Current Events > Death Stranding is an OK game

(+) Yeah! (+)

It kinda feels like a AAA independent game, warts and all

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If there were more things to do in the world, the build cap was increased dramatically, and they fixed some other stuff (like no BT zones right in the middle of the road), it could've been amazing. Instead it'll have to settle for "pretty decent".

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Shotgunnova posted...

If there were more things to do in the world, the build cap was increased dramatically, and they fixed some other stuff (like no BT zones right in the middle of the road), it could've been amazing. Instead it'll have to settle for "pretty decent".

Yeah, its surprisingly engrossing for a game that feels fairly hollow

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I'm fragile but not that fragile

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i know the emptiness is the point, but it was too empty. let me eat doritos underground with geoff keighly.

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it's a legitimately terrible game, IMO.

• characters, writing, and story = bad.
• the forced combat encounters, weak stealth mechanics, and unending Timefall sections = bad
• the world is beautiful to look at, but is very boring to traverse...but it's still the most interesting part of the game
• the music isn't bad, but it started to sound too samey

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I made it about to around 75% of the story and had enough. found it dull all around...

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I was having fun snowboarding on a floating carrier like before just the other day. Messing around is when its most fun. Story was ok, exploration was excellent, and I really enjoyed how you and others' influence shapes not only structures, but trails as well.

I'm hoping the Director's Cut gives you the ability to ollie while riding the floating carrier, and the ability to drive the really big trucks. Those two things specifically.

While I enjoyed the game overall, I kept getting thematic whiplash from a gameplay perspective. The opening hours lead you to believe that it's more of a stealth horror game, but then it throws a ton of tools at you to trivialize combat. It puts all these camps in your way so you think okay, maybe this is more like metal gear solid, but there's never really a good reason to go into the camps and you can drive around them. Then you unlock vehicles and you start to think that maybe the game is about long distance traversal, but then it takes them away again in the mountains when it briefly feels like a horror game again. Then it gives you a quad rocket launcher and the entire thing just becomes an action game.

I can appreciate the spirit of what it was trying to do, and I have to give it praise for somehow making the act of actually moving from point A to point B a core part of the gameplay, but it felt like it had too many ideas and not enough focus.

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DuranOfForcena posted...

it's the best Action/Strand game ever made

true

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tbh I found it a lot more fun to run in and take out MULES with stealth, thrown packages and the occasional bola shot. The rubber bullet weapons made it way too much a pure TPS for me since you could pretty much ignore stealth.

I just got it for free a couple days ago after I bought an 11th gen i7. I checked out a gameplay video of it, and I'm not sure it's something I'm into.

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Legato-and-Vash posted...

I just got it for free a couple days ago after I bought an 11th gen i7. I checked out a gameplay video of it, and I'm not sure it's something I'm into.

The gameplay is not a mercy to you. It is only so that you might know the pain that is living.

Sorry, couldnt resist.

boy do I love scaling terrain for hours with random hipster music playing in background

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It's a masterpiece.

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Love this game and everything Kojima does, fuck the haters. Finding optimal ways to deliver packages is addictive for some reason as you progress. It's not a "walking simulator," you do a lot of driving. You also battle and avoid terrifying supernatural entities. It's also got a ton of cutscenes and manages to be both "finished" as well as not terribly overwrought.
The first area has a lot of walking but is atmospheric, the second area is primarily driving followed by ziplining, it's not a walking simulator. And even if it were, who cares? JMO, YMMV.

Oh_you_travel posted...

Love this game and everything Kojima does, fuck the haters. Finding optimal ways to deliver packages is addictive for some reason as you progress. It's not a "walking simulator," you do a lot of driving. You also battle and avoid terrifying supernatural entities.

I did enjoy the game, but the enemies stop being terrifying like 2 hours in when you unlock poop bombs and suddenly they become a resource to be farmed, not feared. An upgraded bomb combined with a regular shotgun (shooting through the red mist created by a bomb causes regular bullets to do blood bullet damage) can take out regular enemies with ease, completely trivializing the fear factor.

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I really loved it. In fact i haven't beaten it but I have 75 hours in it

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s0nicfan posted...

