I don’t even know how to begin talking about this game. “Game.”
One part of me wants to do nothing but carefully stack teetering boxes on my back and find more and more perfect routes through gorgeous and inhospitable terrain forever. The other part of me wants to throw this game disc in the fireplace and purge the sadistic spirits obviously residing within.
man up, you knew what you were getting into going in!
Only vaguely. Obviously I had some concept solely due to it being a Hideo Kojima game, but I’d intentionally only watched one or two trailers for it, and have largely steered clear of it for the past few months.
This is like… distilled Kojima.
So what is it exactly? I can’t quite tell.
I do enjoy the Metal Gear series. But….what is this?
I have no idea.
But is it fun?
Reply hazy, try again later.
You should have said “I…do not…know.” Go full Shatner.
My interpretation of “distilled Kojima” is “hours of concentrated, dubiously coherent wankery occasionally punctuated by periods of competent gameplay”.
For the record, I know nothing about Death Stranding except that it’s a Kojima game.
GIT GUT SCRUB oh wait…no…wrong game…and comic….and i think website…..i do not know where i am XP
This game is out now and I still don’t know what I’d be getting into if I played it. And apparently I should have “game” and “play” in sarcastic air quotes? What is Death Stranding?!
well it IS a Kojima game, so if you weren’t expecting this, you probably didn’t pay attention to the last 10 years
No sir. MGS Kojima does not fully prepare you for Death Stranding Kojima. Death Stranding is Kojima mainlined directly into your veins.
I feel like the crazy has been coming out more and more in each iteration of MGS. When I heard he was forming his own studio I thought ‘And now we’ll get unedited Kojima’. I’ve always loved his gameplay systems and hated his narrative.
“unedited Kojima”, suddenly that sounds like the best wording possible and possibly the very reason for what we’ve gotten.
I would call this “Full Frontal Kojima”
This is basically my reaction with every single trailer I’ve seen for it. I just… I don’t even know what to make of it. I have genuinely zero idea what the game is about, all I know is I want to play it kind of possible maybe.
That’s exactly how I feel. I kinda want to play it just to see what it’s about, but… I’ve heard it doesn’t get good until about 10 hours in. I don’t really want to just walk around for 10 hours, waiting for the game to maybe be fun. Also I don’t really want to fork out full game price for those exact same reasons haha.
I mean this IS Kojima we’re talking about and he has expressed interest in going into cinema. Maybe this is intended as a social experiment or one really long trailer for a franchise he’s trying to start.
When you beat it, you ‘get’ a 2 hour cutscene to close out the story – I’d say that’s more cinema that I’d want to ‘play’.
It’s a game built around fed-ex quests. You’re hauling freight by hand, bike, or whatever. You fight terrain, rogue delivery nutters, haunted rain, and undead landsquidwhales.
And interesting characters and insufficient explanations.
Considering how much fun I (unexpectedly) had with Farming Simulator and how I just picked up Mud Runners (thanks Game Pass) I feel this game will be right up my alley.
Edit: Had Fun
Death Stranding is what you get when you take a developer who is known for kooky, weird ideas and give him no editors and full authority. Kojima has always needed reining in. He doesn’t have that anymore.
So he’s George Lucas? And Death Stranding is the prequels?
The opposite. The Prequels were all style and no supbstance, CGI and lightsabers and wirework. Death Stranding is 90% thought experiment and 10% game, carrying way more about making you think than making you shoot things. I love it, and I think it balances out other games out there, but it could have used a developer saying “Maaaaaybe some good combat?”
I suspect it is more like Death Stranding is Jar Jar
I’m still a little tilted about that Psycho Mantis boss battle…
Kojima is not for me. His gimmick seems to be “batshit insane in a way that would send people into a rage if they didn’t know he was attached to the project.” To me It’s the kind of high art that people fall all over themselves to tell you “you don’t get”.
IMHO i think the problem is people have a problem with “not getting it” on both sides. Kojima is weird and this game definitely lets him run wild with his weirdness. As such some people will greatly enjoy it for its weirdness ( i.e. “get it”) and some won’t. This is not a flaw in either the game, the player who enjoys it, or the player who doesn’t. I can’t say that I really “got” the movie Eraserhead although everyone in the room who watched it with me (8 people) all claimed they did and enjoyed it immensely. I’m still… Read more »
You’ve just described my interaction with every Hideo Kojima game since MGS1
I was hoping for an N7 Day comic but this is pretty funny too
What’s not to get.
Norman Reedus, a post apocalyptic UPS delivery man whose performance is based on Facebook popularity, must deliver packages through swarms of Ghosts with his formaldehyde-baby sidekick.
Its an allegory for accepting bondage.
“One part of me wants to do nothing but carefully stack teetering boxes on my back and find more and more perfect routes through gorgeous and inhospitable terrain forever. The other part of me wants to throw this game disc in the fireplace and purge the sadistic spirits obviously residing within.” why not both?
