Balancing the Weight of Expectations
Hideo Kojima returns video games with the long awaited Death Stranding
By Riley Fink
Hideo Kojima returns video games with the long awaited Death Stranding
By Riley Fink
After the tabloid-esque breakup of game publisher Konami and their superstar director Hideo Kojima in 2015, Sony picked up Kojima, gave him his own production studio and wrote him a blank check for whatever kind of game he wanted to make.
Four years later, that game ended up being Death Stranding, and was released exclusively for the PS4 on Nov. 8.
The game pits Sam Porter Bridges, played by The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus, as a delivery man in a post-apocalyptic America. The human race is near extinction due to this apocalypse, which is not initially explained, though linked to invisible monsters called BTs. After the death of the last president of the United States, Sam is tasked with reconnecting settlements across America.
The initial story is mostly straightforward, shockingly so for a Hideo Kojima game. The plot does get deeper with time, though very slowly.
Like the story, the gameplay in trailers leading up to release looked simple. Boiled down, you take cargo to-and-from different cities while avoiding the BTs. In practice, it is a bit more complex. You have buttons to shift your balance, the ability to create structures to get across difficult areas and even choice on where on your suit to carry cargo. Walking up a steep slope in most games means holding up while running, where in Death Stranding, each hillside, river or valley is its own difficult puzzle to get across.
Even with the system’s depth, traversing all the way from the east to west coast is intentionally tedious and time consuming, which is where the online component kicks in. Structures you leave behind like ladders, ropes or bridges all show up in other players’ worlds. Where, on launch, the game’s world was barren and annoying to backtrack through, as time passed it turned into a haven of communication and cooperation.
Some of the game’s terraforming is also affected by this. When trying to get my vehicle up to a certain terminal, I built a bridge across a river and painfully navigated up the rocky hillside. After a few hours and a few trips up and down the hill, I looked on in awe as the rocks had all disappeared and a dirt road had formed. Soon enough I realized that every dirt path in the game was unintentionally carved by thousands of players walking the same way.
Death Stranding certainly isn’t for everyone, as the gameplay is very slow and not everyone meshes well with Kojima’s unique directorial style. But if you’re a fan of more cinematic, slow burn stories full of atmosphere and mystery, Death Stranding is a no-brainer.
Four years later, that game ended up being Death Stranding, and was released exclusively for the PS4 on Nov. 8.
The game pits Sam Porter Bridges, played by The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus, as a delivery man in a post-apocalyptic America. The human race is near extinction due to this apocalypse, which is not initially explained, though linked to invisible monsters called BTs. After the death of the last president of the United States, Sam is tasked with reconnecting settlements across America.
The initial story is mostly straightforward, shockingly so for a Hideo Kojima game. The plot does get deeper with time, though very slowly.
Like the story, the gameplay in trailers leading up to release looked simple. Boiled down, you take cargo to-and-from different cities while avoiding the BTs. In practice, it is a bit more complex. You have buttons to shift your balance, the ability to create structures to get across difficult areas and even choice on where on your suit to carry cargo. Walking up a steep slope in most games means holding up while running, where in Death Stranding, each hillside, river or valley is its own difficult puzzle to get across.
Even with the system’s depth, traversing all the way from the east to west coast is intentionally tedious and time consuming, which is where the online component kicks in. Structures you leave behind like ladders, ropes or bridges all show up in other players’ worlds. Where, on launch, the game’s world was barren and annoying to backtrack through, as time passed it turned into a haven of communication and cooperation.
Some of the game’s terraforming is also affected by this. When trying to get my vehicle up to a certain terminal, I built a bridge across a river and painfully navigated up the rocky hillside. After a few hours and a few trips up and down the hill, I looked on in awe as the rocks had all disappeared and a dirt road had formed. Soon enough I realized that every dirt path in the game was unintentionally carved by thousands of players walking the same way.
Death Stranding certainly isn’t for everyone, as the gameplay is very slow and not everyone meshes well with Kojima’s unique directorial style. But if you’re a fan of more cinematic, slow burn stories full of atmosphere and mystery, Death Stranding is a no-brainer.