Review
Played on: Xbox Series X
Released: 2023
Original release: 2019 (PS4)
My first two hours of Death Stranding we're emotionally divided between confusion and fascination. After tens of hours and completion, I'm still torn between confused and fascinated. I'm genuinely unsure if I enjoyed it all.
It's a game so niche it baffles me it reached such popularity. Yet, Hideo Kojima pulls all his strengths to deliver just what people love him for; a cinematic, weird, captivating and unique experience unlike little else.
Death Stranding began its journey as a PS4 exclusive back in 2019, but has since reached PS5, PC and, last year, the Xbox Series X/S. Having been recommended it a few times, I decided it was time to give it a fair chance. After all, I've been happy with a lot of Kojima titles through the years, but I'm not a die-hard fan and Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain, which I abandoned halfway, left me disappointed.
This version of Death Stranding I'm playing is on the Xbox Series X and is the Director's Cut. I've never played the vanilla version, but from what I've heard the changes are minor and for the better when it comes to the player experience with some quality-of-life changes.
Let's put on a heavy backpack and take a closer!
As I mentioned, the first couple of hours of Death Stranding are indeed extremely confusing. Beautifully cinematic presentation, using the ingame graphics, which covers a lot of topics. There's a ton of weird events happening right from the beginning, leaving you with so many questions once you're left to play on your own. These questions stack up during your playthrough too, believe me.
In the opening hours alone we're introduced to the main character Sam Porter Bridges, voiced and resembled by Norman Reedus, as he's wandering a lonely mountain. Rain breaks out and he seeks shelter in a cave, where he's not alone. Realising there's some kind of invisible monster there, its handprints showing up on the ground, he's silently advised by a female character to stay quiet to avoid detection. After the danger passes, she introduces herself as Fragile, voiced and resembled by Léa Seydoux, warning Sam about the dangers and asking if he's interested in working for her.
Denying Fragile's offer, they part ways and Sam continues on a small journey to the nearest city. This is when the plot really throws a ton of strange stuff at you; the society of USA, and the rest of the world presumably, have collapsed. Dark monsters from a black tar liquid have taken over the world and nature elemetns. Your aim is to reconnect all the safe buildings and people of a vast network called the UCA.
This is the journey part of which most of the game is about; connecting up the network as you deliver packages on foot across deserted mountains and valleys to people who need supplies. All while avoiding rain which speeds up time.
And don't get me started on dead bodies that can blow up entire cities.
Confused? Well, you should be, but the main task of game is delivering those packages for people. Back and forth. Even more confused? I was, but at the same time consistently intrigued as I played though my first hours. As the main gameplay settles in and you begin to enjoy wandering through the rolling hills of vastness delivering packages from one base to another. Rain will destroy your luggage, as will stumbling and falling.
Rain destroys the packages? Yes, this is no ordinary rain, it's called Timefall. As severe weather erupts, spending time in it will speed up the erosion and age of everything by a tenfold. Stay in Timefall too long and packages you need to deliver in good condition will deteriorate and break. Worse still, within this severe weather, ghost-like enemies appear. These are called BT’s and will drag you into a tar liquid if they detect you.
Luckily, you have equipment like a restoration spray to fix damaged packages and an unborn baby in a bottle to detect the BTs. Wait, what?! Yes, baby in a bottle which is connected to Sam through a cord on his suit, and the baby will detect enemies in severe weather so Sam can sneak past while holding his breath. As if everything else wasn't weird and stressful enough!
In addition, there are human, pirate like, enemies that try to take your goods too. These keep overwatch in certain areas and require more traditional combat to take down. Sneaking is advised and try to refrain from killing them as a dead corpse will blow up if not burned, resulting in more manual labour for Sam to undertake as he needs to find a furnace and take the body there to be cremated.
The hardest part though, is not the enemies; it's the heavily physics-based movement and weight of walking with Sam's backpack. Overloading him will result in extreme difficulty to walk, and especially climb, about with a huge backpack. You'll lose your footing and tumble-down steep hills and mountains. It's about holding your stamina high, replacing worn down equipment and avoiding enemies, while at the same time fighting against nature with cumbersome weight and physics.
But stop for a moment, I know you're overwhelmed. It's not actually that hard, or rather, it is but the struggle becomes addictive. It feels rewarding having climbed over a mountain, crossed a valley, battle the water stream of crossing a river or sneaking past a bunch of enemies, only to deliver a package to a satisfied customer at the many bases around the map. Slowly building up the UCA's resource network again!
There's a gameplay blend of a tedious, sim-like, experience, which baffles me in comparison with the casual gamer popularity of this title, combined with a distinct Metal Gear Solid styled gameplay. Although it leans more into a physics-based experience, there's still a tad of that awkward mechanical animation to it all. Yet, it feels responsive and satisfying to control, albeit with a typical cumbersome button and menu navigation as you try to navigate quests, massive inventories and items.
