I played something last night, and I have to admit I am not entirely certain what type of game I played. There are a few things you have to understand going into this. First I have never played another Kojima game that I am aware of. I missed the whole Metal Gear Solid thing, in part because I don’t really love stealth games and whichever one I tried first… I believe Solid on the PS1 had some early stealth mechanics. Secondly I more or less ignored Death Stranding when it came out on the PS4 because it had already been announced for the PC at that point, and I figured I would just wait and play it on my system of choice. It is very rarely that I will choose to play a game on a console that is not the Switch over my beloved PC.
Most of the world is going to come into this game with specific expectations or opinions, but I figure I am entering from fairly fresh terms. My initial thought is that this might be one of the most gorgeous games that I have ever played. We were off to a rough start because I did what every PC gamer does when they first get a new game… open up the options and check out the graphical settings. I am not sure why this is a thing, but it absolutely is… and I was greeted by my game crashing to desktop. I immediately turned around and tried to configure the settings through GeForce Experience, but it also seemed to have trouble reading the settings, so in the end I just went with whatever the game detected which seemed to be perfectly reasonable for 4k at 60 fps.
The opening of the game feels more like the opening of a movie, with each actor announced any time they are on screen and in what was ultimately the opening credits. You are presented this view of the world which seems dark and brooding but also at the same time full of unexpected life. The pictures don’t really do this experience justice, because it honest to god feels like I am watching big sweeping panoramic shots at the beginning of a movie as they give us a glimpse into the world we are about to explore. I knew enough going in to realize this has more or less been damned to the term “walking simulator” but I am largely okay with that. I have been bouncing between games and figured it was worth a shot to see how well the pacing of the game fits with my current mood.
You play as Sam Porter Bridges, which seems like a name but appears to be a designation in this world. Sam is a Porter and works for the Bridges organization… so Sam Porter Bridges. There are others that work for other organizations like one called Fragile, and appear to be named accordingly. Ultimately you are existing in what is a post apocalyptic landscape, and this particular apocalypse is an event called the Death Stranding, which I don’t fully understand. What I do understand however is that when someone dies, it is important that they be incinerated or some event happens which causes an explosion of this black goo that appears to have a malevolence and drags anything it touches down into it.
At the beginning of the game you are sent on a mission to incinerate a corpse, and a bunch of “BT” entities show up which apparently stands for “Beached Thing”. Your character has DOOMs, which is apparently a psychic connection to the world of the dead allowing you to sense them. I accidentally triggered one of them and what transpired was some of the most terrifying game play I have experienced. An eruption this black ooze appeared underneath my character and several oil slick figures started trying to claw me down into… but I was able to escape barely which set me running from whatever it was. The oil slick coalesced into a tentacled monster of a sort that kept chasing me and firing volleys of the black ooze at me, eventually giving up chase as I climbed a nearby rocky precipice. I am maybe going to have nightmares in the future about the sequence… but it did immediately underline the danger of being discovered by one of these things.
The core gameplay appears to be you running around this green waste picking up packages and delivering to their intended destination. There is a lot of nuance to this, and travel itself is a challenge as you load yourself up like a pack mule there is a constant concern of tipping over or slipping and falling down causing your cargo to tumble behind you. There are some really interesting mechanics of how one stays upright and a stamina meter that feels very reminiscent of Breath of the Wild that dictates for how long you can manage to forcibly stay upright. The over arching mission is to reconnect humanity which now lives in a scattered and disconnected series of city states. Reconnecting the world uncovers bits of long forgotten tech and allows you to do more things.
Now we get to the part of this discussion where I talk about the nonsense of this game. Firstly like I said before I have never played anything by Kojima before. I was not exactly prepared to be expected to take seriously names like “Deadman” and “Die-Hardman” like they are completely normal. I have no clue what is going on with the skull mask, but I figure by the end of the game we will have likely learned something about it. I assume there is some facial scaring or something… or that he got caught in the “Timefall” which is a rain that prematurely ages everything it touches. So many weird things are going on in the game that you just sorta have to roll with it and accept them at face value until you learn more about them.
What I was not really expecting however was the shameless product placement. You spend a lot of time in your “private room”, which appears to exist in pretty much every outpost that you encounter. In it is always a constant supply of Monster Energy drink, the old fashioned green and black can version. If you drink one, you are given a stamina boost that seems to last for the next mission. It is something that you ultimately want to do given it seems to help, and the game is seemingly designed around you having that extra little bit of stamina. It does make me wonder exactly how much was spent on this promotion, or if this is just one of those inside jokes that Kojima thought was funny? Maybe he is a Monster chugging addict or something.
The other product placement that I find hilarious is that any time you go to use the toilet, a modesty screen pops up with an ad for Ride with Norman Reedus. Since the actor plays such a major role in the game, I am wondering what sort of quid pro quo behind the scenes occurred to make this happen. I does make me wonder if at some point during the game we are going to see an advertisement for something related to Guillermo Del Toro since he also very prominently plays the character of “Deadman”. In the grand scheme of things I can look past it, because it doesn’t really bother me that much but it is something that will pretty well yank you back from any sort of immersion quickly.
I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from this game, and like I said I more or less went into it with a fairly clean slate. The end result however was rather enjoyable and I expect to be playing some more of it. There is something relaxing about the combination of having to struggle your way across the landscape while watching out for lost packages and listening to a rather chill soundtrack. I can see how for a lot of people this was an unexpected and frustrating experience, but I am enjoying myself. It is very much not an action game, apart from very small segments of action playing out when something goes terribly wrong. I am interested to find out more tidbits about this world and its setting however so for the time being I am hooked.
