Death Stranding (PS4) Review

 Death Stranding (PS4) 7.5/10

Hello and welcome to another review. This’ll be a long one, so hang tight and enjoy. Death Stranding was released on November 8, 2019 for the PS4 and PC, with the head game director being none other than the legend himself Hideo Kojima, most famous for his work on creating the Metal Gear Solid games. This game is something special. It is not your typical video game by any means. What Kojima has created here is “a new genre of gaming: the Strand Genre.” What this means is that the whole point of the game is to make connections with everyone, both in-game characters and online people. I’ll go more in depth with this in a little bit. But first, let’s talk about the story. Before I begin, I am well aware of the Director’s Cut that came out, but for this review, I’ll be going over the original PS4 release. Let’s begin.

Our story follows Sam Porter Bridges as he connects America back together in search of his sister Amelie in a world that has been completely torn apart by an event called The Death Stranding. I’m going to do a massive info dump here, so please bear with me. In this world, the United States of America has been destroyed. The Death Stranding has completely fractured its government and the way society works. To replace it is The United Cities of America (UCA). I won’t go into what caused The Death Stranding because that’s a major spoiler right there. Within the UCA are a couple of key figures: Die-Hardman, Heartman, Deadman, Mama, Fragile,  Amelie Strand, and President Bridget Strand. These figures (besides Fragile) basically run the government owned organization called Bridges, which was created by Amelie to reconnect everyone in America via the chiral network and porters. The chiral network is an advanced technological network that feeds data through the Beach, which in turn can print anything non-organic anywhere that’s in the chiral network. The Beach is another world that was discovered around the time of The Death Stranding. Everybody has a Beach, which is connected to one’s soul, or Ka. After someone passes away, their Ka is transported to the Beach via The Seam, which is the connection between our world and The Beach. But what happens to their physical body, or the Ha? Due to the Death Stranding, after someone passes away, their Ha begins to necrotize. After 48 hours, the Ha then turns into a BT. BTs are souls trapped in this world due to their physical body not being able to decompose normally. Because of the Death Stranding, death holds a completely different meaning in this world. Normally, after someone dies, you bury them out of respect for the person and let nature erode the body into nothingness. But here, you can’t do that. You see, BTs are extremely dangerous beings that should not be in this world. These things are primal and attack anything that disturbs it. They are invisible unless you have DOOMS and/or a BB. They also have an umbilical cord that connects them to The Beach. With BTs, when they consume you, their anti-matter and your matter clash, causing an explosion called a voidout. Voidouts completely destroy anything within its vicinity, leaving only a massive crater with a handprint in its wake. DOOMS is an illness that certain individuals have, such as Sam. Depending on your level of DOOMS, you have a stronger connection to The Beach and BTs (and you also suffer from horrific nightmares). BBs (Bridge Babies) are fetuses that have been severed from stillmothers. Stillmothers are pregnant women whose brain has gone dead, but the body is still alive, similar to that of stillborn children. Because of this state, the fetuses are in a perfect balanced state between the land of the living and the dead. After being harvested from the stillmother, BBs are then put into a pod where they are treated as equipment by Bridges. There’s a dark origin to BBs, but that's spoiler territory, so I won’t go into it. Due to the Death Stranding, the world’s environment has been altered drastically. Due to chiral contamination in the world, chiral clouds have taken over the skies. When they rain, it’s not ordinary rain. Instead it’s timefall. Whenever there’s timefall, it is highly advised to get out of the rain ASAP. Whatever timefall hits, it accelerates the passage of time of whatever it touches. Meaning that if enough timefall touches a living thing, it’ll drastically age to the point of death and decomposition. Due to there being no proper decomposition, a human will turn into a BT.

Now onto the main story. Sam is on a mission to rescue his sister Amelie from terrorists that’s holding her captive in Edge Knot City (what used to be LA). Sam starts out in Capital Knot City (former Washington DC) and must trek across the continent. As he’s moving west, he must expand the chiral network by using the Q-Pid to grant access to the network to all the cities, waystations, and distribution centers across the country. As he moves west, he’ll meet up with the other members of Bridges and piece together the cause of The Death Stranding and stop the plot that Higgs, the terrorist leader, has in store for the world. As he’s doing this, Sam will also be uncovering a deep conspiracy about the American government and highly classified archives about BBs, President Bridget Strand (his mother), Amelie, Die-Hardman, and a new mysterious character that’s connected to Sam’s BB.

