Can't believe what I've finished playing yesterday. I'm still processing all that happened, but I'm ASHAMED that took me this long to play this masterpiece.

The characters are charismatic, the plot is beautifully written and the change of pace in CD2 didn't bother me. Even I thank for a more straight-forward change to start explaining everything that the game built in the almost first 50h.

The gameplay is addictive. It isn't complex, but the accessories and Gear equipment let you adapt to every situation and even do a kinda "glass cannon" build. Getting all the Deathblows for Fei and Citan (my faves for combat) was fun and did a bunch of sidequest that really liked (that Emeralda sidequest was very good even tho short).

Can't wait to keep diving in the Xeno world, as I've played (and loved) Xenoblade and now Xenogears.

Yes, I'm looking at you Xenosaga ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Building connections

It's funny how life works sometimes. I never had the original intention of playing Death Stranding until a friend gave it to me out of nowhere for giving her something for Christmas and yet here I am several weeks later thanking her once again after going for every achievement and over a hundred hours. The reason I bring this up is that it relates to how Death Stranding wants you to experience the benefits of being part of something more than a single entity hoping we don't regret it.

I had a lot of reservations going into this one with how I knew that if the gameplay didn't keep my hands moving and my mind contained throughout the whole experience in that I wouldn't like it but Death Stranding has a surprising amount of depth in how to approach every delivery. The act of just delivering and constantly running around isn't what makes Death Stranding completely unique in this facet but the act of "walking" and "traversal" makes this one of the most engaging experiences for a first time. All of this wrapped in one of the most heavy handed and odd writing style for a Kojima game in my opinion makes this one of the best open world games by a long mile.

It's probably the first time in a while that I felt like it was quite obvious what Kojima wanted to tell with this title. The world is disconnected from everything due to an deathly apocalypse called the Death Stranding. Everyone is out for themselves and too scared to even go outside relying on porters to survive like our protagonist, Sam Bridges. Sam never had a connection to the human society except for one moment and then it being taken away has let him believe that connections are meaningless and only bring pain. One of the best parts of his development was going all over America, meeting new people and helping them bring stuff. There's a personal satisfaction when you've done all you can and their best reward isn't some random item or overpowered item but opening that door for you and letting you in. Doing all this made me feel the change was genuine as I felt the same way too, I ended up helping everyone except one person. I won't say who it is but one of the preppers you meet is really sick and their deliveries consist of bringing medicine to them. I ended up doing this for a while until I almost maxed them out until I decided to do story and hold on delivering packages to them. After a while, I decided to deliver one final package to this person so I can max out our connection and then I wondered why they didn't pick up when I came but saw a BT. After I delivered my package and received an email from them asking where we were and only hoping we were continuing the good fight before sharing the news that they moved on from this world. It's a small thing but it made me sad that I couldn't deliver that one final package for them. To my dismay, I found out you can keep them alive but you had to constantly deliver to them throughout your whole experience but people will probably tend to move on from them from a gameplay standpoint like I did. "Why go back when you already maxed them out?" is what people thought until this happened but it's just surprising that it actually happened. With all that said, the supporting cast are interesting and even with cheesy names like Deadman or Heartman (guess what this guy is all about), they still manage to hit the right spots in the emotional space with the game beginning how it ends in a sense.