As you progress to new parts of the US, each part is sizeable open world map segment which unlocks, you can expand your delivery services by putting resource into building infrastructure and, better still, roads. Doing so allows you to make electricity pylons to charge small motorbikes and cars, vehicles that allow you to deliver packages quicker across the map. These vehicles are badly suited for uneven terrain, but the part where you've built roads will at least aid you in getting there faster.
There's a weird kicker here though; it's not just you rebuilding the map with infrastructure! It's also a ton of other players, which incidentally share your same map, but not at the same time. You can leave or take resources from other players, contribute yourself, and thus a lot of infrastructure will appear finished. It's mostly unlocked over time spent on a map but really helps speed up the endless package delivery quests you receive at bases scattered across the maps.
Delivering packages for bases will build their trust to connect to the UCA network and progress the main story missions. It's a unique progression system, but it also reveals some of the weak part of the game; time consuming fetch quests. It's such a slow and cumbersome affair; doing tons of journeys quickly feels like a chore rather than entertainment.
Some might not tire of it, but I did, thus I had to revisit the game with long breaks between each time. It makes the main progression a slog, killing momentum in the process.
While the atmosphere and visual style seem like a cross between a ruthless open world, a dash of horror with loneliness as the trigger rather than darkness and that typical Metal Gear Solid vibe on cinematics and character design. Kojima DNA wherever you look.
Graphic settings on the Xbox Series X offers two options; quality and performance which in turn represent less stable 4K@60fps vs locked 1800p@60fps. Usually, I always choose performance mode, but the default was quality mode, and I never noticed any dips at all. Then again, I'm using a VRR screen. So, for people using VRR; just keep the quality mode on! Otherwise, the performance mode is probably best to keep the framerate smooth.
Visually, it's excellent. Focus is clearly on the sheer vastness of the environments rather than tons of geometry. So, the result is an incredible draw distance, with some stunning landscapes giving me that vastness of a Starfield planet. Grassy fields, rivers running across them, large rocks scattered and the shadows of moving clouds, help build an empty landscape into something pretty.
There are very few buildings though, basically a shelter here and there and the road structures. There are some ruined city moments thrown in for variation, nailing down the fact that time has truly passed with parts of roads, derelict buildings and empty chassis of cars lying about.
Woodlands are mostly absent, but I like the smaller detail like grass surrounding your feet. Overall, I would've perhaps liked some forests, but the visual design leans more into a barren post-apocalyptic world. Later in the game there's some snowy mountains to climb, the sensation of snowstorms is fantastic and really make it tough for Sam!
I found it interesting seeing the Decima engine running on Xbox hardware, it's height of fame is in Horizon Zero Dawn, review here, which Death Stranding gives me vibes of visually. It runs smoothly and balances the act of a massive open world with finer detail, like textures, up close. Yet, it doesn't have the insane number of trees and plants like HZD has.
Character models are beautifully presented, especially their facial detail like skin and expressions. looking incredibly real in the ingame cutscenes. Norman Reedus, playing Sam, looks just like the real actor!
My gripe here is that this attention to detail is such a contrast to the rather robotic looking movement in gameplay. I get that animation prioritising in gameplay often results in slow and syrup-like movement, but on the other hand it looks kind of dated the way your character moves. It was something I found a bit off-putting in MGSV too.
I'm torn with my overall experience with Death Stranding; there's top quality presentation of story and characters, both in cutscenes and dialogue, but at the same time it's feels extremely disorientating to follow. The ending lasts for what felt like two hours of cumbersome explanations.
While the gameplay is unique, it's also a repetitive and often a frustrating affair. Sure, I had some addictive moments when I got the hang of delivering packages smoothly, building some momentum to the process with vehicles and roads, combined with beautiful nature experiences, but most of the time it feels like endless chores.
The space between the story progression is too long, literally just fetch quests all the way, and over time you begin questioning if anything is truly going to conclude in a manner that’s satisfying. There's a point where you as a viewer need answers, but all you get are more questions.
As it stands, it's a back-and-forth experience of love and hate, where it gets interesting with the main story, only to tear it down with endless chores. Then build up excitement again with some more story, only to see a bunch of fetch quests thrown at you again. My interest didn’t sustain over time, I had to take breaks, and when the story was just about to pick up some interest it felt like it deliberately kept itself confusing. Breaking my drive to sit down and just play through it without long breaks.
At the same time, damn, such weird twists and turns the main story takes. It's like nothing I expected and cleverly pulls you back in with an interesting event. Perhaps Kojima's strongest suit as director and writer through all his titles, but you need to be aware of insanely weird and complex story that unfolds. Love or hate for the story aside, I have limits to repetitive gameplay between the cinematic moments, its MGSV all over for me; it becomes boring.
I see the vision Kojima has had and he's undoubtedly made an incredibly captivating scenario and highly original title. There's nothing quite like Death Stranding and when it works its very satisfying and refreshing. Just be prepared for lots of fetch quests and have a ton patience before jumping in on the hype. My end score is torn between a five and four, but I it falls back on the latter overall.
