Hideo Kojima is arguably one of the biggest names in gaming. He was the driving force behind the massively successful Metal Gear Solid games and had a monumental presence within the game publisher Konami until a very messy falling out.
Since then, Hideo Kojima has gone on to found Kojima Productions and his first high profile game with this new company was Death Stranding.
Death Stranding, when announced, looked like a surreal game that one could only expect from the mind of Kojima. What no one expected though, was that this game would go on to be what amounted to a post-apocalyptic FedEx simulator. It’s a game where you play as Norman Reedus and interact with many other characters played by high profile actors, including Conan O’Brien of all people.
This is nothing new, as Death Stranding initially released in November 2019. What is new, and arguably more surprising, is that five years after the launch of Death Stranding it shadow dropped on the Xbox ecosystem in Director’s Cut form.
Now the description of FedEx simulator is a bit crude for Death Stranding. After all, it tells a uniquely gripping story that focuses on the USA after a cataclysmic event called the Death Stranding. The opening cutscenes feel like a fever dream taking place in a broken world with more questions than answers. Which is an apt description for how the start of Death Stranding begins.
The game begins in the middle of a delivery that was interrupted by otherworldly phenomena and as the cutscenes come to a close, you are tasked with completing said delivery. The pillar of Death Stranding’s gameplay is delivering various items. The world is absent of any infrastructure, and as the plot progresses, the nature of the world is slowly revealed to you.
For the sake of avoiding spoilers, this review won’t discuss many specifics of the story of Death Stranding, as experiencing it for yourself is the best way to go into the game.
The basics of it are that the world is broken, and various paranormal phenomena have caused the complete deterioration of the world’s infrastructure. Transportation and logistics are what allow us to live the lives we live, food, supplies, and everything else we depend on is transported via trucks, ships, planes, and so on.
So porters like Sam Bridges (Norman Reedus) are vital in this post apocalyptic world where none of those systems are reliable anymore. The gameplay begins with all deliveries occurring on foot. There are no roads, no communication network, and due to the events of the intro cutscene, you don’t even have access to a motorcycle to navigate the world.
However, as you continue to complete deliveries, you slowly start to build their trust by showing them you can be relied on to provide them with the supplies they need to survive. There are bunkers and small cities where deliveries can be accepted and fulfilled, and as those are completed, your rating as a porter improves.
That rating is affected by various factors, including the quality of the packages and delivery time. As you transport packages, you can lose balance and fall. This causes damage to not only you, but the cargo you are transporting. Take too much damage and these items can fall into an unsatisfactory state. To help, you begin with basic tools like ladders and ropes that allow you to navigate treacherous terrain, including steep cliffs and rapid streams. However, it is quickly revealed that completing deliveries is just a part of the plan to reconnect the country.
Sam Bridges is also tasked with connecting the independent bunkers and isolated cities onto the chiral network; a system that allows for the sharing of information and the printing of useful items.
As these independent individuals and communities are brought onto the network, it gives you access to various structures and items that have been placed by other players of Death Stranding. It also gives you more items and structures that you can use to navigate the world. Before long, you have access to vehicles, body enhancing power suits, and more. There are even structures called autopavers that can be loaded with materials that will allow you to rebuild entire highway systems, making navigating incredibly easy.
Other player’s structures only become available to you once you are able to connect a region to the chiral network though. So every time you set off on a delivery to a new area, you have to rely on your own tools and cunning. Not only that, but some individuals are so bitter at the world and those in places of power, that a single delivery is not enough to gain their trust. These individuals will refuse to connect to the network and often require you to navigate devastated areas infested with mysterious beings called BTs.
BTs are ethereal beings that appear as particles in the shape of humans and upon getting too close to them, cause large handprints to stomp in your direction. Being grabbed by these invisible hands leads to Sam Bridges being flung around as the world becomes overtaken by black tar, while distorted human figures, whales, and ethereal monsters start to appear. To be fair though, it is a Hideo Kojima game, so this weirdness is par for the course.
The only way to identify exactly where these BTs are is through the use of a BB – the creatively named apparatus that contains a human baby that allows you to scan and mark these BTs as they hover ominously around you.
Your BB plays a pivotal role in the story as Sam Bridges becomes attached to his, getting brief glimpses of its memories as he spends more time with it.
Death Stranding is a weird and surreal game that plays at its own pace. There are tense moments but much of the game is focused on taking things slow and being deliberate in your decisions. There are sections with minimal combat, but these are actually the worst part of the game, as the aiming and shooting are a bit awkward to get used to at first. There are in-universe reasons why killing isn’t allowed and even if there wasn’t, I would still choose to avoid engaging with the combat whenever possible.
The navigation is where the gameplay in Death Stranding shines, and while it’s not for everyone, it is incredibly satisfying seeing how your actions reconnect the world. What really makes things come together is how the game rewards you for your efforts. The rewards screen following each delivery tallies up your stats and shows how you’ve improved as a porter. Beyond that, you are also awarded “likes” for your efforts where both NPCs and other players can show their appreciation for what you’ve done. Every structure that is built can be liked by other players and as they are used, you’ll be notified of the likes that other players leave you.
This shows how your efforts are making a difference in not just your game but in other players’ games as well. It takes the overall theme of reconnecting the world and how people need to be able to rely on others to be successful and survive, and directly integrates it into the gameplay as well.
It’s a brilliant system and has given rise to a unique and fun, albeit odd, game that most people would never have expected from a AAA game studio. Death Stranding is not going to be a game for everyone, and there are a lot of quiet and slow moments where not much is happening. There are also a couple quirks; vehicles can be a little touchy and that combat isn’t the best. However, if you are looking for a truly unique game, with an off-the-walls story, Death Stranding Director’s Cut will be seen as a treat.
It’s great that Death Stranding has finally come to Xbox.
Death Stranding Director’s Cut Delivers a Genre-Defying Experience on Xbox – https://www.thexboxhub.com/death-stranding-directors-cut-delivers-a-genre-defying-experience-on-xbox/
Buy Death Stranding on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/death-stranding-directors-cut/9nqgn8tgnt8p
