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Death Stranding Review

Death Stranding Review
by

October 30th, 2020

There was a lot of weird stuff in the Metal Gear Solid franchise. Ghost ravens, bullet telekinesis, a man so angry he wouldn’t die, a woman that could breathe through her skin, the list goes on and on. So you might understand why I didn’t bat an eye in Death Stranding when a man was lifted off the ground and eaten by a giant ghost while a corpse next to me went off like a nuclear bomb. I might have asked some questions if it was another developer, but the strangeness of Hideo Kojima is something that I’ve just learned to roll with, assuming he’ll explain it all later.

And explain it he does. After what feels like every “quest” in Death Stranding you’ll be bombarded with emails and interviews that will just fall over themselves trying to explain the weirdness that makes up the world around you. Trying to explain it all would take up much of this review, and really all you need to know is that the USA was destroyed by a supernatural event. This and the aftermath from it has led to most Americans living in underground cities, and you play as a “porter” named Sam Bridges whose job it is to deliver packages to these cities.

Along with the lore dumps you’ll constantly receive email from people that you’ve met on your deliveries, and it gets kinda weird. They bombard you with emojis and praise, calling you everything from hero to savior to legend for bringing them a loaf of bread, meanwhile you’re carrying 500 lbs of Monster Energy up the side of a mountain wondering where it all went wrong.
Along with the lore dumps you’ll constantly receive email from people that you’ve met on your deliveries, and it gets kinda weird. They bombard you with emojis and praise, calling you everything from hero to savior to legend for bringing them a loaf of bread, meanwhile you’re carrying 500 lbs of Monster Energy up the side of a mountain wondering where it all went wrong.

So you’re a glorified mailman walking across the ruins of America, and ninety percent of the game will be spent doing just that: walking. You strap one or more deliveries to your back, along with any gear you might think you need, and set off with nothing to keep you company but the open countryside and a baby in a jar that can detect ghosts. Like I said, it’s weird. The really “interesting” part of Death Stranding‘s primary gameplay loop comes from this part before you embark, where you piece together your delivery route and inventory. Should you take this small box of medicine up into the mountains, or will doing that delay your other deliveries? Traveling through the canyons might make your delivery time even quicker, but the ladders and climbing ropes you’d need to bring with you could overburden you or limit the amount of deliveries you can make on this run. If you’re into organization and optimization this could be a game that scratches that itch, but of course there’s little quibbles that will get in the way…namely the rest of the game.

You see not everyone is happy with your plans to bring one hundred Playboys to the frat house in the ruins of Minnesota. There are two types of enemies and we’ll start with the aforementioned ghosts, the BTs. The BTs are “easy” enough to deal with as they’re generally floating in stationary locations and once you get a bike there are a few areas where you can just speed through to avoid them entirely. They get less easy to deal with once the game decides to take your only way to detect them away from you, but even then you can use some “cheats” like hugging walls where enemies wouldn’t be from a design perspective.

BT’s are generally invisible unless you use the scanner on your back, but that’s also the button used to hold your breath so they can’t hear you. It becomes a bit of a balancing act.
BT’s are generally invisible unless you use the scanner on your back, but that’s also the button used to hold your breath so they can’t hear you. It becomes a bit of a balancing act.

That doesn’t mean it’s fun to hide from invisible enemies though, and it gets even less fun if they end up hitting you. If you fail to avoid them you’ll be hit by another confusing attack where you have to pull yourself through hordes of ghost zombies that are trying to drag you down into black sludge, and if THAT goes poorly you’ll be dragged across the environment (possibly dropping and damaging your gear, which is worse than anything else that’s about to happen) and attacked by a larger BT. These fights are…visually interesting but rarely present any real threat, as a squid or lion made of goo jump around while you shoot them or hit them with special grenades. When the fight’s over you brush yourself off, go pick up your dropped gear, and carry on your way.

The second enemy type is good old humans, who you’ll encounter in both lethal and nonlethal varieties. The nonlethal ones are slightly more interesting in-universe (which we’ll get to later in this paragraph) but are also more annoying to avoid because their electric shock attacks can disable your vehicles and they have special weapons that can steal your gear. The enemies with real guns lack these vehicle disable abilities but of course can shoot you, which risks damaging your packages but is less relevant when you can simply drive past them on a motorcycle or van. Avoidance is the name of the game when it comes to the human foes, but on the rare mission that you’re forced to fight them you’re encouraged to use stealth since you’re not supposed to be killing people in Death Stranding. This is because of the plot weirdness of “void outs,” where if someone dies they will explode like a nuclear bomb. So you’re encouraged to use nonlethal ammo, stealth take downs, and the bola gun, a personal favorite that can temporarily disable whole groups of enemies in one shot. What actually happens if you use live ammo? I don’t know, I was a good boy that didn’t want to make a new crater in Ohio so I stuck with my bola gun and running away.

Sure it was less exciting than going Call of Duty on everyone but Death Stranding isn’t designed for such things. Your guns come with limited ammo and there’s no way to refresh it other than sleeping or picking up brand new guns, plus remember that you’re carrying important packages on your back so any prolonged combat may ruin what you’re carrying. Furthermore I had numerous control issues in combat that led to me constantly unequipping weapons in the middle of combat, which might have been a problem exclusive to my hardware (since I haven’t seen a lot of other people complaining about it) but it actively drove me away from combat.

