This piece is an update from a game review I did in 2019. A feature of this game is a story about a man delivering packages alone. As things progressed in 2020 with the Covid outbreak, Amazon started hiring individuals, sometimes in their own vehicles, delivering packages to my home when we were all discouraged from going out in public. Sort of like art imitating life.
What follows in my initial review and my thoughts on a second play-through.
The Slog Of A Lifetime
The main thing I learned from playing Death Stranding is how good most game developers treat their players. We are given many luxuries to avoid slow pacing, levels of difficulty, updates with bug fixes, fast travel on big maps and so forth. They make the game fun for us. I didn't realize how much we are afforded to make playing a game efficient and enjoyable. Not so with Death Stranding. This game is a mix of carrot and stick with more stick than carrot.
The plot according to Grok: Death Stranding follows Sam Porter Bridges, a courier in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by the Death Stranding, a mysterious event that blurred the lines between life and death, unleashing ghostly entities called BTs (Beached Things) and causing supernatural phenomena like timefall, rain that accelerates aging. Society is fragmented, with survivors living in isolated underground cities connected by a network of porters delivering supplies.
I’ll leave it there. It gets more complicated as the plot drifts into surrealism and metaphysics.
With Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding game, players are forced into a slog of epic proportions, sometimes getting a break with road building and vehicles only to be forced back into the struggle again as the game progresses into areas not accessible with trikes and trucks. Fast travel for the main plot progression does not exist. Kojima seems bound to not make the play ability easy on the player. There is an attempt to lower the frustration of the game's mechanics so it does not become overwhelming, but the journey remains exhausting.
Another element that does help a bit is the addition of online players building on the maps. You don’t interact with them, just see their names on the things they left behind from ladders and ropes to bridges and completed highway segments. It does invoke a feeling of gratitude to find a ladder that aids in a climb left by a fellow traveler.
It is ironic how easy the boss fights are compared to hoofing packages up mountain slopes in snow, rain, fog and slippery terrain. Death Stranding’s toughness is in the journey, not the destination or physical conflicts with men in yellow suits.
In the game you play as Sam (modeled after and voiced by actor Norman Reedus) in what has been called by many a walking and package delivery simulator. However, later in the game, it becomes more of a mountain climbing simulator.
So imagine a huge load of packages on your back, often in knee deep snow, trudging up and down rocky crags sometimes in blizzards and whiteout conditions. On top of that you are under threat of the dreaded BT ghosts either to battle with or sneak past. In a bizarre plot twist Sam uses an unborn baby in a glass tank who serves as a BT warning device. Sneaking by them is a very slow process. I got to the point of dreading the next delivery and story arc. I took a break to go do some infrastructure building, mainly highways. I actually found this to be an enjoyable side occupation. One gets a sense of accomplishment going about gathering resources to complete a stretch of highway or place a bridge over a rushing stream.
Many have complained of wanting to play a game, not watch a movie. The huge amount of cut scenes are another part of the slog. Heavy on exposition; way too heavy with a mind bending plot that is a mix of reality and the paranormal. To speed through Sam’s shower clips you have to skip through 4 cutscenes. Other parts of the narrative require this as well. To be fair, the videos are well done with excellent motion capture rivaling a big budget movie production. Just overdone and another element of the continuous slog the player is put through. Overall, the game's visuals are superb and probably the best of the PS4 generation.
One disappointment for me was that the main entities you battle with, the BTs, are never defeated. At the end of the game you can still go back to delivering packages and build infrastructure but the BTs are still there to torment your progress.
For a while I thought it was too grueling to try it again. If I did, I would only work through my favorite chapters and never finish it. After giving it some time I decided to try it again.
Death Stranding—Second Play Thru Much Better
Oh, the first time through Death Stranding was such a slog that I thought at the time I would never play it again. I intended to put it on eBay and rid myself of this cursed gaming experience. I both loved it and hated it.
