See you on the beach - the thread for Hideo Kojima's DEATH STRANDING

*rocks BB way too quickly*

Death Stranding (2019) @giantbomb @jeffgerstmann @taswell #DeathStranding pic.twitter.com/CIsjHTgE47

— Jacob! (@JacobGehnert) November 9, 2019

18 hours deep, still in chapter 3. happily building roads.

the design and aesthetic are top notch. i love that HD means you can really read all the dumbass slogans kojima slathers over every surface. even the corny music works, when it swells up and the camera pulls back crossing a giant open space. the upward-floating debris, the weird tendrils hanging from the hovering overpasses, the porter bots wearing little shoes and singing to themselves.

trudging slowly over wet sand with an enormous stack of high-performance underwear crates is fun. putting ladders in stupid places is fun. getting and sending thousands of likes is fun. rocking the baby is reasonably fun (and i spend most of my day entertaining an irl toddler). feel like most reviews don't mention that the game is actually fun and satisfying to play. when you do something stupid and drop every fucking thing you are carrying (a rare occurrence unless you are not paying any attention), mashing triangle to pick stuff up is hilarious. it's got a similar feel to snake picking stuff up in mgs, it's a really fast animation and when you mash it norman reedus goes fucking nuts throwing shit back on his cargo stack. feels good.

love the bananas story and setting.

the walking simulator is my favorite game genre and this sounds fucking awful to me

it's too bad everyone established "walking sim" as a flippant term for narrative adventure games because now that there's an actual walking sim we don't have a term for it that won't cause confusion

how does the online element of this game work? online players can affect the landscape based on things they leave out for each other... but does that mean that technically you might be able to bump into each other and if enough people play it there could be thousnads of Reedus's walking around? I take it that's not the case?

i've already floated 'stumbling simulator' tbf xp

“Drudgery sim”?

xp it's asynchronous, it'll load some amount of other players' constructions into your game, prioritizing people on your PS friends list, but you're not actually in the same instance of the game world as anyone else

'Slow Gaming'

other people can contribute to your constructions and vice versa so the resource accumulation/distribution is less onerous. i like upgrading ppl's stuff when i don't feel like hauling a zillion kg of metal back to whatever knot city.

i think the cutscenes' emphasis on connections and logistics are telling but what really gives it away is calling the bandits MULEs. i feel like kojima is in direct dialogue with M.U.L.E., advancing a vision of radical generosity over that game's free market ruthlessness.

so let's go with "post apocalyptic socialism sim"

aw shit, i think by mentioning MULE you just made me buy this goddammit

it rules forks just do it

damn u

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Box4XDvBSgE

I am kind of disappointed because it seemed like I was going to finally meet Mads' character and you.. kind of encounter him? not really. I'm sure it'll come later.

This is the first game where I've gotten something that seems like it could cause lethal damage after having some random incapacitating items and I feel really hesitant about the idea of shooting people. Those MULE guys seem like assholes, but do I really need to injure them that badly?

“Drudgery sim”?

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses)

that's sort of what i like about gaming, ultimately at a certain point they all boil down to tedious drudgery. commit this otherwise useless sequence of button presses to muscle memory. this vision of gaming has been around for at least as long as pac-man - i remember as a child reading books on how to get good at pac-man and it was all rote execution of patterns. we pay money for the chance to do routine things.

This thread is the manifestation of the game I was most looking forward to, please update with tales of dystopian banality

the irony of the fact that this will take until Wednesday to deliver is not lost on me

I think the banality aspect has been oversold, to an extent. There have been a number of games with interesting landscapes, but I can't remember many details of them past rote pathfinding. Might have to jump over some rocks, may encounter an impassable area. In this game, not only is the world very beautiful, but the obstacles seem meaningful. Do I set up a ladder to make it past, or do I go around and use my tools later?

When I connect a new area, will I discover that the other way up a hill that seemed insurmountable on the map already has a series of ropes and ladders placed by someone online, making my journey that much shorter? There's a joy of discovery to it

yeah, the game isn't boring at all. in its insistence on paying attention to your surroundings and to your movements it's not at all unlike metal gear solid, just without the trappings of Tactical Espionage Action. that absence is the engine of Gamer Backlash, plus i think there's a (faulty) collective assumption of rebuke in that absence.

So it's actually fun?

what if I told you in 2019, that a video game would not only get the idea of "likes" from strangers giving that kick of dopamine, but did so in a way that made it a constructive gameplay dynamic?

there are some abuses of it, like spamming of a bunch of signs that a player has to pass through near home locations, but overall it's a well-balanced mechanic

Still looking for clarity: if you play offline, that whole aspect of the game is nullified?

