to miss. I won’t spoil anything of this 30+ hour adventure, but the story of Sam growing as a person while traveling the world with his BB and reconnecting America is a special one. At all times there seems to be multiple story lines being piece fed to you until the end when it all comes to together in a really beautiful way that involves one of my favorite twists in recent memory. Just to touch on the acting a bit, everyone brought their A game but the stand out performances for me were Mad’s Mikklesen as Clifford, Tommie Earl Jenkins as Die Hard Man, and Troy Baker as Higgs. When they were on screen, they steal the show every time.
So yeah, I love Death Stranding. I’m going to spend some more time with it to really gauge just how much I love it, but man, what an experience. Despite some annoyances, I kept coming back every day to experience this beautiful (the game is actually gorgeous) world that marries theme and game-play so perfectly. And how can I forget the music? It’s absolutely amazing. My favorite video soundtrack ever and its often in my music rotation to this day. The DS2 trailer last year has me even more hype to continue the story of Sam.
Death Stranding – 10/10
