Death Stranding, the first Hideo Kojima game in a post Konami world, is out now. I picked up the game on Friday, a rare day off. I played the game late into the night, and again this morning.
It is a pretty, desolate wold
In it, you fill the revolving wardrobe of shoes of Sam Porter Bridges, protagonist and courier. Set in a desolate, post-apocalyptic United States of America, Death Stranding is beautiful to gaze upon.
Character animation is fluid, and the environments are richly detailed with rocks, bumps, and ghostly horrors that spread across the land like the ink from a leaky fountain pen.
I'm not crying, you're crying!
Your goal is to piece back America, rebuilding the "chiral" network, which is vaguely analogous to the Internet, except you can also transmit matter through it. Its futuristic, esoteric, and a dangerous, monstrous energy that can't really be understood. (In hindsight, editing this work, that's not a pun based on the appearance and product placement of Monster Energy Drink in Porter's private quarters)
If you've ever been at an airport with far too many bags, and you've felt overburdened, you have played Death Stranding. You're surrounded by strange figures in an otherwise deserted world and you're more interested in being somewhere else than where you actually are.
You have to stack cargo on your back, or on a motorbike in a tetris like fashion, and then hope that you can master the gameplay mechanic of activating your core muscles in an appropriate manner to ensure that a comically large pile of containers doesn't tumble down the side of a mountain into a river.
Death Stranding feels like a drunken old man gathering people around for what could be the last anecdote they ever croak into another human ear. You know that there might be something profound lurking within their words, but deep down, you've got something more important to do, somewhere else to be, and something else that you want to achieve.
Thus, Kojima has achieved one thing with his boundless exposition and massive fetch-quest game: respect.
You don't want to walk away, because you respect the old grandmaster, and you want to hear about the story that he wants to tell you.
In-game footage of the gameplay mechanics on life support
The only problem is, you have to crisscross across the land on a journey that would be much more interesting as a novel, not as a tedious game where fetch quest crossed with paranormal fiction (and a baby in a back-pack) take tens of hours to get to the point, while frustrating you, literally every painful, laboured step of the way.
Perhaps the only game where "podiatrist" would be an overpowered class
Avoid this title. Watch a playthrough instead and save yourself some coin, or stop reading right now. I am so glad my local game retailer has a 7-day return policy on games. It's back on their shelf now, if you want my copy.
A narrative as complicated as this lady's umbrella
All screenshots, gorgeous as they are, taken from Sony's page that tries to sell copies of this game.