Death Stranding

mattyfez said:
"didn't manage to unlock every upgrade or building but I don't really feel a need to go back."

That's really not the point of the game.

You help to build enough infrastructure with the help of anonymous players...
Then you build zip lines
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I'm not sure how much of that cooperation with other players is real or in fact a clever sleight of hand by the game. Sure the player names are probably real.

The whole "collaborate to build" thing could easily be mostly faked.

It is clear that each player has their own unique copy of the structures, and the condition of them seems to be unique to each player.

Don't you find it odd that all structures in your own game, even those built by other players, start at 100% durability? That is clearly not the condition of those structures in other player's games... And after a while they all deteriorate to 0% unless you repair them in your game. And probably this is the same for all other players, who each have to make their own repairs in their own game.
 
Luckily I'd read your synopsis of frustration near the end, so I knew what I was getting myself into, it still got to me though. Why? Why make interactive diarrhea? That's what this felt like, you want it to stop, but for it to end, you just have to carry on no matter how unpleasant.
 
I think there's some degree of filtering or other mechanisms behind how the online elements appear in your game. They couldn't have hundreds of thousands of players structures appearing, the game would grind to a halt.

One structure I never learned how to build was a 'chiral bridge' which seemed useless anyway as it didn't work in the rain.
 
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Kautya said:
@FoxEye Get ready to knuckle down again and set aside another 100 hours :p.
As the 2nd one is coming:
www.youtube.com

DEATH STRANDING 2（Working Title）- TGA 2022 Teaser Trailer - [ESRB] 4K

A HIDEO KOJIMA GAME「DEATH STRANDING 2（Working Title）」 for PlayStation®5KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS Official Sitehttps://www.kojimaproductions.jp/
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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If I so much as install it (say if Epic gave it away for free again..) then you have my permission to get me sectioned under the mental health act :p
 
I enjoyed these rants and also found Death Stranding to be a mixed bag. At their best Kojima games give an alluring sense of another world of stylistic espionage, Solid Snake and especially Big Boss are great characters that truly capture the imagination, easily letting players fill in the gaps without having to say that much about them.

Death Stranding characters are all too obtuse and deliberately glib to try keep a sense of mystery but just come off as pretentious and boring.

I quite like Norman Reedus but not sold on him as a leading man at all. Sometimes he seems cool but he's kind of scrawny and mealy mouthed, many players could likely easily beat him up in real life, plus his character has a 'trendy' alt style to him that feels lame in the setting.

The most interesting MG games to me are the Big Boss ones, MGS3, Peace Walker and Ground Zeros, notably all set in the past with great use of that era's tech along with fantastical elements. At best they're even educational in a historical sense of military and other tech. I love how late 70's setting Peace Walker references the first Walkman.

MGS 3 has the great setting in the mid 60's, extremely interesting military history, again even educational as to the cold war and Russian environments actually having some jungles and rainforests.

I find the current at time of release and future setting games just not as good, plus the bait and switch he plays in MGS2 really, really annoyed many players including me, then he did it again in MGS5 in an even more ridiculous way but not until the very end, leaving a hollow feeling.

Death Stranding is Kojima allowed to do what he wants, which isn't what many players actually want.

Also while I'm at it, his trope of the very young 20's girl who somehow is an absolute master of combat or involved in political machinations way above any reality, or knows a lot more than we do but won't say is just annoying, not cool or mysterious. MGS3 has some decent female characters, borderline Peace Walker too, but most games they're badly done as Kojima just wants a hot girl in skimpy outfits in his games, nothing wrong with that in context, but most of the time it come off as unbelievable. The crying girl in Death Stranding is a good example of that.

There is still good in Death Stranding but it's also an extremely indulgent Kojima with no holding him to account.

Also as someone who forced themselves to complete RDR2, I somewhat agree with the other poster, many elements to that game are dusty and boring, it fails to capture the excitement of GTA5. RDR2 is wonderful in many ways but actually quite boring and a chore to complete.

There you go, a couple of mini rants to add to the quality rants already here.
 
None of the characters in DS existed for any other reason than to spew exposition at the player whenever he saw them.

There was no character arc for any of them. Literally nothing.

You meet a character, they spew theories or history or just inane culture references at you, you leave. That's all they are for.

Honestly the plot of this was nonsensical and none of the characters exist for any other reason than to a) spew exposition or b) appear in boss fights. That's literally it. You don't feel for any of them, you don't care about any of them. They might as well be data terminals with a copy of Encyclopaedia Kojima installed on them.

e: Until right at the end, none of the characters really express any emotion, either. It's just "here's the mission" or "here's some random nonsense you aren't going to care about" - nonsense which makes about as much sense as a dinosaur with an umbilical cord bringing about the end of the world. Sorry to spoil the plot ;)
 
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did you 100% it? Not sure how much character development is done via side quests, but I thought the stories around the “Momma” character and the guy trying to find his family were really well explored, and both were well told and interesting.
 
MoNkeE said:
did you 100% it? Not sure how much character development is done via side quests, but I thought the stories around the “Momma” character and the guy trying to find his family were really well explored, and both were well told and interesting.
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Yes, I did. And interesting is not the word I would have used :p The "Momma" thing was ridiculous, frankly.

What I found was that basically each chapter of the game retconned the last. Characters would go from believing one thing to its polar opposite, and just expect the player to go with it. Characters were defined and given a back story and then that back story was discarded in favour of a contradictory one.

Entire bits of lore were re-written from chapter to chapter. The excuse being that nobody actually knew what had happened. But some very fundamental things were explained at the beginning and then, oh no, that's all wrong, something totally different really happened.