I feel like watching Death Stranding's gameplay is deceiving yourself in the sense you only see it in its simplest form. When you watch someone going up the hill carrying something in their hand, you expect not much is happening on the controller or attention span but to someone actually holding the controller, there's a lot going on and this is one of the best strengths of Death Stranding. Open world games tend to have this problem of going from point A to B being some of the most minut interactions in their games with the player running forward or being in a vehicle and driving there but in Death Stranding, the world puts up a fight. It won't make things easy until you work to make them easy. Running up hill requires you to manage stamina and your balance along with any cargo you might have, holding an item in your hand isn't just a button press but requires holding down the trigger button based on your hand. I initially thought it was tedious to constantly hold down the trigger to hold something in your hand but it does make sense. When you're holding an item in real life, it's not a touch but a constant effort of holding and holding down the trigger represents that your arm is in constant effort of holding up the arm which I thought was pretty intuitive. The gameplay loop mostly kept my hands and fingers on the control going through a death torn America trying to get a video game collector an old PSP system. Fortunately that's not all there is to the "traversal" as the game gives you plenty of tools to circumvent the worst the world and the terrain has to offer. Starting out with ladders and climbing hooks and then turning into elaborate structures like ziplines and bridges. You can eventually build a network of structures that make the world a little easier on you and your boots but that's not all. The online experience is what I feel is the definitive experience for Death Stranding as you don't just your world but a shared one. Various signs of life, tools rusted out from use long ago, and networks already set up are here to help you as your tools and structures help them. You are never alone. It starts to feel more like collective doing everything it can to make everything easier which is how it should be. Personal satisfaction when I poured the most effort into making roads for everyone to get through easier and the only form of thanks is "likes" which don't really serve much of a purpose is all you need sometimes. It also helps that the world just provides a variety of challenges to confront to endless ravines, rocky surfaces, to snowy mountains that tax every facet of your health and tools so you'll need to stay connected to make the most of everyone's efforts. There are vehicles in the game and you're probably thinking "well that'll just make everything easy and trivial like every other open world game" but actually using them might make you think otherwise. They're mostly for flat surfaces or roads you already built since the rocks on the ground will immediately stop you on your tracks to frustration even more so with trucks that provide a lot of cargo space for bigger orders but become bordering on wielding outside of anything but roads unless you know how to drive up the terrain properly. All these tools and I'm reminded of Metal Gear Solid V where Venom Snake had every tool and gun in his arsenal to perform stealth and missions however he wanted in an open world environment and now Death Stranding gives you these tools and structures to perform deliveries and missions in any way you wanted in an open world environment as well.

Apart from "traversal", there's two forms of combat in Death Stranding in which you fight the living and fight the dead. Fighting MULEs which are the human combatants will eventually be required of you and you'll hopefully prepared some tools for it. Early on you'll have a Bola gun that only really ties them up for you to incapicatate later until later on when you get non lethal conventional weapons like assault rifles and shotguns. I really think you can approach these camps early on in a stealthy manner and it would work for the most part and feel a bit fun since you don't have much but eventually when you get the bola gun, you can just shoot them at mules that essentially just run towards you anyway so it stops being a challenge. Later on though, MULEs get a huge upgrade in capability that makes them pretty fun to go against for a while in that they're actually trying to kill you with guns. It's pretty jarring that they do this considering actually killing someone is something you don't want to do. BTs initially feel like this horror mechanic in the preferred way is to go past them undetected since you don't really have any single way of fighting them for a bit and I liked this dichotomy of relaxing traversal and having to keep focus on going through a BT infested zone in the world. You do eventually get tools and weapons that let you fight BTs more efficiently that it unfortunately feels like an annoyance more than something you should be scared of at some point. Boss battles rely on these huge creature like monstrosities that take a lot of damage to defeat and will probably run out of ammo if it wasn't for the other players coming from the tar and helping you by throwing blood bags and rocket launchers. I do recommend playing on Hard at least to keep this a bit challenging and not completely mindless as you will still die pretty quick without armor on Hard. Overall I find this aspect of the game adequate but it was never really the focus of the experience but a good way to break up the action.

As I've mentioned before, the multiplayer aspect of Death Stranding is essential to fully enjoying this experience. Apart from being in a shared world where you can see other people's structures and struggles, you can see warnings of danger, deliver their lost cargo for them if it's on the way anyway, help them with weapons or tools if they really need it or donate materials so everyone can use them. There's a lot of ways to help the collective of people you're with and I think it's the best use of asynchronous multiplayer yet. The traversal also doesn't get made easy by this as you have to face the challenge yourself at least once before you get connected in specific areas too.