You get "likes" from doing certain tasks in the game, but the abundance of physical objects in the landscape won't appear

so there's no benefit to the likes if you're offline?

my understanding is that the online components don't require playstation plus

(if that is the issue)

I'm perversely avoiding any actual reviews or gameplay videos atm because every anecdotal comment somehow confuses me further re: what this game even is/is about. Which I find fascinating.

it's possible some of the structures are put up by the NPC porters (your job) in the game, as a few appear, but I don't know that anyone reviewing or even playing the game has done it completely offline

the "likes" are what levels up one of your five metrics

i've gotten likes from NPC porters for shit i've left lying around

OL, there's a backstory that at the core establishes this post-apocalyptic world, what the precursor event was, and some of the basics that differentiate this world from our own. The story starts to answer a lot of the unknowns, but a lot of it is "we discovered this technology, it did amazing things, and something horrible happened" with some additional elements related to the fact knowledge was lost in the chaos and your NPC peers are discovering the history as you are.

fwiw the thread (strand?) title here is a reference that becomes clear not far into the game

finally a game that can breach the high watermark set by bioshock for creepiest cosplay

oh man there's gonna be a thousand norman reeduses at comicon
fat reedus, skinny reedus, buff reedus, black reedus, ups delivery uniform reedus, amazon delivery uniform reedus, DHL delivery uniform reedus, asia reedus, sexy reedus, mecha reedus, dog reedus...

I'm wondering what point in the game unlocks the Chvrches song!

The non-score musical parts so far are ok, but I feel like Kojima has found a band that's halfway between Imagine Dragons and Coldplay

I guess I should say vibe-wise, since there's not just one band

This is actually pretty fun and addictive. I don’t think the gameplay footage really sells it. There is a kind of tactile satisfaction in hauling yourself over the landscape that doesn’t really translate well to someone not holding the controller.

Not without its problems. The MULE and BT enemy encounters seem really simplistic and half-baked. I’m down with de-emphasizing combat, but I wish those systems were a little more sophisticated.

There are certain elements that seem to be deliberately irritating. Trudging through BT morass, mashing buttons as monster arms tear cargo off your back while a baby is crying in your face via the controller speaker is a good example. But that stuff is relatively minor/brief.

I've only had one BT battle encounter so far! And it was right at the beginning, before I really got the dynamic. If you're cautious and well-stocked with grenades or some of the later weapons, you can knock those suckers back to the afterlife.

I kind of want to trigger a battle because apparently if you take out one of the larger enemies that appear, they drop a ton of crystals

gameplay in the looks a bit like a walking version of spintires, would that be accurate?

THE HEART-SHAPED BUBBLE

the president's henchman is 'die hardman' who wears a leather suit, cravat and METAL SKULL MASK 24/7 i can't

i ended up just running the fuck away from the annoying BTs at the incinerator, suddenly found myself at the edge of a cliff, and somebody named igor had left.... a rope for me! at the edge! i liked the shit out of it and rappelled away, thanks igor.

thomas i think spintires is more frustrating and lets you screw yourself over. here a modicum of attention will keep you upright.

love this game. just got the "speed skeleton" and i am booking it across this rock strewn ghost-scape. also i am getting the rhythm of infiltrating BT areas so it's less of a drag. stupid MULEs not so much. i'll figure them out.

I’ve gotten pretty good at shooting MULES in the face with my bolo gun. Drops em.

Game really starts opening up in chapter 3. Trucking my stolen MULE mobile down the highway, wind in my hair. Feels good.

just got the BRIDGES truck, really adds to the UPS vibe. loading that motherfucker up with claimed metals and ceramics all the way to south knot city.

Tracer, Igor was the guy in the truck with the corpse at the very beginning!

Ahhhh!

I've been trying to put a certain feeling into words and I think this is how one says this these days.. This game has big Tomb Raider 1 energy

Yeah, building roads is like the main reason I like this sequel. The story and the characters are super dumb, like, significantly more so than the first story which was kind of dumb but didn't have a guitar playing Joker guy.

I think I would like a few more stealth encounters. You're right, they are fun.

