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Death Stranding OT - Special Delivery, update - PC release on July 14 (Steam/EGS)

Keyser_Soze

By Keyser_Soze
in The Spawn Point

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Biggie

Biggie

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Ok and hour an a half in and let me just say this isn’t a boring game. Not even close. The prologue is beautifully done. 
 

I am not going to spoil anything but just let me say this has Kojima all over it. If you are a fan of Metal Gear Solid, it’s presentation, it’s gadgets, and it’s UI, then you will really like this. The story so far is definitely Kojima. The graphics are crazy good as well as the sound effects. The sound effects will remind you of MGS. Just wish I had more time to play but I gotta work tomorrow. lol. 
 

Overall I am really surprised how fucking cool this game is thus far. Long story short if you enjoy Metal Gear and Kojima's crazy style of story telling you will no doubt like this game. I can’t wait to play more of this ish tomorrow. 

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Xbob42

Xbob42

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4 hours ago, Biggie said:

Ok and hour an a half in and let me just say this isn’t a boring game. Not even close. The prologue is beautifully done. 
 

I am not going to spoil anything but just let me say this has Kojima all over it. If you are a fan of Metal Gear Solid, it’s presentation, it’s gadgets, and it’s UI, then you will really like this. The story so far is definitely Kojima. The graphics are crazy good as well as the sound effects. The sound effects will remind you of MGS. Just wish I had more time to play but I gotta work tomorrow. lol. 
 

Overall I am really surprised how fucking cool this game is thus far. Long story short if you enjoy Metal Gear and Kojima's crazy style of story telling you will no doubt like this game. I can’t wait to play more of this ish tomorrow. 

Motherfucker you're an hour and a half in, you haven't even finished the opening credits for the first cutscene yet.

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Biggie

Biggie

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Posted

The way you can use other gamers ladders, rope, etc. to get to your destination is great. Then you can leave them “likes” sort of like Facebook. Very cool.  And you can also leave things for the next person/persons to use to travel over certain terrain. 

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eggydoo

eggydoo

Posted
Posted

@Biggie for the chiral network, is it randos in your world or is there a way to have people on your friend's list be part of your network?  I thought it was kinda neat to see where my friends died in Shadow of Mordor and think it would be neat to see your friends leave stuff in the chiral network.

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Biggie

Biggie

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1 hour ago, eggydoo said:

@Biggie for the chiral network, is it randos in your world or is there a way to have people on your friend's list be part of your network?  I thought it was kinda neat to see where my friends died in Shadow of Mordor and think it would be neat to see your friends leave stuff in the chiral network.

I’ve only seen randoms so far. People who have left ladders, ropes, etc.  It’s a very neat idea. Not sure if you could only choose friends.  I doubt it. 

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Brick

Brick

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On 11/1/2019 at 4:48 AM, gamer.tv said:

It's been interesting seeing the reviews come out for the game. I watched the IGN (US) review this morning and they slated nearly every aspect of the game, but similarly told me barely anything about the game as a whole, just everything they didn't write. The actual score (6.8), to me seemed like a way to drive up web traffic, than a fair impression. Especially looking at others impressions (which by in large are in the 8-9/10 range). 

 

I'm not picking it up just yet as it seems like a User Review kind of game, but I'm glad I haven't pre-ordered.

 

Can we please stop with this mentality for game reviews? We're never going to get better criticism and honest reviews if every time a big game comes out and gets a low score people shout it down as "clickbait/trolling/biased", etc. If anything I find game reviews are almost too high a lot of the times because the reviewers don't want to seem like they're hating a game, and get called out for it, so they make caveats as to why the game is still good, hence why we end up with so many games getting 8s, 9s, and 10s. Let's be honest, and if we really don't like a game all that much, give it a 6, or a 5, or even a 4, no matter how big of a title, and AAA it is. Even if a game really is amazing, and a new high point for the medium, if one guy doesn't like it, and gives it a low score, that's fine. Might not take his recommendations if his tastes differ from mine wildly, but at least he's honest, and if the review is well written enough I could see why he didn't like it.

 

Just like with movies that we all seem to love, there's someone out there that just doesn't like it because it wasn't their cup of tea.

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Bacon

Bacon

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2 hours ago, Brick said:

Can we please stop

I'd love it if games got lower scores just so devs would actually improve on their games. TOW isn't that good, but Obsidian really could make a great game. Instead they will see the ridiculous high reviews and then learn nothing and make another mediocre game. 

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Greatoneshere

Greatoneshere

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Game has been absolutely bonkers, bug-nuts crazy with a very compelling world and mythology and story. Love the delivery gameplay, and find the isolation of the world enthralling. I'm only a few hours in, things could change, but if you're patient with your games, I think this really is something very different from any game you've played. Maybe it gets bad later, keep everyone posted. This game is very political and very existential, in a very overt, Kojima way but makes everything feel grounded by making it overt.