The sound of metal clanking against the weight of your cargo, small medleys playing during specific moments in the world. The music and sound of Death Stranding reaches a high note in what was used and how it was used. The highlight is the usage of music throughout the game playing these licensed haunting and serene songs from Low Roar and Silent Poets to give a few examples. It really helps to reflect how quiet the world can be in its photographic view of america based on Iceland from what I can tell. Going down a snowy mountain and it becoming a grass hill while this is playing is a zen like experience that's hard to describe when the game puts you into this reflective state of mind. My favorite original piece has to be this and when you hear it makes it one of my favorite experiences I've had in a bit. The whole song feels somber and later on sounds like one of Sufjan Steven's electronica efforts. I do understand why they didn't have a music player for this game considering its use during certain moments but they could've made it a reward for completing the game or a 100% reward at least.

With all that said, I can understand that this game isn't for everyone or a purely perfect game to anyone but I think in terms of how this game carries out itself is extremely rare and something I wish for more in the industry in general. Death Stranding practices what it preaches and then some with some of the most innovative open world gameplay I've played in a long time, themes I can understand due to my personal isolation barring COVID and the fear of connecting with people. I always felt like every link I made with people is something tangible people can eventually cut off and cutting something always hurts. Reaching out might not be so bad after all. Even in the way BTs are, even in death we are always connected and are never gone from this world as long as that connection is there. We are always connected.

I'd like to know what type of crack Kojima was on when making this game, because I don't know how a man can write a game with such shitty writing and it still comes out amazing anyways.

You have many extremely long and tedious segments of exposition, forgettable side characters, a garbage underwater section combined with an escort mission, and a romance subplot so bad that its comparable to Anakin and Padme in the Star Wars prequels.

Yet at the same time, you have the most meaningful and profound ending to a videogame that I've seen, that actively took advantage of the medium of videogames in such a creative way in fucking 2001. Its even more impressive when you compare that to today, where so many big AAA game try their hardest to be movies and take themselves overtly seriously. The ending of Metal Gear Solid 2 is a small fraction of a 12 hour game with many questionable design and writing decisions, but that small fraction holds quite possibly the most value out of anything I've ever experienced in a videogame. This is a corny ass statement I'm making, but that final speech from Snake has left more of an impact on me than any thing I've ever been taught in school.

Fostering those connections

If you want to know my thoughts on Death Stranding, please click on this as I'll mostly be going over my thoughts on the Director's Cut additions in this review.

It's really funny when you give Death Stranding a director's cut considering how much Kojima himself said that what we got was what he envisioned and more just corporate speak for a definitive edition of the game with better graphics and new gameplay additions that are pretty popular during the console generational leap going on right now and the past few years.

We can ignore the usual suspects: better graphical tech, quality of life stuff, extra cars and mission to focus on the big additions.


The new ruined factory area and missions are pretty cool additions as I've realized that you mostly always fight and operate in these outdoor and open spaces and being an actual indoor location brings some much needed variety in the folder with a pretty good arc and conclusion.

Open world additions like new roads being able to be built and new structures like jump ramps, cargo catapults and chiral bridges bring a bit more versatility into the fold granted I never understood the use for cargo catapults as much.

One of the most surprising ones is an actual racetrack in which you do time trials in an effort to unlock the cool and click roadster which looks like an expensive car that goes really fast but completely awful for rough terrain so only good on roads. A few new additions like a firing range to test stuff out and drills for more opportunities to actually use guns in general.

Apart from new enhancement to already existing gameplay systems such as better melee, being able to replay certain moments, new regular orders. This is pretty much your run of the mill definitive edition with extra content in which I feel that you will probably appreciate the quality of life more than the actual additions but considering that this version is the most accessible, it's the best version of Death Stranding barring some performance issues.

Once, there was an explosion, a bang that gave rise to life as we know it. And then, came the next explosion. An explosion that will be our last.

Those words from the opening of Hideo Kojima’s epic Death Stranding sat in the back of my head for the nearly 70 hours I spent playing the game. Kojima always has an underlying message with his projects and for some reason, those lines, among the hundreds of others within the dialogue, were the ones that stuck with me.

Even after getting the gist of the game's message midway through, it wasn’t until the game reached its twilight moments that I fully comprehended this quote’s gravity.

Death Stranding is a game that has been divisive for many reasons. Some won’t find anything appealing about the “Fed Ex simulator” as it has been mockingly reduced to and some find Kojima’s ego grating. Those are all fair assessments, but I think some people may be missing the point.

