Now Playing: Death Stranding

With over 60 hours clocked, I finally finished Death Stranding and I wish I could say I was still feeling as positive about the game now as I was when I wrote my First Impressions post. The game gets off to a slow – but good – start and successfully builds from there into an engaging and enjoyable experience . . . but an experience that sadly wanes as the game progresses.

Death Stranding, unfortunately, hits a peak and then slowly goes downhill. The first part of the game when you’re still learning the mechanics is great. Death Stranding is regularly introducing new locations, weapons and equipment. The story is intriguing and I was always eager to see what would happen next.

The problems begin to mount when you reach the final third of the game and Death Stranding starts to drag its heels, not so much in terms of narrative, but gameplay. The delivery loop of moving from A to B was always quite varied and interesting thanks to the combination of distance, weight and terrain in addition to the introduction of new player tools that would help you tackle and overcome each new challenge before you. 

But you reach a point in the story when the game wants you to trudge across a snowy, mountainous region to a number of small outposts. This is after you’ve already trudged through a similar snowy, mountainous region. And I really didn’t mind the first time because it was a new terrain, a new challenge and it came with its own new toys to play with.

   

 

But now I’ve got to do it again? And this is the point where Death Stranding runs out of new ideas. Which wouldn’t be such a problem if the game was wrapping up. And it certainly feels like it’s wrapping up as you make one final (or so you think), arduous trek to reach your ultimate destination – Edge Knot City. This leads you into a couple of weak boss fights (more on combat later) and although there’s clearly some story threads to tie up, I was pretty happy with the game ending at this point. All I really needed was a few cut-scenes and maybe a short playable sequence to see the game out.

But no. Because although I liked how the story played out from this point and ultimately concluded, this is also the point that Death Stranding starts to feel a little too self-indulgent to the detriment of the experience as a whole. At first, it didn’t seem so bad being asked to backtrack across the entire map to my point of origin – I can see the thematic intention and getting from B back to A shouldn’t be as slow thanks to all of the structures and short-cuts I’d constructed along the way. 

But I suppose that would have been too easy – instead, the game puts far too many enemy encounters in your way to slow you down and hold you up. To make matters worse, when you do eventually return to the original starting map, the game destroys all of your improvements because . . . because f**k you, I guess. Luckily, I still had a vehicle stored to help me on my way. I say ‘lucky’ because the game at this point also removes the ability to craft new items or equipment.

Of course, without my bridges, generators or zip-lines I couldn’t travel as far as I’d like on my vehicle and eventually I just had to hoof it on foot . . . which leads onto another weak and kind of unnecessary boss fight. At this point, I felt like the game should be over – or at least wrapping things up. But no. It just kept going and everything from a gameplay perspective became an incredibly tedious slog. 

After defeating this latest boss and experiencing what you think is now – finally – the end, the game forces you to ‘play’ through the game credits as they slowly appear on the screen. There’s nothing to actually do during this sequence but run Sam in circles on the spot in a futile attempt to trigger yet another exposition dump because the game has bizarrely decided to explain ‘*everything* in the final 20 minutes.

When you do finally reach the end of this credits sequence you get yet more cut-scenes, including cut-scenes you’ve already seen – just from a different perspective. You then have to go on another (final) delivery which, once again, is something that worked from a narrative perspective but was boring as f**k to actually play.

At this point, it felt like the game had been ‘over’ for nearly 4 hours, but most of that was taken up by pointless gameplay sequences and not one but two credit rolls. Yes, that’s right, after forcing you to sit through the game credits once, Death Stranding does it again. And no, they can’t be skipped.

When I finally finished Death Stranding I felt relieved and exhausted. I was ready to wrap things up 4 hours prior to this but the game just wanted to roll around and revel in its own bullsh*t. It didn’t completely ruin the game as a whole, but it definitely sullied my experience. 

It’s a real shame, because Death Standing is certainly one of the most unique and engaging games I’ve played in a long time. It really needed someone to step in and say ‘no, Hideo Kojima – sometimes less is more’. You don’t need to stretch the ending of your game out to 4 tedious hours with pointless and self-indulgent bullsh*t. Just. End. The. F**king. Game.

The other major problem Death Stranding has is how it doesn’t quite successfully combine its gameplay and its narrative in a way that one can complement the other. The ‘main’ deliveries you undertake aren’t really any different than the numerous and repeatable side jobs. The only difference is that the ‘main’ jobs end with a lengthy cut-scene to advance the overall plot.

And aside from a handful of exceptions, Death Stranding doesn’t do much with those side jobs from a character or story perspective. You get to know a few of the people you make deliveries to and learn more about them via the e-mails they send, but most of them feel like generic clones with no real personality that would make them unique in terms of dialogue or mission types.

Unfortunately, Death Stranding relies more on its rather weak combat for ‘important’ gameplay sequences than the more engaging, varied and thoughtful delivery loop. The combat isn’t terrible, but it’s not exactly good, either. It’s basically just a bog standard third person shooter. It’s also a shame that your main enemies – the BTs – never really evolve. At least the human enemies get new weapons and tools to contend with your own advancements, but the BTs never really change and as a result, you quickly stop fearing them and soon start farming them for resources.

One of the more interesting aspects of the human combat is that – for plot reasons – you want to keep it non-lethal. But the game doesn’t do anything particularly clever with this and you end up just shooting the bad guys with an assault rifle anyway – an assault rifle loaded with ‘rubber’ bullets. It’s . . . kind of lame, especially when so much thought and care has been put into the delivery aspect of the game.

Okay, I think I’m going to wrap this up. Between this post and my First Impressions, I think I’ve covered enough of the game to give you a pretty good idea of how I’ve felt about it from start to finish. Overall, I’m glad I played Death Stranding. It’s different. It’s unique. It’s got a pretty good story with some cool characters and neat concepts. The core gameplay loop is engaging and clever.

But Death Stranding also ends long after it really should as it gets bogged down in its own nonsense and it never quite manages to combine its gameplay and its story in a way that would elevate both. It relies too heavily on weak combat and it runs out of new ideas long before it ends. As much as I enjoyed the overall experience, I don’t see myself playing it again. I’d recommend checking it out because there’s really nothing quite like it out there, at least not with this level of production value – but be prepared for a flawed experience that may annoy and bore you as often as it delights.

7/10