The story and lore for this game is easily one of the deepest, most thought out stories I’ve seen in quite a while. This game easily has one of the best stories I have ever seen in gaming. There’s so much background info on this world and its characters that it's quite impressive. Sifting through all the lore was very interesting and thought provoking. I loved all the characters. Each and every single character was very interesting and well developed. Every character underwent a character arc and it was satisfying to watch, especially Sam’s and Die-Hardman’s. There’s side characters too, such as Junk Dealer, Aaron Hill from Mountain Knot City, The Doctor, etc. All of the side characters just felt like filler characters to help pan out the game, but I did enjoy a couple of them such as Collector, Craftsman, Aaron Hill, and The Doctor.

The actors in this were pretty damn good too. Norman Reedus was a great main protagonist and his supporting cast was phenomenal. Tommie Earl Jenkins (Die-Hardman), Lea Seydoux (Fragile), Emily O’Brien (Amelie), Troy Baker (Higgs), Mads Mikkelson (Cliff Unger), and Margaret Qualley (Mama) were quite notable in their performances.

Graphically, the game is also impressive. The world looks so bleak and dead but there’s a hint of life in the world. I love the game’s color palette with all the grays and blues. There’s so much detail put into the grass, rocks, water, snow, everything. This is very important as this coincides with the gameplay.

Sound design is great, too. The sound effects for the environment (wind howling, waves crashing, sounds of your footsteps) and character speech is of great quality. However, the music is kind of a mixed bag. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good soundtrack. Kojima did great in picking the artists for the game’s sound. It’s just that I wish there was more variety to the OST. 90% of the soundtrack sounds almost exactly the same. From what I’ve heard, there’s only a select few songs that actually stand out (such as “BB’s Theme”, “St. Eriksplan”,”I’ll Keep Coming”, and “Almost Nothing”). In my honest opinion, this game does not deserve OST of the year. That award should’ve gone to River City Girls.

The gameplay is lackluster. Let me explain. As you play the game, you’ll constantly be doing delivery missions for someone. You’ll be delivering packages to and from settlements as a means to increase your connection level with them. By doing this, you’ll be able to build more stuff within that region of the chiral network. This doesn’t sound too bad, but here’s the thing: it’s monotonous to all hell. 90% of the gameplay is literally FedEx simulator and it’ll get boring fast. There were several moments when I was falling asleep at the controller because all I was doing for the past 3 hours was just walking with boxes on my back. Occasionally you’ll be dealing with Mules and Terrorists, but these moments are few and far in between. There’s also BT areas that you’ll have to travel through, but once you get the cord cutters, these areas are a joke.

There is action in the game though. There’s certain deliveries where you have to recover stolen cargo from Mules and Terrorists and return them to their original destination. These missions were great as you get to do something that’s not push the analog stick forward for 2 hours straight. As you max out settlements, you get rewards for your efforts, such as guns, armor, helpful tools, and other stuff. You can use these to make your future deliveries that much better and easier. The more deliveries you do, the more you’ll level up Sam. At the end of each delivery, you’ll get a score card for your overall performance on that delivery and for your current ranking in the game. The more you level up these stats, the easier these deliveries will get. Sam will be able to keep his balance more often, carry more cargo, get more likes from other porters, etc. One of the main driving forces for these deliveries is getting likes. Yes, likes. Similar to that of Facebook and Twitter. There’s an in-game explanation for this. Getting likes from people produces happy chemicals in your brain called oxytocin. Getting more likes will help drive you to do better on your deliveries. This is bullshit because I didn’t get any oxytocin myself from these after the first 10 hours or so. As you max out settlements, they’ll give you special rewards such as higher quality materials, better guns, better tools, and a star that you put on Sam’s leg. These stars show how many settlements you’ve maxed out, which is a nice touch. Too bad that these aren’t really good completion rewards in the long run seeing as the more settlements you max out, the less useful these rewards become.

As you play the game, you’ll constantly be looking after Sam and BB’s health. You’ll be looking after Sam’s blood levels, stamina gauge, his balance, and BB’s stress level. Tracking all of these is important to continue the game. If your BB is too stressed out, he’ll shut down and you won’t be able to detect BTs. If Sam runs out of stamina, he won’t be able to move and he’ll need to rest for a little bit. You’ll also have to watch Sam’s shoes as they will deteriorate over time, so keeping spares on you is a must. You also have a scanner called an odradek that can be used to scan the terrain for missing cargo, hazards, and enemies.

