3/5 ★ – TheCriticalPandaBoi's review of Death Stranding.

So, I played through Death Stranding about a month ago, yes I know I’m very late to reviewing this, god knows I’m dreadful at reviewing video games for some weird reason, but I wasn’t initially gonna talk about it, that was until i finished the second game. Before I talk about Death Stranding 2, I do wanna talk and review the first Death Stranding game as I do think there’s enough between both games to warrant the extra attention that I’ll be giving them. When it comes to Death Stranding, I’ll admit, I’m extremely mixed with it, the good in the game is actually phenomenal, i expect nothing less from Hideo Kojima, as he’s the same guy who created Metal Gear Solid, my absolute cherished game series, but I can’t help but think the bad drags this game down a lot. It’s definitely a very divisive game, wouldn’t say as divisive as something like The Last of Us Part II but I’d say you could probably bundle it up with that, but I am way higher on this than I am that game. The environments in the game first of all, it’s so beautiful, I can’t help but feel like all these landscapes just made me feel extra special because it reminds me of Ireland, I know it takes place in the United States but regardless, I just think it looks visually amazing. I played the Director’s Cut on the PlayStation 5 and it was truly breathtaking to sit there and look at the environments, it’s not just the enhanced graphics and frame rate, but it’s also the unique sound design that comes out from the controller… obviously as long as you aren’t wearing a headset to appreciate the extra details. All of the facial expressions from the motion capture also look fucking incredible in this game, some look infinitely better than others, like I think Die Hardman and Fragile have the best translated facial animations in the game, but it all looks phenomenal. It’s also a very good mood to get real life actors for your game because as we’re obviously familiar with them from movies or tv shows, it’s just really smart to show how good they get translated into game. You play as Sam Porter Bridges, whose played by Norman Reedus but if I’m honest, I don’t feel like Sam gets fleshed out as much as I want in this game, if anything I was actually mostly interested by the side characters here. For example, i think Léa Seydoux as Fragile has such a good backstory and she’s just interesting, Margaret Qualley as Mama and Lockne was fucking fantastic, Mads Mikkelsen’s role in the story is really interesting to see unravel, even if you can kinda see where it’s going. Even the lesser people that got stuff going on like Tommie Earl Jenkins as Die Hardman, as well as the man, the myth, the legend, Guillermo del Toro as Deadman, this is funnily enough the first time I’ve genuinely seen Guillermo del Toro acting instead of directing, but I’d be lying if I didn’t think it make sense for a game like Death Stranding to have someone like Guillermo del Toro to be attached. The main villain here is played by Troy Baker, and let me tell you, whenever you see Higgs show up at all, it’s the definition of aura farming, I fucking loved Higgs as a villain and it’s one of those rare times T-Bakes plays a villain role. The story here is also phenomenal, it’s very interesting to follow despite the amount of information dumping it gives you, and it’s also extremely weird, which is the signature style for Hideo Kojima, I don’t know how this man comes up with the concepts of BTs or BBs, and has such a clear vision that keeps his world so thought out, but I need tips. The story is about Sam Porter Bridges reconnecting all of the United States of America by delivering these packages to people and connect them to this chiral network. It might sound like it’s an Amazon Delivery Simulator… and yea you’d be right, it’s literally a gameplay loop of delivering a package from point A all the way to point B, so it never likes to break that. Unfortunately though, I think the gameplay is really where my issue with the game stems from, I think the gameplay is very repetitive and sometimes pretty boring to play. I powered through it obviously because I was motivated by what could’ve happened next in the story, the story is strong enough to at least attempt to push past the gameplay, but I wouldn’t call it fun. Sure, it’s fun to plan out your routes and see how to approach deliveries, but only for the first couple hours, it’s close to a 30 hour game and I just stopped planning my routes after awhile because I just wanted to power forward. There’s items you can get that speed up the deliveries as the game carries on, like I used the bike quite a lot throughout the game once I unlocked it, but I still think it brutally hurts the pacing of the game for me. There’s also some combat, very little combat I might add, but I’m so dead serious when I say the combat and gun play here is genuinely ass, I tried avoiding combat as often as possible because of how terrible it controls. It really just feels repetitive and draining, like I said, I played it mostly for the story but if I’m honest, this is my hugest issue with the game. There’s a really bad balancing issue between how much gameplay we get compared to how much cutscenes, Hideo Kojima is known for making really long cutscenes as he’s such a huge fan of film, this is the same guy who made a feature film length cutscene at the end of Metal Gear Solid 4 after all, it’s no secret that he loves this stuff. Death Stranding really suffers from long and lengthy cutscenes that tends to just throw everything at you at once, it’s just constantly information dumping for about 70% of the game, which I think is kinda a major flaw in my opinion. Because you’re constantly being berated by information, it’s easy for the casual gamer to get lost and think they are talking gibberish the majority of the time, it’s not a good thing where I have to look at definitions afterwards about what the game is trying to tell me. The pacing is really bad too in my opinion because the gameplay is just whatever and after you do what you need to do, you’re given an even longer cutscene, so I just feel like you could’ve sharpened things up a bit better. Come to think of it, I honestly think Death Stranding is one of those games that may work better in a tv show format or a movie, funnily enough, A24 i believe is producing a Death Stranding movie as I’m writing this review, so I wonder if that means the ambitiousnsss of this game is strong enough to translate into a movie. Even though I have very strong issues with this game, i still really did like it, I think so much of the good manages to outweigh a lot of the major flaws, but those flaws are very heavy still. Overall, Death Stranding is indeed a very divisive game, i think your enjoyment of this game is determined on whether or not you like Hideo Kojima and his style, as a fan of his, I ate this up, but I’d also understand if you don’t particularly like it.