Bosses and big BT encounters are always a bit sloppy. Nice set-pieces, often, but I find it's largely down to luck if I beat the boss or not.

the bosses and the BTs are super uninteresting

zip line stations have just started appearing for me and i'm wondering how/if/when i would use them. i'm kind of addicted to my off-roader, puttin it on the monorail, loading it up with as much as i can

The game really likes to throw new stuff at you. It can be hard to keep up with all the different grenades and weapons and little knick-knacks they keep telling you to try out.

I've also started feeling slightly overwhelmed by the number of side orders there are to do. I know you're meant to kind of do the story, then worry about all that later, but the shopping list of tasks is hard to ignore.

i keep meaning to try out the decoy grenades but I like sneakin around too much and snapping fools' necks

maybe i'm misremembering but honestly the stealth sections feel as well thought out to me as anything in MGS games? they're robotic in their routines, but MGS was a little robotic too

dl what's your take on say, building signs, bridges etc? i frankly don't build anything. I give everything likes like it's going out of style though. and the random postboxes everywhere, with nothing in them? why do people build those??

I'll build a ladder now and then, when I need to. Bridges are too resource-heavy to build. And I don't see a scenario where I'd ever build a postbox or a lamp post. I get the impression people build signs just for the likes. What is the point in watchtowers? Those speed ramps are fun, but I've yet to think of using one. Those jump-ramps are fun, but I rarely think of building one. Haven't used those magical warping things yet - those don't interest me. I don't get the point of the steam pools either. Ziplines remain essential and fun.

Watchtowers let you tag all enemies in one go very quickly from a much higher angle than Dollman lets you which is handy sometimes - though it does annoyingly also tag every single piece of cargo, which makes the screen very confusing

oh.... i'm not even sure what you mean by "tag"... have I missed some essential mechanic? Or are you talking about being able to see the loot they're carrying?

Once spotted by Dollman or a tower, enemies are marked with a little light blue polygon over their heads which stays there even if they go inside a building etc - and it turns yellow if they're alerted (or red if they're actually looking at you)

huh. i

i must never have noticed that! i rarely use dollman. but then there've been few stealth missions so far for me because I had been so good at buillding roads. otherwise i tend to just pick a few people off, then go in all guns blazing

tagging enemies in camps is kind of a key mechanic, imo. it walks you through that early on in both games iirc, although I can't remember if the first one gave you a big count at the top of the screen telling you how many enemies are still active. fwiw, if you scan and tag every guy in a camp, you then know exactly how many you have left to clear the camp for a while.

how can i have played so many hours of this without knowing about it? can you tag people without using the watchtowers or Dollman?

i think if you "look" (with your binoculars?) (L1) it will also do it? can't remember

I believe the "camp cleared" sound is, if not the exact same, very close to the "ding" noise from MGS that you hear when enemies are no longer looking for you.

i think if you "look" (with your binoculars?) (L1) it will also do it? can't remember

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 6 January 2026 15:45 (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

LOL, I never ever do this either.

There really are too many things in your Swiss army knife here. Coming back to the game after a break away, I was a bit baffled by just how many different objects and items I had. I was trying to remember what I use to divine hot springs and just couldn't recall.

I did give the coffin board thing a go and that was fun. But I'm not sure exactly why I'd use it other than the exceptional cases when a truck won't work.

coffin board absolutely rips through some tasks and was my go-to for a while in the endgame

I can't remember if it's in the very last act you can unlock it or if that's just when I did, but the highest level stabilizer is even better. I never unlocked it in the first game's director's cut, but in DS2 you can just get to the highest area, set up a jump ramp, and then fly halfway across the map

"Stick a fork in me Sam. I'm home"

I heard terrible things about this, and picked it up (the first one) on an Amazon Prime subscription leftover from last-minute Christmas purchases, and it's really fun. Is it worth playing through, as opposed to just enjoying farting around and falling down for an hour?

imo yes - new abilities/gadgets open up new play styles. though farting around / falling down remains the core mechanic lol

I'm not real clear on why I'm supposed to be so scared of the "ghost" baddies.. there's a whole VR "archive" where you can "examine" maquettes of them but they just seem like slightly tougher baddies? I can still absolutely house them in melee for instance

You're not rushing through too quickly, then. tbf Death Stranding isn't really a combat game outside of the giant BTs and those just require a little bit of strategy. definitely more combat options in DS2, but it's still an exploration and delivery game at heart

Chuck_Tatum, the terrible things you read were by little babies. Of course yes get going with it.

