Jan 12th - Resident Evil 2 (PS5)
Mar 5th - Nier Automata (PS5)
Mar 14th - The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (Switch)
Apr 23rd - Blue Prince (PS5)
Apr 29th - Dishonored 2 (PS5)
Jun 13th - Death Stranding: Directors cut (PS5)
God, where do I start…
So I liked Death Stranding a lot. In fact, sometimes I adored it. But it wouldn’t be hyperbole to say that it’s also annoyed and bored me at times more than just about any game in living memory.
There’s a lot to unpack.
At the heart of the game is a brilliantly simple idea. Humanity is in hiding and separated into tiny pockets across a broken continent after a cataclysmic event. Your job is to reconnect humanity through delivering messages, items and rebuilding pathways on foot.
That’s it. It’s so beautiful a premise. So amazing to feel humanity coming back to life as you play.
The problem is that it’s almost entirely possible to miss this joy because of how much other bullshit this game throws on top of that.
But let’s start with some good.
Firstly, the world this takes place in is glorious. Both the landscapes themselves - the real star of the show - and also the sci-fi doomsday universe Kojima has conjured up. Haunting BTs, skeletal soldiers, warzone flashbacks, beaches of dead whales, babies that alert you to danger. It’s all bonkers and utterly brilliant. There is atmosphere dripping off of everything, which is heightened even more when the terrific soundtrack kicks in. It’s arguably Kojima’s 2001: A space odyssey. Fair play to him, he’s long earned the right to explore something this vast.
However the story, cut scene exposition, celebrity cameos and the general standard of writing of it all? Utter garbage. Very little was interesting or made sense, despite all the rationalisation and exposition. The writing needed more mystery than validation in my eyes. I had maybe one ‘aha’ moment in the game, in the final chapter. But mostly everything else was tenuous, confusing, cheesy, boring or obvious; it’s tonally all over the shop.
The core mechanics of the game for traversal are great. Ladders, ropes, exoskeletons, carriers, blood bags, boots, gloves… I really loved all this stuff and working out what I’d take, though as the game went on I realised it was pretty rare I’d need a lot of it.
And the PCC device that lets you build shelters, roads, bridges, recharge stations and - my personal favourite - ziplines, which I created huge networks of across vast mountain ranges, is genius. I love the way your creations merge with other players. Seeing a recharge station on the horizon as your power skeleton is about to die is a great gaming moment, and well worth a ‘like’ to say thanks to the builder.
So you’ve got all this great stuff to make the world a joy to spend time in. I know! Why not try to ruin it?
You could make hand combat very dull. Throw in a ton of dull weaponry, that uses your blood if you use it and kills you too. Have stealth sequences where you stand still a lot. Have bosses that just spawn sometimes and are so dull to fight, it’s best to just run away. You could give us vehicles that either are so crap they get impaled on slight rubble or so overpowered they ruin the joy of travelling on foot.
When you get too invested in driving, trying to speed the game up or get distracted by combat, Death Stranding loses its appeal. And becomes a bad 3rd person shooter.
It also has issues with pacing. It’s a miracle I made it the great middle part of the game.
The first 15 hours felt like cut scenes or tutorials. When I did get to do something, it initially involved falling over or struggling with holding down a button whilst pressing down on the d-pad to bring up a sub menu that I needed to use the right stick to flick between pages on.
I dreaded entering a save station as it takes about 5 mins every time you go there to skip through all the little animations and transitions. I loathed the map thats so overloaded with icons that it’s impossible at times to know where to go. The UI is so small, I now need glasses.
And just as I fell in love with the game towards the end, traversed the entire map on foot, builtvs network to get around and finally found my groove… the game shits the bed at the end.
The last 10 hours are bad. I had to skip some of the lengthy cut scenes and occasionally found myself answering some work emails out of boredom. There are several poor bosses in quick successions. Various revelations about characters I’m supposed to care deeply about; characters called Die-Hardman and Heartman?! There’s a credits sequence you wander about in for a month.
The only thing that is good is one final, giant walk. A walk I adored.
And that’s the dilemma of Death Stranding in a nutshell. A majestic, original, new type of game that just asks you to disconnect from the noise and reconnect with some of the simpler things in life. But one that equally piles so much needless or game damaging bullshit on top of this, that at times the gem at the heart of this game almost gets lost.
I’ll never disagree with anyone who hates this game as - for large chunks of it - I was in danger of doing so too.
But thankfully the part of Death Stranding that is good is properly good, and will stay with me for many years. And I can’t praise such a unique, weird project getting made with this level of love. Gaming needs more of this.