 

Also, the graphics are quite impressive (I'm playing on a base PS4, 1080p) and I usually game on a powerful 4K desktop PC. 

 

Edit: Honestly, you HEARD IT HERE FIRST. The closest analogue for Death Stranding's actual gameplay is Super Monkey Ball. That should put the "delivery service game" and "empty walking simulator" and "intentionally wonky controls" (it is indeed all of those things, in a good way) criticisms to rest. It's Super Monkey Ball. For the others playing it, you get what I mean?

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Greatoneshere

Greatoneshere

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On 11/4/2019 at 6:58 PM, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

MGS2 and 4 were my least favorites in the series. :lol: 

 

Precisely. :p  But many have come around to those two games in the intervening years, and I think fans of those two games specifically will really like Death Stranding. This is Kojima far more towards the future sci-fi weirdness of MGS2 and MGS4 than it is the typical "realistic" and "grounded" MGS games everyone loves, MGS3 and MGS: Peace Walker (to me, all great games in all very different ways).

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Bloodporne

Bloodporne

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Holy shit I just played for six and a half hours without moving from my couch somehow...

 

This is basically one of those goofy ass experimental, yet awesome, mid-tier PS2 games but with an insane AAA budget. I can't even tell you why or how but somehow the basic Hiking Fetch Quest Simulator gameplay loop is addictive as fuck.

 

The terrain is highly designed in a way that really quite simulates and feels like...actual hiking. I used to hike a lot and the thought process it pushes you into feels familiar. I'm constantly scanning the environment, also oddly satisfying, and intently watching the ground and judging inclines and so on. It's not even like there's much at stake here but something makes it work for me.

 

The story and characters are peak Kojima anime absurdity which I find thoroughly entertaining in its silly schlockiness.

 

About seven hours in total and...I somehow really like whatever the fuck this is and I certainly didn't expect it to engage me for six and a half hours STRAIGHT.

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Nokt

Nokt

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Posted
4 hours ago, Biggie said:

The game is great. I feel the gamers who aren’t going to play it are really missing out on something very special. 🤷‍♀️

The main 2 things I see about this game

1: I can’t put it down

2: When does it get good?

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Xbob42

Xbob42

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I feel I'm about 10 hours or so in now. While I never found the delivery stuff amazing, it was fairly serene and satisfying. I could see myself doing that for a while and enjoying it.


And then the game starts to take a bat to your kneecaps every 10 steps. Constant interruptions and hassles and systems designed to make things as unpleasant as possible, and not in a fun, surprising way, just you rolling your eyes and saying "Not this shit again."


The BTs are completely unfun forced stealth/action sections, every time they show up you're treated to a six and a half hour long gameplay interruption of your little gizmo thing going nuts, right after the game slows down before that as a... warning or something I guess? That part alone is a slog, and you get the same thing when you exit BT territory, the game slows down and your flower ghost detector does a little celebratory thing that's cute maybe the first time it happens.


But when you're in that BT territory, it's not scary or tense or anything. It is those things very early on (the first cutscene does a far better job at selling BTs than any gameplay I've been through) and then it's just a hassle. Avoiding them is dead easy unless you're super low on stamina, in which case it's essentially impossible as you can't hold your breath long enough (maybe there's some pro strats I don't know about?) so you're super likely to get caught as BT territory feels damn near endless. So if you do get caught, there's a chance when they're trying to drag you down, even if you're successful at not getting dragged under, that parts of your cargo will fly off and take massive damage, meaning you'll have to escape the BT, then wait the tar pit to vanish, then go inside and get the cargo if you're unwilling to abandon it.

 

Then you get grenades that can handle the BTs, which should be empowering but is instead even more tedious. They take your blood, or blood from blood bags you have on you, which can cause issues in and of itself, but with how long they take to die and how many there are, it can take even longer to get through like this! You eventually learn to start pushing it and having those grenades ready to go at an instant, but you'd better not fucking miss. And it seems like some BTs take just one shot, while others take two? I might be wrong on at one and could just be wasting a grenade because they take SO long to die that I think they can't be dead yet.

 

The most "fun" I've had with this mechanic is when I get on my motorcycle and am successfully able to just blitz through without them catching me, using my roboflower to give me enough general guidance to avoid them... unless they're dead ahead. Then your motorcycle takes damage along with your cargo and it's just a really insufferable slog/mess.