In this game, nothing is superfluous. In many open-world titles, which have littered the release windows this generation, all the emphasis is on the destinations. Rarely is time given to contextualize the game’s world. Open worlds merely serve to artificially extend the experience out, a sandbox that exists instead of thoughtful level design.

This couldn’t be further from the truth for Death Stranding.

In Death Stranding, gameplay consists of delivering items between destinations and encouraging denizens, existing in the wake of an apocalypse that has destroyed America, to join a new nation and become part of a connected network. You must efficiently adjust your inventory for optimal weight distribution while simultaneously traversing through hazardous territory that can range from swamps, rocky hills, and blizzard-laden mountain peaks that would make Everest shudder.

What happens at point A and point B is important, for sure. The people you make deliveries to are grateful for and eventually join the network you’re creating during your trek from the East to the West Coast of America. But the real meat and potatoes of the game is the experience of what happens during the journey.

Whereas navigating worlds in other games is often an afterthought — a way to artificially extend the experience — it is the game in Death Stranding. Some have compared it to walking simulators like Gone Home. But even in those games, the walking only serves to vector the player between items and points of interest. All of the exposition will occur when reaching these locations but nothing really occurs between them.

Every aspect of the gameplay is methodical. You have to plan ahead and decide what tools are most important since they take up weight just like the cargo you will be carrying. You can be thrown off balance by rocks, slopes, or water. You can run out of stamina while trying to balance your load and end up dropping and damaging it. Mercenaries can try to steal it or even kill you. Every moment of this game demands your attention and engagement.

I expected Death Stranding to be a statement of games not needing to be fun to be good, like Spec Ops: The Line or Depression Quest. But that wasn’t the case.

Death Stranding is a blast. All of the game’s meticulous mechanics and contextualization result in an addictive, rewarding gameplay loop that shaved hours off my days before I realized it.

When playing Death Stranding, The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus came to mind. Camus’s central argument is that in the face of overwhelming adversity and the apparent insignificance one person’s existence may have, shouldn’t individuals just kill themselves? Get it over with? If there’s no purpose, if the universe is apathetic to our struggles, then why bother? What’s the point?

Camus analogizes this futility with the Greek tale of Sisyphus, a being who is cursed by the gods to carry a boulder up a hill by day only to have it fall down at night. Then to do it again every day for eternity. Given the burden he incessantly carries on his shoulders and the futility of his actions, one could assume him miserable.

But in rejecting nihilistic thoughts and finding purpose in the actions he can control, defining his own existence, and moving forward even when something might seem fruitless, one can imagine Sisyphus happy.
Comparatively, when Sam Bridges, the player character, feels what he is doing may serve no purpose, he carries on. He also does so in the face of nihilistic antagonists such as Higgs, who is aware of a systematic disaster that will end all life. His motivation is to expedite humanity’s extinction in the face of its inevitable end.

This brings us back to that opening quote. Near the end of the game, I realized Death Stranding was a commentary on the global climate crisis – that this seemingly inescapable calamity facing our planet means we should probably just not care.

But Death Stranding says otherwise.

There is a purpose in the struggle. Purpose in the moment-to-moment decisions we make. Purpose in the relationships we build with those around us.

One of the core gameplay mechanics is asynchronous multiplayer. If I reach an obstacle, I can use one of my tools to build a bridge to cross a ravine or drop a rope to rappel down a cliff. These things you left behind by you will appear in other players’ games to offer them relief if they don’t share the same tools to build what’s necessary. It speaks to a level of communal effort.

This ties into the game’s social system of “likes.” Players can click a dedicated like button, resulting in positive reinforcement and doubling the same appreciation that non-player characters have for Sam and the player by extension.

Norman Reedus’s performance as Sam and Mads Mikkelson’s as Cliff Unger are outstanding. Well-acted and voiced, the characters all feel human. Kojima’s camera work rivals that of some film directors, and the attention to detail is staggering.