But after I considered what I loved about the game. Building roads and infrastructure! So I decided to give it a shot. One more time. I have no desire to finish out the game with its barrage of bewildering cutscenes and general lack of fun.
The second time through has proven for me a much better gaming experience. Just focusing on the main map, running deliveries, building and repairing structures makes for a totally different gaming experience. The peculiar and unfathomable surrealist plot is eliminated and the game’s mechanics feel unburdened by dealing with Hideo Kojima’s story meanderings. On the downside, many deliveries feature the same type of things. So nothing much new will arise regarding variety. What one can do is work out strategies for the tougher deliveries and there will always be repair work for degraded structures.
Infrastructure Construction
During the first play through, I did some construction but was sidetracked by the plot and decided to work my way to the end.
While it is stated that a game can be over 40 hours of play time, once you set to pave every piece blacktop available it lasts far longer. I didn’t keep track of my time but I think it is fair to say you can get up to 100 hours and more. That includes package delivery, building trikes and trucks, building and maintaining bridges, safe houses, power hubs and so on.
The good thing about building the road system first is that it makes a lot of deliveries much easier. One of the grueling deliveries the first time I played was backpacking Momma on Sam’s back and huffing it to her final destination. The second time, I put her on my back and hopped on a trike and sped her to the delivery station on the road I built.
Even after all of the road building, there are still people located in mountainous areas where no paved road will ever go. Such as the Mountaineer where one delivery mission has you climbing into a snowy mountain range while dodging BTs. It’s a grueling delivery mission, compounded by an immediate health crisis which sends Sam back again for the needed delivery of medical help. It’s one of my least favorite parts of the game, being two consecutive grueling missions in a row. Afterward, the Mountaineer needs a huge number of deliveries. Until I discovered a better route, I handed the deliveries off to other porters. Since then, I found a good route west by northwest through a ravine where I can drive a trike to the Mountaineer’s place. I have not attempted a truck yet as the passages are narrow.
Other mountain folk can be easier to deliver to. Such as the Robotist who resides west of Weather Station. Simply travel to the Station and do a short climb up the ridge from the east to deliver her packages.
Actually, the worst mission is the Peter Englert pizza and champagne delivery starting out from the Timefall Farm at the bottom of the map that requires a walk to the north edge of the map. Meaning, you can’t put those items in a truck and drive it north. It is not allowed. You have to backpack the pizzas and hold the champagne bottles in hand while hiking all the way. It’s for Sam only so no handing it off to another porter. I refused to do it.
Death Stranding’s Version of Online Play
Online play is an isolating experience. It’s basically, encountering the actions of other players. The theme is community building and helping each other out to make the journey easier and more efficient. There have been many times when I have been thankful about a well placed ladder or climbing rope. And players can show their appreciation in the form of “Likes” as one would on social media. You will see ghostly images of porters but there is no interacting with them. Other than accidentally running over one which awarded me -100 likes.
It’s all well and good if you run into the most persistent thing in all of nature—jerks. As seen by the image above of a delivery truck blocking the delivery terminal. What joy people get out of this prank only an online jackass would know. But it is very annoying and is a situation that one must deal with every time the game is played. One of the recent updates gives an option to make the vehicle disappear quickly. It works well enough but it still interrupts a smooth delivery process.
Other Players Basically Don’t Repair Things
Build it and leave it seems to be the general rule for players of the game. Obviously many players are not sticking around like I am. They most likely want to progress through the game as I did in the first play-thru. So they build infrastructure and move on. But as bridges and other constructions rust out they do need to be repaired so I made some effort doing that. Over time, it gets to be a huge task and I let it go towards the end of my playing experience.
In Closing
Death Stranding remains one of the weirdest games I’ve ever played. The second time I never actually played it to its chaotic and bizarre ending which amounts to a surrealistic nightmare. But it was much more enjoyable. For a game this old the graphics are stunning and the PS4.
Word is, they are working on a sequel for release in June 2025, Sony PS5 only.
Images sourced from Death Stranding and ©Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC. Image use under CCL noncommercial usage and fair usage.