Within every major settlement there is a private room that Sam can use to rest up in. You use these private rooms to recover your health, pacify BB, and take care of yourself. You can shower, take a piss, take a shit, drink Monster Energy drinks, eat cryptobiotes to restore blood levels, read emails and interviews, listen to the songs that you’ve unlocked, customize your accessories, and revisit memories (boss fights) that you’ve unlocked. You’ll be spending a good portion of the game in these private rooms, so take advantage of these spots when you can. Wanna know what sucks though? So with the soundtrack of the game, you can only listen to these songs in the private room. This is fucking bullshit because most of your time is going to be out in the world where you won’t be able to listen to the soundtrack. How does Kojima want me to appreciate the OST when I can’t even play it at my convenience. From what I’ve been told, back in MGSV, you can have Big Boss listen to the soundtrack whenever he’s out exploring the world. Why tf did Kojima take out this mechanic for Death Stranding? So stupid.

So one of the main parts of the game is making connections with everyone. The game supports online functions with other players. There is no multiplayer co-op or PvP or any of that. What online does is that you can use and help out other people that’s in the chiral network. As you expand the network, you’ll see structures pop up everywhere. These structures can be either postboxes, watchtowers, bridges, ziplines, ladders, etc. You can make these too with the help of an item called the PCC. If you have enough raw materials (metals, ceramics, chiral crystals, chemicals, etc.) you can build these structures as well and other online players can use them too. You can give likes to these structures and in doing so will give its builder likes. Doing this will increase your Bridge Link with other players. The Bridge Link is only necessary for your porter score at the end of every delivery run. For me, a good portion of my time with the game was rebuilding roads so that me and other porters will have a much easier time making deliveries, which was nice.

The bosses. Another highlight of the game. There are two kinds of bosses: scripted bosses for the story and optional bosses for your own pleasure. So you know those BT areas that I talked about earlier? Those are optional boss fights. Let me explain. If you let a BT notice you and capture you, it’ll drag you into a decent sized area where it’ll transform into this giant hideous creature. The BTs have a couple of different forms it can take, so you’re not usually fighting the same boss over and over. These BTs can turn into a giant tentacle thing, a giant lion with a golden mask, or a HUGE flying whale. I’m pretty sure I missed a form, but whatever. These fights can get really intense and if you screw up and die, you’ll cause a voidout and a permanent scar on the map. Lucky for you, Sam is special. You see, Sam is “immune” to death due to being a repatriate. A repatriate is someone that can return from The Seam, back into their own body. After he resurrects, Sam will start throwing up tar and cryptobiotes, but then he’ll be good again. The scripted boss fights are fucking dope. There’s roughly 7 boss fights in the game. 3 of them you’ll be fighting a massive BT, 1 of them is Higgs 1 on 1, and the other 3 is the mysterious combat vet that wants your BB. Each of these fights were extremely fun, but my favorite has to be the last boss fight with the flying whale. I literally got Shadow of the Colossus vibes from that fight. Another one of my favorite fights was the Higgs 1 on 1 fight. For this boss, there’s 2 phases. The first phase is you just running around, trying not to get shot and beating him up. Second phase was a fantastic homage to Metal Gear Solid. Idk how it is with the other games, but I’ve only ever played MGS IV: Guns of the Patriots. The second phase with Higgs reminded me of the final fight with Liquid Ocelot. With Higgs, both of you are stuck in tar and you’re basically boxing each other. You gotta block, sway, and throw your punches in a timely manner. This fight and the whale fight were major highlights of the game.

The game does have some downsides though. Gameplay is severely lacking in variety and the music is kinda disappointing. The gameplay is what truly holds back this game from being a masterpiece. I also would’ve liked more BT boss battle variations. I just wish there was more game in this video game. Give me more sections where I’m fighting more terrorists and even enemy variations. In all honesty, I think Death Stranding would’ve worked a lot better if it was a television mini series instead of a full fledged game.

Overall, this was an interesting experience. Part of me hates that I dropped 111 hours into the game, but another part of me is glad that I took my sweet time with the game. Like I said earlier, This game has the most interesting lore and story that I’ve seen for quite awhile and I’m going to remember this game’s story and it’s mindfuck of an ending for quite some time. I can only recommend this game to those that have extreme patience with walking simulators and a big brain. Trust me, even I had some trouble trying to understand everything.

If you read this whole thing, you are a trooper. This is my longest review yet, but I wanted to make sure I got everything down considering how polarized people seem to be with this game. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this massive piece. Some time in the future, I’ll touch upon the Director’s Cut and even the MGS games. Until then, stay safe out there.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.

This is Zorgak, signing off.