Well, giving this game a score is a headache in itself, nevermind writing something up to back up that score. Experimental is the easiest way of explaining it; Death Stranding is the first game Hideo Kojima has been allowed to do anything he wanted in, and it shows. The common phrase around Kojima is that he needs an editor, and now without Konami, we see what he’s truly like without one. While I think he can make some wonderfully weird stories, the gameplay takes up most of your time and is forgotten about.

That said, I’m not going to purposefully spoil anything, though I am, of course, going to talk a little bit about the themes of the plot. Despite the madness that it is, the plot the reason you will and should want to play Death Stranding, which wins the prize for the most on the nose giveaway of my opinion. Yes, the gameplay is boring and useless to this one. Death Stranding is a movie that wants to be a game, something that I would have said about any David Cage game if he had an interesting idea. No matter what is said, you can rely on Kojima to do something interesting; for better or worse.

So with that, the main themes are based around America and connecting people. In true Kojima fashion, you can bet all your money on that being slight political. Kojima himself recently said that the game is in response to the western politics of the last few years, something that makes sense, in a child playing with green army men kind of way. It bases itself on our knowledge of the world around us, though it does so with Kojima’s brand of madness such as his Soviet Union business in Metal Gear Solid.

With that in place, you play as Sam Porter Bridges (Norman Reedus), a porter for a post-apocalyptic postal service called Bridges. Though unlike the Royal Mail, Sam won’t just throw your package over the fence into the mud when you are out and it is raining; he has to get a signature for all these deliveries. He is caught up in a massive explosion called a “void out,” causing him to speak with Guillermo del Toro, the president, and her pet human. Yes, the president is a woman and that happens in the first hour, so I have no shame in telling you all that.

Here is where it all goes to toffee, I won’t spoil that, though the obvious has to be said and that is Sam’s cooperation to deliver everything even after refusing. This is when the game opens up, you are being taught a lot, but you can explore and mess with the world. The aforementioned boring bit, and that’s because there’s nothing really in it other than places to deliver to, BTs (Beached Things) to stealth around, and people to avoid. It is all a bit slow, and comes off a bit dull when you think of the stealth-action games Kojima made his name with. This is what I feel will or has put off a lot of players.

At this point, it was annoying me to be playing a game of repetitively stumbling around the beautiful world, delivering everyone’s useless tat they ordered from Amazon, and Kojima’s trademark dialogue of redundancies. This isn’t helped by the MULEs, groups of disbanded porters who will hunt you down and steal your packages. They aren’t going to deliver them themselves, though they are referred to as porters for some reason. For the most part, I stayed as far away as I possibly could early on because I was defenseless and they are a nuisance more than anything.

This is something I think Kojima knew only he would do. Most games would arm you to the teeth, or keep you defenseless through the whole game. Death Stranding, on the other hand, is made by a man in his own little bubble, so he’ll dictate when you can and can’t defend yourself. This makes it hard to say this is a good thing, it annoyed all the liquid excretion out of me at the time, yet upon looking back I can see why. It wouldn’t be a Kojima game if you were Rambo from the get-go. Without spoiling it, it teaches you how to avoid them later on, though is still annoying.

It should also be said, this is not the only case of something being held from you. Yes, you are given weapons hours into the game to defend yourself against MULEs, the same is said of BTs. You are eventually given a way of predicting where BTs will be, and some way of nullifying the MULEs scanners. It is all so frustrating to play before getting these upgrades because you are most likely used to games giving you these from the start. Though as I’ve already alluded to, if these weren’t held from you it wouldn’t be a Kojima game; it would be another Ubisoft tower collecting game.

So your question might be, “what are BTs anyhow?” Well, they are the aftermath of the Death Stranding incident, ghostly apparitions that appear in the rain. You either have to wait for them to disappear or stealth around them; well, that’s the ones that appear in the rain, those that appear in the tar are a different story. The former of the BTs are the most annoying thing in the game, unpredictable, invisible to the naked eye, and the prelude to something deadlier, they are simply annoying. Yet, many hours in you’ll deliver to a weather station, be able to predict the weather, and better understand how to avoid them altogether.

Deadly BTs, on the other hand, refers to the monstrous small whales/dolphin-like creatures that appear in tar. Only appearing when the former BTs grab you and pull you into their tar-like substance, they are mini-bosses. Once again, you’re almost defenseless against a straight attack from one of these early on. Fighting one is tense and fun, though as I said, they are mini-bosses and they fall easily once you can defend yourself.

Eventually, due to major plot reasons, you will fight a proper boss version of these latter BTs several hours in. Up to this point, I was ready to call Kojima a hack that used up all his good ideas on the Metal Gear Solid series, couldn’t make a game anymore, and just wanted to shift into weird and lengthy indie movies. I’m glad I was proven wrong once hitting this point, it made the game worth that long and boring wait.

