Death Stranding

[DisturbedSwan]

Played the first 3 hours earlier. I like it so far but it barely feels like I’m out the tutorial really so very early days. A lot of mechanics are being introduced still and it feels like the reigns haven’t been let go of yet so I’m not free to fully explore the world yet.

 

First things first. There’s a lot of cutscenes. Almost all of them during the Prologue are ones we’ve seen from past trailers so in some ways we’ve all seen the opening hour but without the  context you’ll get in the game. After that you’ll start to see some new stuff but at this early stage most of it is just introducing you to characters and locales with not an awful lot going on in terms of plot or anything. 
 

I’m not sure I need to go into a deep dive over the way the game plays as we’ve seen the gameplay trailers in the past. If you’ve seen those clips with Sam delivering packages that’s pretty much all I’ve done so far, the tone has definitely been on the serious side - thus far at least - with the piss grenades and Kojima wackiness completely missing during the opening stages of what I’ve played at least.
 

The way it feels to pilot Sam though is probably what has surprised me the most, I read someone else somewhere compare piloting him to driving a car in GTA or something which had me a little bit worried because I assumed he’d control like a tank but instead he controls like a Sports Car if anything. He is incredibly nimble and controls very intuitively which I was shocked about, the walking speed is a light jog as well which means you get places really quickly. Holding L2 and R2 in will enable you to keep your balance much better and it’s a godsend when you’re carrying something heavy or traversing mountains as it will stop you flailing from left to right wildly. The way you load and unload packages feels very intuitive as well and it’s somewhat novel in letting you pick it up and then rearrange it on your person, it feels very tactile. 
 

I’ve made 3 deliveries in total in my time with the game so far. It seems fun enough to me to simply get lost in the world and walk about eventually getting to your delivery point but as mentioned previously I haven’t been fully let off the reigns so far so have only been able to explore very linear corridors which have been funnelling me to the next exposition point.
 

I have met the ‘BT’s’ once so far and the whole experience completely weirded me out. I fucked it up first time around and was flailing wildly not knowing what to do before being chased by some kind of monster thing so I reloaded and gave it another go. The atmosphere in those moments is so damn tense creeping around them whilst crouching and holding your breath, the BT’s themselves give me the creeps, they’ve got such fantastic sound design. 

It probably goes without saying but the visuals are absolutely phenomenal as well. They world design has a really unique art design to it, I don’t really know what I can compare it to really other than possibly Nier Automata maybe? It just has this washed out melancholic but vivid quality to it that I’ve not really seen much elsewhere. If you like somber indie tunes you’ve come to the right place as well, in particular moments the music will swell and the camera zoom out to give you a sense of place whilst adventuring along. Kojima has a great music taste.

 

As far as negatives go, so far the writing has been a little ropey in places and I couldn’t help but laugh when Kojima’s name comes up under every casting title during the credits as well. 

 

So yeah, so far so good really but it’s still very early days. I’ve been pleasantly surprised with it this far but am eager for the leash to be loosened so I can fully explore the world. 
 

Spoiler

 

[one-armed dwarf]

I watched the opening hour on Giantbomb. It was cool. I will join you on this bullshit asynchronous social multiplayer artsy journey come midnight when it unlocks and I can get an hour in.

 

I hope you built lots of ladders cause I'm in a hurry. Very important stuff to do.

[one-armed dwarf]

Omg I have to turn this off for tonight I'm getting too angry rite now lol

 

Remember how in Phantom Pain when you first learned that you could beat the shit out of the soldiers and they would always thank you? How everyone would always do that everytime they started playing?

 

Right now falling on my arse is the DS version of that. I'm going too fast, it is true. But still lol

 

 

I will say I caught a gameplay related 'spoiler' on the era thread right now, to do with BTs, that actually has me a bit excited for how the systems might work later.

 

Which could be cool, once I learn how to walk and move and not break my hole falling everywhere

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Man, fucking youtube. Ending is already uploaded lol.

 

I mean it might not matter much to me personally, I'm more into what these systems are. The story so far as it's been told leaves me with a feeling of I'm not sure what I should be laughing at and what I should take seriously.

 

But BB safe out there o7

[Maf]

I found out I got another week off work so bring it on

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Ok, I've played quite a bit of this now. 

Very much a tale of two games so far. On the one hand it's a very boring walking simulator. On the other it's this sort of weird Lovecraft horror-ey mystery action game with bits of stealth in it.

 

Could you guess which is my preferred of the two? It's actually the boring walking simulator. So far anyway. It's hard to explain but there's a great sense of feedback conveyed in every step Sam takes and how a mistep can completely displace you. The animation tech is a bit jank, another thing it has in comparison with Shadow of the Colossus. But the audio and vibration feedback give it a feeling of tactile satisfaction.

 

Satisfying also are the quiet moments of victory when you cross a river on a ladder you placed, or take shelter from the corrosive rain. When Death Stranding is about these simple things it's not so bad really. 'Boring' isn't really a criticism because it uses boredom to good effect.