 

That's not to mention the terrain that is clearly designed to be annoying in spots. Not just "this is handcrafted so you can't blow past it," but "this is the most irritating possible terrain we could've possibly imagined for your current kit." Yeah, you get tools and upgrades to make these insufferable things tolerable, but that's just it. What should be fun upgrades just kind of make things less irritating. At which point it's kind of just... boring? See, the thing about the delivery structure is that that sense of hiking and whatnot, at least for me, kind of wore off after a few hours. I'm struggling to imagine how I'm even going to fathom 40 more hours of this. And I usually don't force myself at all when I'm not having a good time, but I feel like I'm always just one or two steps away from having a good time.... but I never get there?

 

The structure building and ladder stuff is way less cool than I thought, every time I get to a spot where I'm like "fuck, made it up this weird mountain, let's pop a ladder and hit the top" I got some dumbass message about being outside the allowed construction zone. I turn around and face it the other way and it works just fine. So I don't know if ladder placement has rules I don't understand or what, but half the time I just can't place them where I want. Outside of prefab buildings and of course spots without enough physical space, I don't think there should be any building/placement limits. You can't even place structures too close to each other. Wouldn't it be dumb, inefficient, but potentially cool to put a few buildings side-to-side and use them as a sort of staircase/platform/spot to put a ladder and make a ramp for vehicles? Except it seems like even for the basic bike, a ladder doesn't serve as a viable platform, which I guess is to be expected, but still disappointing. Gimme a sandbox to go wild in! All these artificial limitations...

 

I'm already rambling too long, but this game really feels like fetch quest: the game, but instead of a normal fetch quest, someone's just fucking kicking you in the knees every couple of minutes to make sure you're not just having a pleasant, zen time. I get why, in terms of story, but I don't think that's a good excuse. Frankly if the game was one long seamless journey across Totally-America-Even-Though-It-Looks-Nothing-Like-America with maybe a couple delivery missions along the way, no combat, keep the Timefall but create more ways to deal with it, etc, have regular upgrades that make traversal really interesting when you get across more wild terrain, I think that would make a really solid 10-15 hour game. As it stands I have no idea what the goal or the point of this game is in terms of gameplay.

 

And don't get me started on the fucking story. It manages to simultaneously have some very bizarre and imaginative imagery while being utterly mundane in every way that matters, metaphors and allegories so surface-level the characters might as well be named the first 3 sentences of their bios. Unsubtle imagery and storytelling is one thing, Kojima then spending 45 minutes to tell you exactly what's going on, after you could tell what was going on going by the first fucking sentence that came out of someone's mouth, is just painful to the point of being unbearable. There's no filter, there was clearly no editor, no one to tell Kojima that you don't need a character to explain their motivations to you, and then follow that up with a codec conversation reiterating literally the exact same thing, followed by a multi-paragraph email detailing it further exactly the same, followed by an interview from 3 years ago that, just in case you missed it the first time, is here to finish the job and put the fucking "Did you get it?" bullet through your brain. Hope you like hearing 8 conversations about chiral being greek for hand and how your hands don't mirror each other perfectly if you face them away from yourself and put one on top of the other, despite being the same if you put them palm-to-palm.

 

Fuuuuuck man, I had hoped hearing all the negative stuff would set my expectations properly and allow me to sort of skirt by the parts that reviewers found boring, but it has only served to underscore just how boring they are. This is paragraph 36 and it still wouldn't equal half an average cutscene conversation in Death Stranding, all to say even less than I'm saying here. That's the problem, they spend hours saying ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.


And the most ironic part is that the Fed Ex/walking simulator part of the game is the most interesting bit with the most potential, when it's not trying to poke you in the side with a thumb tack.

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best3444

best3444

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7 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

I feel I'm about 10 hours or so in now. While I never found the delivery stuff amazing, it was fairly serene and satisfying. I could see myself doing that for a while and enjoying it.


And then the game starts to take a bat to your kneecaps every 10 steps. Constant interruptions and hassles and systems designed to make things as unpleasant as possible, and not in a fun, surprising way, just you rolling your eyes and saying "Not this shit again."


The BTs are completely unfun forced stealth/action sections, every time they show up you're treated to a six and a half hour long gameplay interruption of your little gizmo thing going nuts, right after the game slows down before that as a... warning or something I guess? That part alone is a slog, and you get the same thing when you exit BT territory, the game slows down and your flower ghost detector does a little celebratory thing that's cute maybe the first time it happens.


But when you're in that BT territory, it's not scary or tense or anything. It is those things very early on (the first cutscene does a far better job at selling BTs than any gameplay I've been through) and then it's just a hassle. Avoiding them is dead easy unless you're super low on stamina, in which case it's essentially impossible as you can't hold your breath long enough (maybe there's some pro strats I don't know about?) so you're super likely to get caught as BT territory feels damn near endless. So if you do get caught, there's a chance when they're trying to drag you down, even if you're successful at not getting dragged under, that parts of your cargo will fly off and take massive damage, meaning you'll have to escape the BT, then wait the tar pit to vanish, then go inside and get the cargo if you're unwilling to abandon it.