I don't think Kojima is a genius. Neither M. Night Shyamalan. There are certainly comparisons, here. (Plus Kojima's writing is often frankly awful.)

Establishing a series of events and then just continually retconning and contradicting what's been established isn't clever, instead it's frustrating. It's like the whole thing is improv from start to finish, and only by the end has he settled on what actually happened, lol.

Meanwhile the player just has to turn off their brain and definitely not try to make sense of anything that happens. That way lies (Kojima's) madness.
 
FoxEye said:
Yes, I did. And interesting is not the word I would have used :p The "Momma" thing was ridiculous, frankly.

What I found was that basically each chapter of the game retconned the last. Characters would go from believing one thing to its polar opposite, and just expect the player to go with it. Characters were defined and given a back story and then that back story was discarded in favour of a contradictory one.

Entire bits of lore were re-written from chapter to chapter. The excuse being that nobody actually knew what had happened. But some very fundamental things were explained at the beginning and then, oh no, that's all wrong, something totally different really happened.

I don't think Kojima is a genius. Neither M. Night Shyamalan. There are certainly comparisons, here. (Plus Kojima's writing is often frankly awful.)

Establishing a series of events and then just continually retconning and contradicting what's been established isn't clever, instead it's frustrating. It's like the whole thing is improv from start to finish, and only by the end has he settled on what actually happened, lol.

Meanwhile the player just has to turn off their brain and definitely not try to make sense of anything that happens. That way lies (Kojima's) madness.
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I recently watched a TV series that I think matches your feelings about the story here. The acting and camera work was great and there were gripping moments, but in the end it was just a mess. I still thoroughly enjoyed it.
I'm not saying kojima is a genius. Nothing he's been in charge of has been anything but madness and all are far from perfection. I still find it enjoyable. Maybe a cliche, but I think it's the journey. Death stranding was different and mad which kept me playing until the end. I'd never play it again unlike some of the mgs series, but it was still worth it to me.
 
Glad you got to the end of it eventually, but I do think you're a bit crazy to push through something you don't enjoy, especially to 100%. This game was far from being worth that time and energy to me, but most games I drop after an hour or two.
 
Just completed this today.

The ending was quite boring I thought, but I was kind of checked out of the story as I had a big break half way into the game.

Overall I liked the gameplay but it is deffo not for everyone. I enjoyed linking up all the places with things like ziplines and roads, like reclaiming the land. I think it would have been better if travelling around was harder. It seemed way to easy once I had my zipline networks and roads set up.
 
Be careful what you wish for! Kojima will see your request to make travelling more difficult, and will likely make it more tedious instead.

There was almost zero difficulty in DS. There was heaps and heaps and heaps of tedium and frustration, however.

You'll probably end up getting a "drunk mode," where Sam randomly falls over no matter what you do :p In fact maybe that's why Sam is much older in DS2. You have to keep one hand free at all times to use the walking stick. If you don't press the left button in time with your footsteps, Sam trips over and drops all his cargo, which is instantly ruined, and you have to watch a 10 minute unskipable cutscene of Sam wincing and getting back up. Perfect!
 
I absolutely loved this game, although easy to see why it's such a marmite one.

For me, I found it a really nice change of pace and quite relaxing to play. I really enjoyed the story too.
 
Jazzerman said:
Glad you got to the end of it eventually, but I do think you're a bit crazy to push through something you don't enjoy, especially to 100%. This game was far from being worth that time and energy to me, but most games I drop after an hour or two.
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I did the exact same thing with Dark Souls 3 recently. I bought it on release and got bored by about the swamp level. Tried about 3 times in 6 years each time by Anor Londo I couldn’t take the boring repetitive crap anymore and gave up. This week I tried again and literally forced myself to finish it and it was utterly painful.

My logic was simple in the sort of way only an idiot would apply logic. Basically in order to prevent myself from self inflicted abject boredom every few years, I should force myself through all the pain now. The paradoxical thing is, I have loads of terrible games I bought and never completed. So I cannot fathom why I kept having the masochistic urge for Dark Souls 3. Maybe the sunken cost fallacy.
 
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ICDP said:
I did the exact same thing with Dark Souls 3 recently. I bought it on release and got bored by about the swamp level. Tried about 3 times in 6 years each time by Anor Londo I couldn’t take the boring repetitive crap anymore and gave up. This week I tried again and literally forced myself to finish it and it was utterly painful.

My logic was simple in the sort of way only an idiot would apply logic. Basically in order to prevent myself from self inflicted abject boredom every few years, I should force myself through all the pain now. The paradoxical thing is, I have loads of terrible games I bought and never completed. So I cannot fathom why I kept having the masochistic urge for Dark Souls 3. Maybe the sunken cost fallacy.
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I like dark souls, but they do end up dragging on a fair bit! Did you 100% it though? Even if I finish a game it's never to 100% completion... There's never enough content or if there is I'll certainly be bored of it well before then. I've never completed everything in a souls game because it gets repetitive. I can't bring myself to replay anything either. I've not completed elden ring yet after getting a bit tired of it a fair way through and may never.
 
I enjoyed DS a lot more than I thought I would, I did 100% it in the initial Covid lockdown which was quite apt.
I thought it was quite innovative if sometimes frustrating.
But agree fully with it being Kojima indulging his artistic desires. I approached it like a particularly arty film where you need to suspend logic processing and just experience it.
That said, I rate games where that approach is not required much higher, I'll take MGS1 or 3 over his other games no question. I fear his ego will grow too big and the sequel or any other games he makes now will stray too close to pointlessly cryptic and annoying.
 
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