I did enjoy the game, but the enemies stop being terrifying like 2 hours in when you unlock poop bombs and suddenly they become a resource to be farmed, not feared. An upgraded bomb combined with a regular shotgun (shooting through the red mist created by a bomb causes regular bullets to do blood bullet damage) can take out regular enemies with ease, completely trivializing the fear factor.

Yeah but every game is like that. MGS games are like this. I just see it as a challenge that you overcome... I don't see it as, "the BTs should be scary af the entire game or else it's broken."

s0nicfan posted...

I did enjoy the game, but the enemies stop being terrifying like 2 hours in when you unlock poop bombs and suddenly they become a resource to be farmed, not feared. An upgraded bomb combined with a regular shotgun (shooting through the red mist created by a bomb causes regular bullets to do blood bullet damage) can take out regular enemies with ease, completely trivializing the fear factor.

That's kind of the point of the game, though. It starts off very difficult and arduous, but as you move forward you get more and more tools to help. It starts with a bike, then some mechanical legs for more carrying capacity, then cars, then weapons for defense, etc. etc. That's the entire point of the progression: what once was a daunting, terrible task is now trivial due to experience and growth. It's frankly one of the best games in getting this through. A delivery that once might have taken 20 minutes will now take 3 due to roads and cars and such. It is that sense of growth that I really loved, up to and including the zip lines that made certain areas absolutely trivial that were nightmares prior.

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ArianaGrandSlam posted...

maybe if youre not engaging with any of the systems at all. Thats literally the best part, the bread and butter of the game, and its more fun and engaging to traverse than any non-BotW, non-Spider-Man open world Ive played in the last decade

I mean, if I'm using a truck/bike or zipline, how is that really different from any other game, other than rocks getting in the way if you're in a vehicle

and if you're on foot (my preferred method, because what's the point otherwise), there's still not a lot of thought you need to put into it, from my experience - take at least one ladder, one rappelling rope, a gun, a couple of blood bags, and you're good.

I've used every mechanic the game had to offer, and I didn't find any of it to be fun or interesting. and outside of the snowy mountains, which annoyed me because of the quickly draining stamina, the game wasn't that frustrating outside of a late game fight I wasn't expecting.

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You didn't find ziplines to be fun? I loved those bastards. Being able to shoot over BT nests and quickly get from that observatory all the way to that valley farm, or traverse the snowy mountains in a flash with a full pack...man, that was more fun than I thought it'd be. Some of the fun is hampered by build limits, though, and ziplines take up a ton (not as much as your personal parking garages or whatever, but still, a lot).

I travelled pretty light most of the time, though. I'd take some blood grenades, a bola gun, and maybe a nonlethal AR in one of those weather-resistant backpack coverings. Stopped using ladders and rappelling ropes after awhile. You can usually get free stuff if you look in the "lost and found" menus of distros, etc., so keeping some of that stuff on hand wasn't crucial.

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When do you get zip lines?

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Too dark in my book. Sicker than RE7.

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Ziplines unlock later in the story, IIRC. They make getting up steep slopes a cinch for those annoying deliveries, although they're rather annoying to upgrade (due to needing rare chemicals).

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It's...weird, but I put many hours into it so.

Shotgunnova posted...

You didn't find ziplines to be fun?

initially, I thought that they were decent, but they lost their novelty, for me.

plus it felt like I was skipping parts of a game that I chose to play, so I mostly ignored them.

the only part that I really appreciated them for was getting past the BT areas.

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There are some timed missions that'd be almost impossible without ziplines, though. I think there's one from the final mountain city to the wheat farm or something, and going by road would take way too long.

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ngl...I just didn't do most of the side-missions

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Shotgunnova posted...

There are some timed missions that'd be almost impossible without ziplines, though. I think there's one from the final mountain city to the wheat farm or something, and going by road would take way too long.

I actually had a continuous zip line from both locations, and I still couldn't make the time limit. My zip between the two locations wasn't fast enough lol.

I'm taking the premium delivery time limit of course.

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I think ziplines are the only way to do that mission, but I forget what setup I used. Gotta use LV2 ziplines at least (250m range -> 300m) to cut down on switching time and stuff.

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