 

Then you get grenades that can handle the BTs, which should be empowering but is instead even more tedious. They take your blood, or blood from blood bags you have on you, which can cause issues in and of itself, but with how long they take to die and how many there are, it can take even longer to get through like this! You eventually learn to start pushing it and having those grenades ready to go at an instant, but you'd better not fucking miss. And it seems like some BTs take just one shot, while others take two? I might be wrong on at one and could just be wasting a grenade because they take SO long to die that I think they can't be dead yet.

 

The most "fun" I've had with this mechanic is when I get on my motorcycle and am successfully able to just blitz through without them catching me, using my roboflower to give me enough general guidance to avoid them... unless they're dead ahead. Then your motorcycle takes damage along with your cargo and it's just a really insufferable slog/mess.

 

That's not to mention the terrain that is clearly designed to be annoying in spots. Not just "this is handcrafted so you can't blow past it," but "this is the most irritating possible terrain we could've possibly imagined for your current kit." Yeah, you get tools and upgrades to make these insufferable things tolerable, but that's just it. What should be fun upgrades just kind of make things less irritating. At which point it's kind of just... boring? See, the thing about the delivery structure is that that sense of hiking and whatnot, at least for me, kind of wore off after a few hours. I'm struggling to imagine how I'm even going to fathom 40 more hours of this. And I usually don't force myself at all when I'm not having a good time, but I feel like I'm always just one or two steps away from having a good time.... but I never get there?

 

The structure building and ladder stuff is way less cool than I thought, every time I get to a spot where I'm like "fuck, made it up this weird mountain, let's pop a ladder and hit the top" I got some dumbass message about being outside the allowed construction zone. I turn around and face it the other way and it works just fine. So I don't know if ladder placement has rules I don't understand or what, but half the time I just can't place them where I want. Outside of prefab buildings and of course spots without enough physical space, I don't think there should be any building/placement limits. You can't even place structures too close to each other. Wouldn't it be dumb, inefficient, but potentially cool to put a few buildings side-to-side and use them as a sort of staircase/platform/spot to put a ladder and make a ramp for vehicles? Except it seems like even for the basic bike, a ladder doesn't serve as a viable platform, which I guess is to be expected, but still disappointing. Gimme a sandbox to go wild in! All these artificial limitations...

 

I'm already rambling too long, but this game really feels like fetch quest: the game, but instead of a normal fetch quest, someone's just fucking kicking you in the knees every couple of minutes to make sure you're not just having a pleasant, zen time. I get why, in terms of story, but I don't think that's a good excuse. Frankly if the game was one long seamless journey across Totally-America-Even-Though-It-Looks-Nothing-Like-America with maybe a couple delivery missions along the way, no combat, keep the Timefall but create more ways to deal with it, etc, have regular upgrades that make traversal really interesting when you get across more wild terrain, I think that would make a really solid 10-15 hour game. As it stands I have no idea what the goal or the point of this game is in terms of gameplay.

 

And don't get me started on the fucking story. It manages to simultaneously have some very bizarre and imaginative imagery while being utterly mundane in every way that matters, metaphors and allegories so surface-level the characters might as well be named the first 3 sentences of their bios. Unsubtle imagery and storytelling is one thing, Kojima then spending 45 minutes to tell you exactly what's going on, after you could tell what was going on going by the first fucking sentence that came out of someone's mouth, is just painful to the point of being unbearable. There's no filter, there was clearly no editor, no one to tell Kojima that you don't need a character to explain their motivations to you, and then follow that up with a codec conversation reiterating literally the exact same thing, followed by a multi-paragraph email detailing it further exactly the same, followed by an interview from 3 years ago that, just in case you missed it the first time, is here to finish the job and put the fucking "Did you get it?" bullet through your brain. Hope you like hearing 8 conversations about chiral being greek for hand and how your hands don't mirror each other perfectly if you face them away from yourself and put one on top of the other, despite being the same if you put them palm-to-palm.

 

Fuuuuuck man, I had hoped hearing all the negative stuff would set my expectations properly and allow me to sort of skirt by the parts that reviewers found boring, but it has only served to underscore just how boring they are. This is paragraph 36 and it still wouldn't equal half an average cutscene conversation in Death Stranding, all to say even less than I'm saying here. That's the problem, they spend hours saying ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.


And the most ironic part is that the Fed Ex/walking simulator part of the game is the most interesting bit with the most potential, when it's not trying to poke you in the side with a thumb tack.

 

Epic stuff here.

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