So today we are talking about death stranding, one of the most divisive games made by Kojima productions founded by Hideo Kojima, the creator of metal gear series, it’s his first game after his split with Konami and people have been waiting for this one for a long time. So without wasting more time let’s get started, for better understanding I have divided this review into three parts-story, gameplay and performance. So let’s begin with the story.

Story

Since it’s a Hideo Kojima game, storywise you will not get dissapointed. You play as Sam porter bridges and your mission is to bring people of UCA(United Cities of America)together again. The whole world is suffering from this thing called death stranding and because of it people have started to live in isolation and your goal is to convince them to join the UCA by delivering packages and thus making America whole again. So as you start the game a lot of new terms are mentioned like-chiralium, void out, dooms and many others whose meaning are not told at the beginning itself but are told later as you play the game, so it can be a little bit confusing, there are also these journals and interviews which get unlocked as you progress through the game which gives you a better understanding of death stranding. The characters also are really interesting and you get curious about them as you get to know their names like Deadman, Heartman, Fragile, Diehardman, so getting to know about them and their story is a matter of interest. As you start playing you can’t make sense of what’s going on with the story or where it is going next but that’s fine, I mean common its a Hideo Kojima game and it always consists of surprises, twists, and turns. Also, Hideo Kojima loves movies, so the direction of cutscenes is awesome and on top of that, the performances of the actors especially Mads Mikkelson’s are great though the character of Norman Reedus aka Sam speaks much less as compared to other characters in the game but supporting cast makes up for it. On the other hand, the whole theme of the game, the message it is trying to convey is that people can accomplish more if they come together instead of living in isolation. As Kojima said that the idea of death stranding came to him from loneliness, also in the game you are walking alone from point A to point B there is no-one around but yourself then you call out to someone and get a reply, now when you see that there are also other people who are going through and experiencing the same thing as you are, this makes you feel better and a little less lonely in a world of isolation.

Gameplay

As Hideo Kojima claim this game is a new genre and I quite agree with him this gameplay is something that I have never experienced before its fresh, new and I like it. In most games, you know what you are getting yourself into like shooting, stealth, racing but in this, you don’t know that and that’s why it’s something new. The objective of the game is simple you have to deliver packages from point A to point B, seems simple right but it’s not, several other factors affect this which I will discuss shortly. First I would like to talk about character movement, in this game character movement is strongly focused, you feel like you are walking, climbing or jumping which many games do not focus on also in this game you will spend a lot of time walking so they have made it engaging, you also have to keep your balance while carrying weight by repeatedly pressing L2 or R2 to keep your balance, walking cautiously on slippery terrain and also keeping your pace slow while climbing a mountain. There is also a stamina bar that gets depleted while doing this stuff so you have to take care of that

The second aspect is timefall or the timefall setup, timefall is like rain except it fast forwards whatever it touches, so your packages and your equipment will get degraded very quickly in areas of time fall but those will be protected by containers, once those containers are damaged then your package will start to degrade. You have to take care of your packages and whole delivery process as you are rated according to the condition of the packages, how much time did you take to deliver them and how much weight did you carry.

Now, this brings to our next aspect the BT’s or beached things, the ghostly creatures that are found in places of heavy time fall, you can detect them by using a BB(bridge baby) and you can only see them while you are still and not moving this makes them hard to detect when they catch you it will lead to void out and that area will become a crater(one of the things that you will learn in the game early on) and you can’t traverse through that area anymore, the first encounter with them is terrifying and the music which plays in the background and atmosphere which get’s changed while you are traversing through their area is just amazing and terrifying at the same moment.

Now our next aspect is another type of enemy-MULES, these are the delivery fanatics that just want to deliver cargo and will try to steal your cargo when you traverse through there area, you can either avoid them by stealth, direct encounter them by engaging in combat and also circumvent their area. So, this is where the things get interesting, there is no specified path to your location, the player is given with the full choice of the path they wish to take, you can either select the path with Mules or try to circumvent them by taking another path but that area is manifested with BT’s so it will take more time to get your location and your stuff will also degrade while you are being haunted by these creatures or you can completely avoid both by taking a third path which is very long mountainous area, so you will have to bring some extra equipment with yourself which again will affect your weight limit.

Now the last aspect is the “Social Strand System” something which is game-changer, So Death Stranding has a light online mode which means you can see other player’s path, their structures, their equipment, packages which they have left behind, the player is connected to other players indirectly. This system works well and helps you a lot while traversing, let me explain it to you, suppose you have to descent from a mountain and you don’t have a rope with you, this is where the strand system comes into play, now there is a possibility that other players might have already traversed through that area and have used a rope to descent, you can also use that rope and can award likes to the players rope(yes there is a liking system) delivering a message that their piece of equipment was helpful and you appreciated it, there are several other structures which can be built around to help traverse, your piece of equipment might also be helpful to others and others might appreciate it too. All these structures can be built only when an area is connected to the chiral network(something like the internet), So you can only see other players structure when you are connected to the chiral network and vice versa, this makes traversing through the terrain very difficult for the first time but this also connects to the theme of the game very well that humankind achieve more if they help each other which is something I have discussed in the story section but you must be wondering how this works?So let’s get to it while traveling you can call out to other players by pressing D-pad and other people who can hear you can reply to you in the same way, So players can indirectly connect with other players without seeing each other also there are no negative reactions only positive.

There also little things which make the whole experience more interesting like when your stamina is depleted you can rest anywhere to recover your stamina also this will save your game too, you can also sleep(except for some places) while resting, this will give the player some time to take rest too after a long gaming session but the main recovery will only take place when you take rest in your private room.

Now let’s talk about the gun combat(yes it is there), gun combat opens up later in the game but it is something which I am not a big fan of, you can tell that it was not the main focus of the game, there are several guns you can use including grenades, there are different types of guns, grenades for each enemy type and there are plenty of them to choose from one of the guns you might have seen in the gameplay shown at TGS(Tokyo Gaming Show) is bola gun which binds your enemy a non-lethal weapon, there are also other gun types which you can discover while playing game.

Performance

So now let’s talk about performance, as the game is available on both the base ps4 and ps4 pro models, the performance difference is mainly resolution as now the base ps4 also offers HDR support although the game shimmers more on a base ps4 otherwise it runs on a stable 30fps on both the consoles. The game makes good use of the Decima engine and delivers a stunning looking graphics which to some extent looks photorealistic, I often found myself stopping by to look at the beautiful looking sceneries while delivering packages and taking screen shots, trust me this game is a showpiece and also as the game is a timed exclusive on ps4 it’s coming to pc in early summer of 2020 so pc folks can look forward to that. Now all being said I would say that I enjoyed very much playing this game and the gameplay loop is very addicting, even after finishing the game I still found myself delivering packages(grinding for that platinum trophy too) also this game is something that you will get when you experience it yourself, so now go on and try it out. 

This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more.