5/5 ★ – Gamerwhoshoe's review of Death Stranding.

I was asked at one point to explain the appeal of Death stranding and its sequel, and ended up writing the following: The first thing to note is that a lot of people come into the series from Hideo Kojima's previous work, The Metal Gear series. In that series, spanning all the way back to the 80s, Kojima was one of the earliest adopters of games as a method of story telling, as well as leveraging some really innovative game mechanics and interactions as far back as the MSX (an old PC system like the Commodore 64) PS1. For example, in Metal Gear Solid on PS1, enemies are capable of noticing your footprints in the snow and following them to catch Solid Snake. Kojima is also a bit of an "items gremlin" in that he loves to create random unique items that can be used for unique possibilities. This spans from Cardboard Boxes to bottles of ketchup, each allowing for different unique play scenarios. All this to say, a lot of people came into Death Stranding trusting that Kojima would make something good, even if a little weird. The story is a post-apocalyptic tale about the remnants of the US government trying to reassemble the country into the "United Cities of America". The problem is that leaving the various bunker cities across the country is incredibly dangerous due to a phenomenon called the "Death Stranding" where the dead are "stranded" in the world of the living. Non-cremated corpses rapidly decompose into ghost-like apparitions called "BTs" made of anti-matter that cause huge explosions if they manage to capture and consume living humans. The protagonist, Sam, is a porter who is incapable of dying due to a condition that allows him to return to and regenerate his body when he is killed. Because of this ability, Sam is far less vulnerable to BTs than other people, so he is put in charge of carrying deliveries and linking up various personal bunkers and cities to the "Chiral Network". The Chiral Network is effectively the internet, but it functions using the antimatter Chiral crystals that the BTs leave behind. Long story short, Sam is a glorified Mailman who carries a bunch of flash drives that let him set up the internet. Very important when no one wants to leave their home. The core appeal gameplay-wise really comes down to how much of a true sandbox the game is. Every boulder, mountain, river, or desert is an interactable obstacle. You carry ladders and rappelling ropes to climb or drop down cliffs. You can carry large amounts of material to build roads using specialized 3D printers, then print out vehicles to carry larger amounts of cargo. All throughout, you are dodging and fighting off BTs and bandits who want to eat or rob you respectively. In addition, the games have an asynchronous online system where bridges, ladders, and other structures can carry over into other people's world, with a username label and everything, and you can give and receive Likes (Which are used kinda like EXP). There is also gear sharing, where one player can develop and build weapons or other gear and leave it in a shared Locker for other players to use. All this is in service to a theme about learning to connect with other people, and how working together makes the journey easier. There are even NPC porters who carry deliveries around, to show that SAM is not completely alone on his journey to essentially walk across the entire Continental USA. TL;DR Unique game systems, a collaborative aspect through online features, all led by a prestige gaming director