My dislike for the game’s combat cannot be overstated, but I like some of the “realistic” mechanics they’ve included here. Tackles and hitting people with the cases you’re carrying are expected enough, but you can also throw the boxes in your hands by doing a regular melee attack and then releasing the “carry item” button as you swing. It’s a minuscule and arguably frustrating design decision that I still found rather charming, like many of the things Kojima does in his games.
My dislike for the game’s combat cannot be overstated, but I like some of the “realistic” mechanics they’ve included here. Tackles and hitting people with the cases you’re carrying are expected enough, but you can also throw the boxes in your hands by doing a regular melee attack and then releasing the “carry item” button as you swing. It’s a minuscule and arguably frustrating design decision that I still found rather charming, like many of the things Kojima does in his games.

To be honest my favorite part of Death Stranding didn’t have anything to do with the gameplay at all. If you’ve played Dark Souls you might be familiar with the idea of a single-player game that has other players offering you “help” in the form of messages, which helps newer players and also creates a sense of community. Death Stranding takes this one step further in a big way by encouraging you to expand the “Chiral Network,” a plot-relevant form of the internet that also allows you to see buildings and equipment that other players have placed in their own world. This can take the form of many miraculous things, such as ladders to help you up cliffs or bridges over deep rivers. Hell, after the first third of the game you’ll be able to build roads that stretch across the entire country, and every player on the Network can help you with that. You can give and receive “likes” for these community actions, to the point where I would actively leave things behind like ropes or routinely go out of my way to gather resources for road construction. Not only because it could help me later on, but because it would help other players who then might be encouraged to do the same.

Of course there are some mechanics that make this a less than perfect system. Once you place an object you can’t pick it back up again because the Network has already recorded its location and sent it to the other players on the Network, which can lead to a tough spot if you were relying on using one ladder to get up a mountain. I’m also not sure if other players are to blame for this but I would routinely find myself trying to use a climbing rope only to discover that the whole rope is in a pile on the top of the mountain I wanted to climb instead of at the bottom where it would be actually useful. Other players can also actively steal your vehicles from base garages OR if you have them parked outside, which isn’t to say they’re expensive to build (or that I haven’t stolen players vehicles as well) but it’s still frustrating…almost as frustrating as OTHER PLAYERS NOT PITCHING IN TO BUILD THE DAMN ROADS. Seriously, it was great to link up the Network at the beginning and see a huge swath of blacktop to lead me over the rivers and enemy bases near the starting area, but ever since then it feels like I’m rebuilding the entire country myself.

There’s a lot of things that may lead you to lose faith in your fellow man these days, but I guarantee you that when you boot up the Network and see that someone built you a bridge…well you just might think that mankind has a chance.
There’s a lot of things that may lead you to lose faith in your fellow man these days, but I guarantee you that when you boot up the Network and see that someone built you a bridge…well you just might think that mankind has a chance.

Outside of the Network I had the most fun in Death Stranding driving around on vehicles, especially on the road system. As I mentioned earlier there are two types of vehicles, motorcycles and vans, and each has different models that prioritize either cargo capacity or long distance journeys. Vans can carry more, obviously, but bikes are better at traveling across rugged terrain so that will generally be your go-to until you and the Network can build out a smoother path across the country. It feels great to not have to worry about things like weight balance, your stamina, or even something as mundane as falling and instead just hitting the road with a backpack full of ear medicine. Or at least that’s the dream we like to fool ourselves with until we’re halfway through a delivery route in the rain and see the notification “bike damaged.”

Yes, the last great hurdle in Death Stranding (and also the most frustrating) is the weather. Specifically “Timefall,” a phenomenon which started right after the ghosts showed up that quickly degrades and destroys anything it touches. Fortunately you have on a Timefall-proof raincoat and boots, but unfortunately they haven’t learned how to cover boxes, ladders, guns, grenades, and motorcycles in this material yet, so your gear is going to slowly rust away as you deliver pizzas across the country. Gear is cheap to rebuild, as I mentioned earlier, but it doesn’t make having to keep an eye on all of your essential tools any less of a chore. A simple repair option could have made many of these problems obsolete (and you do get one for vehicles through a garage menu or for cargo through an item) but instead you’re forced to “recycle” gear on the verge of rusting away, craft replacements, and then reequip it all, which is just needless busywork. This gets especially annoying towards the end of the game where you essentially have to do the last quarter of your deliveries without a vehicle or most of your resources, so good luck replacing everything you need if it breaks or you fall down a mountain. Fortunately you can save whenever you want (as long as enemies aren’t nearby) so quickly saving whenever you’re trying to cross a river or about to go down a mountain with no stamina is very prudent if you’re planning on getting Mr. Maxwell his underwear delivery in one piece.

If we narrow down Death Stranding to the core element of a man delivering packages across a ruined country, I have to admit I find the whole thing a bit zen. I’ve routinely complained about how I have no video games in my collection that I can just zone out and play, since everything requires either strategic thought or reflexes, so a game about just making sure that the cosplayer in the canyon gets her needle and thread without water damage is a nice change of pace. Unfortunately the weirdness of such a gameplay loop on top of the game’s other problems (annoying combat, frustrating gear replacement mechanics, and a horrifically boring/obnoxious ending) means that I can’t really recommend Death Stranding to anyone who doesn’t know that they like games like Euro Truck Simulator, and even then I don’t think “Euro Truck but you’re on foot and also there are ghosts trying to eat you” is the game that audience is looking for. Check it out only if you have the patience for Kojima’s level of weirdness and think that a game about being a UPS man would be better if he was being chased by invisible ghosts and terrorists.