Amidst the interims as long and dull as this, I’m sure many people who aren’t Kojima fans, who aren’t invested in the plot; or in my case, aren’t devouring it to get a review done, would stop and never play again. They aren’t great and revolutionary boss battles, but they are a great respite (or anti-respite) from the dull and monotonous tertiary gameplay loops of walking five hundred miles across America. To go into the boss battles themselves would be spoiler territory, though they are strange, wonderful, and exciting. Though paint drying on an old man’s testicles would be exciting compared to the gameplay.

The gist that I’m trying to get to is that while it feels like no effort was put into making the walking fun, that’s kind of the point. If the open-world was high action all the time, it would make fighting a massive blob monster on a roof a lot less fun and interesting. Though that’s where I need to shut up about boss battles. I don’t know how to tip-toe around these, but there’s a thing that happens, and that thing leads to you the battle of the Somme.

How does Kojima make these battles weird? You use your blood to kill things. Fighting a big monster? Shoot it with your blood. Early on, that is to say within the first ten hours, you’re given “hematic grenades,” which should be haematic but because it is Kojima, of course, it is not. That said, you don’t just get to use one bit of your body liquid.

Some of you may have seen the lengthy bit from GamesCom’s Opening Night Live, wherein Kojima was a little too pleased to show Norman Reedus expelling himself onto the landscape. A basic and less effective grenade, these “EX grenades” are made from Sam’s excretions and otherwise. Named 0-2, 0 is from taking a shower and washing off the outside world, 1 is from stranding, and a number two is from taking a really big poo at the end of your day.

There is no better way than Kojima being given full control over the entire game. Given his explanation to one of the women being half-naked in MGSV was, “She breathes through her skin,” and that’s when he was reigned in. Don’t expect that to be less outrageous now that he’s off his leash. As I said, the lack of an editor is shown in his redundant dialogue, but here it goes further to make the gameplay less interesting and hurts the game in the end.

Rather than not practically abusing female characters for the sake of it, he took everyone’s yelling about THAT scene in the rain and did it again. Yep, I sat there shouting “Why’s the lass in skimpy clothes?” At yet another scene of a woman in her pants, in the rain; though she’s in white underpants and a tank top this time. Once again you can securely bet all the money you have on Kojima getting a close up on one of her cheeks, and not the ones by the lips you are hoping for.

Another game and another time Kojima puts all the female characters in a box labeled, “Fragile, shake with great propensity.” There was a case of a young man calling a female character “my girl,” given we’re not in West Side Story, I took this to be his daughter: I was wrong, and it felt weird. Another woman is a damsel in distress, another dies hours into the game, another has a stillbirth, and the woman from the rain scene is as fragile as a Fabergé egg around a baby.

None of that devalues the game’s overall merit, however, it is fairly discomforting to sit and watch. It is not a simple case of not wanting a certain type of characters harmed, it is the overwhelming number of X characters being either killed off or abused, while Y either sits in a comfy chair or is just walking about. Without spoiling things, Sam is the only male character we see even slightly sexualized or abused. The latter is only because I want to get down a mountain faster.

Direction and dialogue are the usual Hideo Kojima fare, for better or worse. While most of MGSV focused on single shots, that’s partially retained, though there’s a lot of cutting which is what I praised The Phantom Pain for at its best. As you’d expect, dialogue goes on and on, explaining every little detail about magic crystals or how to sleep; but some key plot details, who needs specifics on that?

In true Kojima spirit, as you’ve probably heard, cut scenes are long: The final one as the game ends is about two hours long. Another reason, I’m slightly down on Death Stranding is the number of times I’ll want to play a bit further to just sit there. I don’t want to count the times I’ve sat/laid there with one hand in the biscuit tin clutching for more custard creams, the other around my crotch, resting around the control for my moments to do more of that exciting walking. They are never ending, or at least when you hope one is done talking, another creeps around the corner to talk about other useless nonsense.

Nevertheless, online ‘features’ undermine the game’s idea for connecting people, but also breaks the game a little from my understanding. The idea is you’ll never see “Spoogel0rd69XXX,” but structures they place in the world like charging stations for recharging vehicles or others appear for you. There’s also a likes system for those structures, which some see as a comment on social media, but it is half-baked at best. The point of the story is Sam’s the only one out there able to do these difficult jobs, though I’m meant to give “Spoogel0rd” some likes for a ladder he places.

Gone, it makes thematic sense to an almost empty world. If you are logged in, it makes the game easier as someone else has already run ahead paving roads to the end. Personally, it made sense to opt-out of that after the first few hours, as if this world is being saved I’m not letting “Spoogel0rd” and his mates get there on my back.

Quite frankly, what is Death Stranding? Aside from an awful title that sticks in my head like a phone number of another human, it is an experiment of Hideo Kojima’s freedom; which has the same result as his other games. It is writing with the finesse of a dying swan trying to fly, it plays like the gameplay is just getting in the way, and is plainly bloated. If I called MGSV a dumb dog you can trust, Death Stranding is an old dog that came in and defecated all over the rug, but you still love him enough to not put him down.

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Death Stranding

$59.88 USD

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• Brilliant boss battles.
• Beautiful world.

Cons

• Awful and redundant writing.
• Boring gameplay
• Dreadful menus.