 

There's also a good feature of the game which are these watchtowers you can build. The terrain one way can be way more treacherous than the other so it's important to know which way involves the least amount of falling on your hole. So the watchtowers let you set a waypoint with binoculars, Phantom Pain/BOTW/Far Cry style. But it's much better here cause you get a terrain analysis that tells you which will involve the least difficulty. Which means less wear and tear on you and your supplies (and patience). You can ignore all this but you'll probably have a more annoying time.

 

It's a shame then that it shits the bed so violently on itself with the action game parts. Like when you have to sneak into a camp to steal a fuckload of stuff and a bunch of quest fetch junkies (Blakeys!?!?) chase after you chucking spears and your shoes fall apart and your baby starts bawling and its' like fuck off game. I was fine with you when you were a quiet walking simulator. When you try to be a stealth game you are actually quite rubbish. So fuck off.

 

Or when you're in those quite walks through a valley and the music gets all scary and it's like 'oh no, time for zombos', and a bunch of black goo guys chase after you and pull you into the bullshit dimension and your cargo gets destroyed and you have no piss or poo grenades to get out of the situation. So you have to rely on the game to throw ammo at you via these asynchronous multiplayer characters who are loaded in. Then when you run out of or lose your ammo, you have to unzip your pants and pull your dick out and piss on the monsters (which does do damage). Also your baby is crying the whole time, it fucking sucks. 

 

But those walking sim bits? They're alright. I could be into that part of the game if it stopped turning into this weird action game along the way with pee pee and poo poo. So lots of bad and good so far.

 

This post sounds quite negative, but that's cause I've just come off the very negative half of my play session. The first half was good

 

[DisturbedSwan]

6 minutes ago, one-armed dwarf said:

Your cargo gets destroyed and you have no piss or poo grenades to get out of the situation...Then when you run out of or lose your ammo, you have to unzip your pants and pull your dick out and piss on the monsters

This cannot be true. 
 

Also

 

 

Suspicious ? 

[one-armed dwarf]

I did a wee on the Cthulhu it is true. It didn't die but it did the take damage reaction/animation, so I am still trying to discover optimal PPS (pee per second) and what the urine hitboxes are. Or if pure wee is better than when it is filtered into a urine grenade. 

 

Clipped

Spoiler

 

 

[Maf]

I got to the first BT encounter outside the incinerator and the tool tip pops up “Hold R1 to hold your breath so you’re not found” or something. So I went to check the map and for whatever reason I hit the touchpad and in front of the BT’s Sam just shouts “IS ANYBODY THERE?!” and all the BT’s just started going nuts. Not quite holding your breath. 

 

I made it out without incident but it was funny. 

[one-armed dwarf]

I had to out the game down because of a BT encounter just now.

 

Tbf, im playing on hard. Maybe I should drop to normal. But I was enjoying my boring delivery sim before the BTs came up and all of a sudden I had to do the Deadlu Premonition stealth sequence thing on them. Got impatient and triggered them and they pulled me back into the bullshit dimension.

 

I had to turn it off then cause I spent all my wee already and I didn't take a poo. Also it just isnt a good part of the game at all. The game is best when it's a walking sim.

 

All that aside, the game is pure attrition. Everything requires so much effort. Which feels good when you're just hiking about. The actual act of moving your character about, plotting out a route and bypassing an obstacle with equipment or another player's equipment. All that can feel very rewarding. Journey, not the destination. Like BOTW but your progress is measured step by step. But it's let down so far by what I think is the pressure kojima felt to shoehorn in weird action stuff that doesn't seem to work quite as well.

[Maf]

I don’t understand the BB’s at all

 

Also if they successfully made it out west, why not just take the Qpid and connect the cities as they went

[one-armed dwarf]

Right? What do they do, lol. I know when there are ghosts.

 

Anyway how many likes we all at. 3139 here. Not sure where they come from though because I can't read any of the fecking text in this game

 

Also I dont know what a strand contract does but maybe we should all do one or something.

[Maf]

My like are 4954, I think.

 

I’m in trouble. My boots are about to die and I haven’t got the ability to fabricate more yet. I did have a spare pair, but I accidentally recycled them when I thought I was recycling the used pair. 
 

I don’t know what’s going to happen now

[one-armed dwarf]

You have to ruin your boots for the first time before they give you the ability to get new ones, I think

[Maf]

Just got to the wind farm. I have no idea how I haven’t had an encounter with the BT’s yet but thank fuck. This game definitely works as intended in some cases. When I got through that forest I actually noticed I was clenching my stomach. BT areas are no fun. 
 

Also, Amelie is not going to be a real person is she? That is not a spoiler because I don’t know but just speculating.

[one-armed dwarf]

I am tuning out the story, I care so little lol. I can only listen to people saying 'reconnect us' so many times. The story feels like someone ctrl-c and ctrl-v-ed the while script over and over

 

But I do like Death Stranding quite a lot. When I place a series of ladders across cliffs near a waterfall, then drop a rope behind for easier access later on, those little victories over the natural landscape feel good. As does the little likes that pop up when people come by your stuff and use it.