The relationship with BB, your infantile companion who can sense the BTs (who are made of a substance very similar in appearance and viscosity to oil), the game’s main antagonistic force, was genuine. I ended up caring about BB as if they were a real person. One of the most poignant moments in the game involves the culmination of Sam and BB’s relationship, which came after the narrative climax and had me reaching for tissues.

Death Stranding is flawed, as all games are. The script can be clunky, and Kojima’s penchant for convoluted character development still remains. However, the genius of Death Stranding is in its confrontation of existence which captures the essence of the digital age by using gameplay to manifest our collective pathos.

What I took from this game is that though things might seem bleak, none of us are alone in our struggles. We have to take things day by day and work together towards building a future and that a better world is always possible.

Nothing is truly futile and all we have is us.

This is the only game that I have nostalgia goggles for that are so big they eclipse my whole god damn head. Replaying it now after not touching it for a few years there are so many weird little quirks that only make sense as an adult who understands the troubled development it went through. I think the fact it's so rough around the edges in so many ways while still feeling polished and pushing Pokemon so far forward as a franchise just hits on something magical to me that I don't really know how to explain.

Shortform review here, but the tl;dr is that I can't say I had the same level of enjoyment playing this for the first time that fellow new players and returning veterans had. Not to beat a dead horse, but Ada's VA and/or her voice direction sullied much of my enjoyment of her character by making a badass double agent spy seem like a lackadaisical bystander. Gameplay was alright but I felt like the ammunition/healing constraints were a little tight for my liking in an experience packed this tightly with action. I loved revisiting the moments that are familiar to the main RE4 and watching Ada connect the plot dots to get her to where Leon was and needed to be.

Probably a good purchase if you're a fan of RE4 and an excellent value for the price point, especially if you are a Resident Evil

Since jumping into Starfield on its Gamepass release date, I’ve become even more of a disgusting gremlin than I already was. No longer cognizant of the passage of time, I have let my already unhealthy sleep schedule become positively obliterated. My baby son’s life passed by in the blink of an eye. I spend my days bathed in the sickly light of my television, creeping to the kitchen periodically to get a tasty treat. The only evidence of my wife’s survival is a missing Diet Coke or two from the fridge.

Starfield is not ’No Man’s Skyrim’. It’s actually more like a better version of The Outer Worlds. I have gripes with it that keep it from a top score, like a pretty weak opening, the lack of interior ship customization, repetition of outposts, and the fact that you can’t have a fleet of ships captained by your ai companions… okay, they didn’t necessarily promise that last one but having only one ship out at a time seems like a missed opportunity. While you can’t circumnavigate every planet on foot, many have multiple biomes and topographical features, with plenty of secrets and activities to discover. I ran into a crazy amount of weird side quests just because I took the time to explore and root around on land and in space.

I can only speak to my expectations and experience with the game, but I think this is the most actual roleplaying a Bethesda game has allowed since Morrowind through its skills, quests, and traits. Many of the quests allow multiple routes for completion, with different avenues of play and endings. The central followers all being goodie-two-shoes is another qualm I have, but I usually play the good guy anyway. The main quest isn’t excruciatingly annoying this time around (Have you seen Shaun, my baby… Shaun he’s just a baby, a brand new baby little baby child!), with an ending and New Game+ that serves and a direct answer to me restarting Skyrim 1,000 times over the years.

But I love exploring strange new worlds, constructing spaceships, getting into dogfights, and expanding my crew. In many ways this is a dream come true game for me, far surpassing No Man’s Sky with its inclusion of compelling side quests and narratives, even if I can’t seamlessly fly from a planet to space. Another gripe. But for my worries going into this game and relative displeasure with Bethesda over the past couple years, I was pleasantly surprised to find they had loosened up on me as a player. I’m stoked for The Elder Scrolls VI, because I think they’ll almost certainly resolve some of my complaints just by toning down the physical scale a bit. Not saying it won’t be big, but I don’t think it’ll have 1,000 planets and therefore will probably have less repeated content; I’m glad they tried it here even if I don’t feel it’s right for Elder Scrolls or Fallout.

I have spent too much time away from the game now… the Starfield is speaking to me. I give myself to it. Goodbye.