Learning why Death Stranding reviewed so poorly by getting all achievements-UNR

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

So I've been re-thinking my creative process. It's a drastic change, just like after 9/11

-Hideo Kojima

I gave it a honest shot, right? Very Hard difficulty 100% of the time, and I got all of the achievements. I engaged with all of the mechanics, sampled all of the content, and traveled everywhere the game would let me. I BECAME the Amazon delivery driver. The game in a paragraph? There were crumbs of a good game, but all of the boring stuff was repeated ad-nauseam to make the bulk of the game. The great stuff never got a chance to shine. The story cut-scenes were never ending but only mildly interesting. The characters were such a mixed bag. The game isn't awful, but I can absolutely see why a lot of people were put off by it.

Get it? You won't miss anything if you don't.

Good things? Looks pretty, lots of gameplay, gameplay doesn't demand a lot.

Bad things? Story bad, characters not well developed, gameplay doesn't demand a lot, enough cutscenes to make a couple of full-length films, repetitive repetitive REPETITIVE.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD ----!!!!!

The story was heavy handed as crap. Sam may as well have been named Hero McGoodguy and everyone and everything else was named similarly. Metaphors were everywhere, and none of them subtle. Get ready for an absolute bukake session of terms, phrases, nautilus with umbilical cord, Ame means soul plus LIE, locked in syndrome, Mads Mikkelsen sings you a lullaby. Watch awkwardly as Sam leaves everyone he meets hanging. His name is HEARTman, and his HEART stops, and he lives next to a lake shaped like a HEART.

Characters were super hit or miss.

• Deadman was great as he went from distant science man to a more joyful person who builds a bond with BB and massively enjoys hugging Sam. He spends most of the time dumping lore and exposition on you, sadly. They really got Guillermo del Toro for this?
• Die Hardman was sympathetic and interesting in only the 11th hour of the story. He eclipses Deadman as a full-time objective-teller and lore-dumper, by a lot, and you start to hate hearing his voice. Or at least I did.
• Fragile was neat. Super interesting but largely absent unless her plot-teleportation was needed.
• Lockne and her baby were neat but largely absent until she invites you over for a favor, asks you to sever her connection to her stillborn baby's ghost, makes you put her in a duffle bag to go see her sister, and then dies for presumably the same reason Padme did.
• Malingen was Landfill. She then goes on to never show up again.
• Heartman was great all around. I wanted about 100x more of him, but never got it. He doesn't even interact with you through the terminal when you deliver things to his lab, why?
• Amelie was awful, always. MARIO AND PRINCESS BEACH?! GAILY PRANCING DOWN THE BEACH?!? WHY WOULD I THINK TO HOLSTER MY GUN IF ALL OTHER CONTROLS EXCEPT MOVE AND SHOOT ARE EXPLICITLY DISABLED?!? PLEASE STOP SINGING LONDON BRIDGES SO MUCH, IT IS VERY UNCOMFORTABLE I AM A GROWN MAN. Why can you stop the apocalypse one minute before midnight, but then go on saying it has to happen eventually? Wasn't the whole major theme here about defying fate?

Music was there, but not my taste. Even still here's an idea for the next Kojima game: let us listen to songs more than once without needing to sit rooted in our room. A nice soundtrack to walking across the US would have been awesome. Think Fallout New Vegas radio; you know, in that we can actually listen to it.

Let's revisit those good game crumbs.

• Things like climbing a mountain for a purely optional memory chip was a lot of fun but I'd wager very few players ever did it because so often exploration was either a dead end or blocked. Things like the overturned tanker in the bay near Port Knot City that you can't reach. The abandoned highway that still stands north of South Knot City with NOTHING on it after you bring a ladder to see. The city ruins in the mountains south/east of Mountain Knot? Empty except for a memory chip on the edge. The cool river area north of the Distribution Center North of Mountain Knot? NOTHING. The mountains east of that? Empty af.
• Deliveries like the pizza delivery from the farm to Higgs' house and the antimatter bombs were fun and challenging because they invalidated a lot of the conveniences you'd picked up until then and forced caution and creativity with methods you hadn't used for a while. Then you never do anything like them again, those challenges are never added to or expanded upon.
• That extra-tough mandatory squid-BT battle was a real challenge at the end of East Region, but you don't do anything like it again until the end of the game. You're outright TOLD to just run away from the Lion-BT fight.
• The Clifford Unger fights were all EXTREMELY fun, I'll defend these to the death. The WW1 sequence was fun because the bullet-spongy enemies could rush you down if you weren't being positionally aware and using the layout of the trenches to your advantage. The WW2 sequence was the most like a modern shoot-em-up, always fun. The Vietnam sequence was a blast because enemies were more tightly grouped which rewarded ambushing from the grass and then retreating. It's a shame that fighting Mules and terrorists was never, ever, that fun. Also why give us the option for using lethal weapons and then punish us for using them?

Misc things I didn't like:

• At one point a collectable description suggested that re-imagining battle mechs as anime girls was the same thing as Amerigo Vespichi naming the land of America after himself. Like, you really put that in the game?
• The special [Ride with Norman Reedus] ™ ( produced by AMC make sure the AMC logo is clearly visible) bike was whatever, but having Sam exclaim "Wow, this is just like if I were on [Ride with Norman Reedus] ™" was not as whatever. Also non-optional Monster Energy product placement? Blegh, I'd rather drink Berlin sewer water.
• The highway was garbage, I wish I never built it. The path system? Fun, dynamic, player-driven. But here I am with a static roadway that makes driving from South Knot to Port Knot an absolute snoozefest and completely overrides player-made paths. I NEVER had to build generators or zip lines because why would I?
• The fight with Higg's was garbage. Fighting him with the rope vs. gun was fine, fun even. But the slugfest ripped off of MGS4? Higgs wasn't even a fraction of the character Liquid Ocelot was, the fight had not even 1 iota of the finality that MGS4's fight had, the history between the characters was not even comparible; it was just a lazy reference to a better story moment. Snatching up cryptobiotes was a neat touch, but the fight was in poor taste.

I wanted to like it, but once I got everything I wanted out of it I put if down for good. I can't imagine the slog of getting all 500 LLLs, that's way too much for nothing in return.

https://ift.tt/3vxLqCK Tuned For Everything Norman We Don't Mess Around when it comes to things pertaining to the man.