59. Death Stranding (PS4)
Finished up Death Stranding last night. Clocked in 48 hours on this one. And I can happily report I pretty much loved all of it. AMA, otherwise I'll just ramble on a bit here.
First off, the game is obviously more in the Peace Walker + era wheelhouse for Kojima. Lots of systems and massive game ground to cover to get to those huge story dumps. We will never know the real story about what happened with MGS5 between Konami and Kojima, along with the odd release of Ground Zeroes itself. But MGS5 clearly felt unfinished in ways and with some leaked cut content/storyboards floating out there, yet what more really needed to be spelled out in the MGS timeline at that point? And I think it was clear Kojima was truly done with MGS, that interpretation and performance for Ocelot in particular really rubbed me wrong. Outside of Miller, the parasite/virus outbreak mission, and the little suggestive twists at the very end... story and context wise MGS5 was utterly barren. The gameplay was phenomenal but rather disjointed in a strange way, as it was never truly open world. You always get dropped off into zones. And nothing about the world design in general was ever exciting. It was just the brown badlands we've seen in hundreds of games by this point.
I like Death Stranding a lot more than MGS5 in basically every department. The story is fully there again, there's a bunch of excellent characters, there's humor that was severely lacking in MGS5 as well, and exploring this world felt like the closest thing to Breath of the Wild that I've played. People have made some Team Ico game comparisons as well that I can see too. There's a lot of systems like the modern Kojima games but when you're ready to gear up with you equipment, cargo, and maybe a vehicle or whatnot, the game just lets you be free and do your thing... exploring this vast and beautiful landscape that frequently changes in structure, climate, visuals and color, it was breathtaking. I continue to notice a trend in that, when Japanese developers do open world, they strip things down keeping it simpler and more focused. The games easily benefit from that. Like Breath of the Wild, while I'm literally carrying cargo around in this game, it didn't feel like I had any baggage on me and I could just slowly take in the sights and enjoy being in this world. Contrary to how a lot of other open world games operate and tax the player with lists of endless quests and menus, waypoints and countless clutter, taking you out of it.
There's still combat and funny enough this was the weakest part of the game to me in some sections. There are these enemy camps with people called MULE's who are obsessed with stealing cargo. You can't take them out lethally and the game starts feeling a bit like MGS5 around them. Thankfully, in these 48 hours I played I think there were only ~2 main story missions where I had to sneak into a camp to steal something. Otherwise it really wasn't that big of a deal to get through the camps, especially when you start rocking vehicles. The second part to combat are the BT's, the creatures from the "other side" when the game turns a bit into a stealth horror game. Sometimes these moments prop up in annoying sections but you soon learn ways to get around them, or how to deal with the mid boss BT's quite easily. There's story related equipment later on that makes these encounters easier to get through as well. Never my favorite part of the game, but not a real road block either. Beyond these two elements, there were a lot of big boss battles that I really enjoyed personally.
Delivering cargo while exploring this world and integrating mission bases into the "chiral network" is the meat of the game and what I loved the most. Once you get to Chapter 3 and the main map, you're frequently tasked with going through zones that are off the network and can only go in them with your own equipment. But once you bring that zone into the network, the online parts of the game come into play and it's all very much in the vein of how the Dark Souls games have done it with their message system, only here it's taken much further. You will see structures that other players have built or jointly upgraded, roads, shared vehicles, and whatnot spread throughout the world. Helping you and others traverse the land better than before. Giving some players enough "likes" makes you join some kind of pact behind the scenes with that specific player, so you'll see more of their stuff throughout it. Nobody still really knows all the tech and magic that went into it behind the curtain, but it's definitely awesome. Nor does it ever feel like cheating or anything weird like that. You can see the point of the "strand" and connections here.
Technically, the game was extremely impressive. This is on the Decima engine that powered Guerilla's own Horizon Zero Dawn and while Death Stranding might get some extra points here for simply being newer, I truly thought this game straight up felt and played better than Horizon in every way. You will see these characters tear up a lot too and the tear tech is amazing. Overall, this game really blew me away on the PS4, even compared to high end stuff you get on PC's right now. It's mesmerizing what they cooked up here in three years worth of time.
Aesthetically it's top level work as well with Yoji Shinkawa doing his thing as usual, if you like the look of the architecture and general art direction in Kojima's past games you'll appreciate that here again. Musically I think it's got some composers from MGS5, the usual 80's tint and some synths which I'm always up for, maybe Kojima's been rocking to a lot of Depache Mode thesedays. Huge thumbs up to the art and sound work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI0RsQDyHakGame made me tear up in the end during a few parts, was blown away by some of the performances. The story is very Kojima and not subtle but you know what? I think that fits a lot with a ton of anime and other Japanese games I've played and love. There's just something about their way of storytelling that I actually dig a lot. I am also a big Kojima fan as well but I don't want to sound like I give him an instant pass, as I've clearly expressed here above with my take on MGS5. I was plenty worried about Death Stranding and pleasantly surprised by what I got, far surpassing my expectations. Death Stranding is abrasively strange but I'm also not going to give it a pass just because it's weird for the sake of being weird at times, it's actually a simple and straightforward experience in a lot of ways. Death Stranding is one of the coolest games I've played this gen and will leave a huge impression on me.
This is a game I think everyone who plays things this gen or will someday, has to check out at some point. And it won't be for everyone, but give it a shot. Don't over think it and just have fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlGdH9XCrgk