 

I have fought so many BTs though and it is always the most 1/10 bullshit garbage. Your cargo getting destroyed, including the mission critical sperm and eggs. Baby crying constantly, Guullermo Del Toro warning you that you are anaemic now. It's a clusterfuck of hellish shite.

 

Starting chapter 3 now because everyone says to get to chapter 3 before doing sidequests

[Maf]

According to the game I am 8.5 hours in and I’m struggling to have any worthwhile thoughts about the game at all. And that isn’t meant as a negative, I just don’t respond to this game in anyway. A moment ago I had a mission where I had to chase packages down stream and I came close to getting slightly annoyed by it and so far that is my only real reaction to it one way or another.

 

The fact I just sat here and sunk 5 hours in to it, like there is something about it which is playable, and I have a hunch it’s just the satisfaction of S ranks and lots of numbers flying everywhere for pretty easy work (Even on hard). But in every dimension you can think of I feel like I’m missing something actually substantial.

 

The gameplay is...what it is. And I don’t hate it. But the fact that everywhere I go other players have already put down tonnes of ladders, ropes and bridges and I don’t need to do any of that, and also because I don’t do any of that I don’t get any likes at all, I feel like I see others successes or positive feedback from the game and I can’t get that because it’s a “shared world” I’m just following other people’s trails instead of making my own. 
 

But, I know how inventive I am not, so I think even if that stuff wasn’t there I would struggle and wouldn’t put down anything particularly helpful anyway. 
 

And because “connections” are the main point of the game, I kind of feel like I’m being robbed of having any. Which in some way is true to real life too. So maybe that is some of the point of it as well. I don’t know. I am not hating it, but it’s leaving me pretty cold. 
 

There’s also so many mechanics and I’m just not engaging with them at all and still getting on fine. I’ve yet to use a generator, I’ve yet to build or use anything except when the game directly tells me too. Like I said I don’t even need to build ladders or ropes because they’re already there. I haven’t used a vehicle yet. All I do is auto equip the back pack, look at the map, and walk. That has been 98% of my gameplay experience thus far.
 

The story I can’t parse at all. I understand most, not all, but most of the concepts on their own. BT’s, time falls, Chiriliam, the networks, etc. But how they connect to each other, and why it matters to me, or why it matters to Sam, or what the end goal is I just don’t get it. I know “Reconstructionalism” or whatever they keep going about an unite the cities but it’s like why, for who and what for. Layer on a thick cut of just absolute bullshit terminology and stuff on top and I just not getting it at all. 
 

I honestly just can’t bring my self to respond to the game in any way shape or form (Yet). I feel like I’m just about outside of the tutorial. A few weeks ago when I was writing about Bloodstained I had all kinds of thought and reactions to it that I couldn’t even organise and I just had to blurt it all out where I was at with the game and what I liked and didn’t like.
 

This is the entire opposite. This game is just a gear stick left in neutral. And every now and then you look at the other gears and numbers you could go to and you jiggle it about sometimes but then you don’t need too so it just stays in neutral. Not doing anything, not feeling like it’s going anywhere. That is as close as I can describe my experience with the game so far. 

[Maf]

Things I don’t understand.

 

Why in the beginning is that guy talking about what America used to be like when he was a kid but according to everyone else it’s been at least decades if not 100’s of years and no one remembers “our time” and how some of this technology was made or whatever?

 

BB spoilers

Spoiler

 

Also it seems as if BB’s can detect BT’s because they are taken out of a dead woman’s womb at 28 weeks so they’re kind of in between a state of alive and not alive, but they’re grown enough that they can detect sensory data and that is transferred to whoever is holding a BB through a fake umbilical cord? 

 

Why is Chriliam sometimes good and sometimes bad? It’s there bases of their network, you can collect it and recycle it. But it causes people to be allergic to it, and you can’t have it in the air because...?

 

Dooms are not the same as Repatriates it just so happens that Sam is both? What are Dooms? They seems to be if you have level 2 you can sense BT’s but if you have a higher level you can actually see them. But if so then why do they need the BB’s at all? 
 

I should say in my game I have got a lot of emails talking about this and that but I haven’t read them because I don’t like reading things in games. This is just stuff I’ve gathered from the cutscenes 

[one-armed dwarf]

Having a pretty bad time with it now where my cargo keeps getting destroyed by rain and tripping over rocks and things before I can deliver

 

I had to reload a few times. I wonder if that stops your stuff from persisting to the shared world.

 

Sometimes I find things to like about this but it feels like it is designed as an anti-fun game. Kind of feel most of my thoughts about this before release are being validated as I go

[DANGERMAN]

@Maf  2 things. Firstly, sort your post out so that I don't see any more spoilers in it otherwise I'll just remove it.

Second thing, start taking a few minutes to collate your thoughts so you're not posting in the same thread every 5 minutes