This is what happends when there is NO ONE IS THERE to say NO to Kojima, he just goes shit back insane. Atleast the story seems to make more sense than Kh 3 thought
Might just be heavy use of metaphors. Try looking at the whole narrative from an overarching view and see if you can figure out what Kojima might be intending different things to represent, sometimes literal interpretations get in the way of understanding these kinds of things. Like, I remember a lot of my coworkers complained that Sandra Bullock’s “Gravity” was the most boring unrealistic space action movie they’d ever seen, when in reality it’s basically just one big artsy fartsy metaphor for grief from personal loss, how it leads people to isolate themselves (almost like a child looking for safety… Read more »
From the very start, I paid no attention to Death Stranding because it looked exactly like the sort of game I would not like, so I have no idea what’s being referred to in the comic. Could someone explain?
The gameplay features carrying boxes and packages across a post-apocalyptic wilderness, literally a walking simulator, with a complex and surreal story told through a ton of cutscenes. I found it extraordinarily fun and thought-provoking, and yet my friends think it is boring and pompous. The comic is basically capturing the fact that there is no real way of saying “Is this good or bad?”
I feel like if the same exact game was made, but didn’t have the name Hideo Kojima attached to it and have years of hype behind it, it probably would have reviewed about 30 points lower on Metacritic, gone on a 70% off sale within two months, and eventually find a fanbase from a few dedicated gamers while being forgotten by just about everyone else.
Remember “Journey,” the game where you walked through a surreal desert? It was beautiful and weird and coring and compelling, and definitely for a niche audience, but it got high scores. I think Death Stranding minus Kojima would actually get better reviews, because journalists wouldn’t go into it expecting Metal gear gameplay, and just accept it for the well-made but not for everyone project it is.
Sounds kinda like the first Killzone. Now, after multiple other games and a good new iP, GG finally have somebody to match their boundery pushing ideas! xD
I’m honestly convinced Kojima is a lovecraftian Elder God in disguise.
It just makes too much sense as his work is Guaranteed to drive people to madness upon being viewed.
For the sake of my frail sanity i just avoid Kojima games. I just can’t take the risk!
Do you read Hideo Kojima?
Only in the Klingon original form
The game is… engaging, but it’s hard to call it fun, it just is a neat thing to do. Like a rubik’s cube, or a match three game, or what have you. It holds attention well, and entertains, but… it’s hard to look at the time you spent as something filled with “joy”, just that it was… filled.
Sounds like a decent rental
To me, it sounds like a -horrible- rental. A game that purportedly “gets good” around the 10-hour mark, and some people just never like it, isn’t how I want to spend my weekend.
I hate to say it, but to me it sounds like either a good 90% off bargain bin title, or a good gift from that uncle you never expect much from anyways. Or possibly a good game to watch Let’s Play highlights on YouTube of.
There’s also an equal number of people saying the game is enjoyable. Im content using up a Gamefly slot to get my own take.
I completely forgot that Gamefly was still a thing. Then yeah – if you’re paying a subscription, and you’re not paying extra for the game anyways, and can send it back immediately if you don’t care and keep it indefinitely if you do, then sure. Makes sense as a rental.
The most difficult thing is trying to explain it to someone who hasn’t even heard of it. I don’t know is the anthem to every question they ask about it.
Well, I’m having fun with it. I guess it may be because I actually AM a trained stage actor. But really, this is ticking a few boxes I didn’t know I had until I saw the live demo video, and then it ticked more when I started playing it. There is so much in the game that is so incredibly subtle and mind bending. SO FUN.
When Kojima said he didn’t want to just make a game that would sell well, he wasn’t kidding. He made something he genuinely wanted to make. Good ‘game’ or otherwise, you can sort of respect the fact he stuck to his guns.
I’ve not played a single Kojima game, but I’m aware of his reputation as a total madman. From what I’d gathered from YouTube, something run by Hideo Kojima isn’t guaranteed to have satisfying gameplay and isn’t guaranteed to make sense, but it IS guaranteed to get your attention. Am currently watching Jacksepticeye play it on YouTube and have seen about 6-7 hours of the game. It’s mostly walking, but Kojima has weirdly found a way to make it entertaining – at least to watch. I don’t think anyone ever has put as much thought into terrain and weight management as… Read more »
“Huh?” Indeed
i don’t have a PS4 so playing this game was never an option for me, but even in reading reviews it seems more like some kind of performance art game, the sort I would find most interesting as a viewer rather than a player.
This is pure undistilled Kojima here folks. It can possibly kill you with an aneurysm with the amount of mind fuckery going on here.
UPS driver delivers packages, reunites America, and defends it from death incarnate while phasing through time shifts.
It’s… really not too hard to understand >.>
Surprisingly so. Like…. if you turn your mind off it gets confusing. If you pay attention for longer than 30 seconds it…. really isn’t that confusing.
I just started it. I WANT to like it. I really do. But I dont think it will happen for me.
It wasn’t just confusing either, it was kind of disturbing.
That scene where you seem to go inside a womb to find a baby smiling at you? Dafaq?