Tracer, I find that the enemies are all really easy... until they're not and then it gets hard. But really the toughness comes from being ganked by multiple enemies which is easily avoided if you snipe or stealth

Yesterday I used the special chiral cannon to snipe a whole base of enemies in a few minutes. But the base didn't clear. And every so often a bomb would land near me. I couldn't see where it was coming from until I noticed one of the "dead" bodies was still twitching around slightly. He had fallen between a crack in the rocks and couldn't get out but was still managing to lib a few bombs on occasion

lol

i haven't found a use yet for the tar cannon, is that what you used??

yeah i've been trained by MGS games that basically as soon as you're spotted you're dead so i try not to let that happen. a couple of times i HAVE been spotted and was kind of surprised that i was able to actually fight my way out (having a truck with an auto-firing machine gun helps...)

I should really try the MGS games. They look great. I tried MGSV but couldn't for the life of me even get past the first section without, as you say, getting spotted and merked.

Chuck_Tatum, the terrible things you read were by little babies. Of course yes get going with it.

oh no! is it one of those

i mean, it seems harmless enough, so I guess it makes sense that babies will hate it

partially I'm just blown away by the graphics - I've been playing on luna, which I guess is on a good-ish graphics mode - it's pretty striking after seven years of only playing a switch, and before that I hadn't really played games since the 90s

It's gorgeous. My friend bought me a big coffee table book of the Art Of Death Stranding and while it was a lovely gift, and the book is interesting, i was a bit disappointed to find there wasn't more of the landscapes. Lots of detailed drawings of the various weapons and suits and vehicles though. But for me, the main character of DS1 is the terrain. You get to know it well after a while, and it starts becoming a friend in a way. I'd be interested in seeing how the developers made the decisions they made when it came to all that

I'm curious to kmow what use people make of beach transponders and hot springs, seeing as you can't use them to transport cargo, and you may as well use the DHV Magellan most of the time. They seem a bit pointless?

Similar question with ziplines.. I mean basically... if I can't take my truck I don't wanna go

At least you can park your truck near a zip line and scooter up the mountain to make a delivery. I loved ziplines in the first game. Only really just started using them now

Oh, has everyone delivered the pizza chef's misanga whoch you can retrieve from the nearby enemy camp? It's worth doing

you must absolutely do all the pizza chef missions if you like combat

the beach transponders are great in the late game where you're wanting to do specific deliveries. just hop on over there. the hot springs? didn't unlock those until after I'd completed the main game

ziplines are completely essential if you delve into timed deliveries or need to do a lot of mountain stuff. the ability to chain them off the monorail towers makes them even better

the other transponder/magellan thing that's useful is bulk material transport. park the magellan at the closest location to a mine, teleport as close to the mine as you can, and send all the materials you can to the magellan's location. then you hop around the map in the magellan and build/repair all your stuff

yes i’ve been using the magellan as a dumping ground for excess so far but not yet leveraging it like that. at the moment it has a pretty low cap on what i can store there

you can do some really silly things with the coffin board for quick deliveries, btw. especially if you want to get to/from the Mechanic. it goes pretty fast on water and if you're at, say, Heartman's lab, you can zipline down to the water (I do not recommend coffin boarding all the way down from his hill, too treacherous) and then just surf all the way around to the other side

it's probably one of the most game scale-breaking things if you take the landscape as the whole of Australia, because your little rocket surfboard can navigate around the entire continent

I didn't know you could chsin the zips off the monorail. This game throws so much at you.

I've been off sick today and I spent all day doing little side deliveries and road builds. It was very mindful and therapeutic, but honestly I don't feel like I achieved all that much in the 6 or 7 hours I just played

Mind you, i think these games are best played at ones own pace. You can, if you wish, race through the whole thing and complete the main game, then go back and do the hoovering up.

But I like to kind of work my way outward, get to know a plot of land really well, build roads and zips, do a few extra deliveries for the props and extra equipment.

It means i can play the game in tandem with other games and it's fine. I'm not always in the mood for this one, but when I am (like today) it hits the spot.

Thinking about it, is there a single supporting character in this game who isn't low key super annoying? Don't say Dollman. Dollman is the colleague who comments on what you brought in for lunch and asks if he can "have a smell of it"

That said, anyone else make them sing the "Ba-bam ba-bam bam-bam" song every time they go in the hot spring without fail? Makes me rofl every time, but mostly because it's really out of character when Sam breaks his RBF and has fun

Last night, as the ladt thing I did, I risked life and limb trying to find a hot spring near the Eastern Observatory (or whatever it's called) because the sensor kept signalling me to climb up a huge mountain. I feel down so many times BB went into par-octo-xysms until I realised the spring was on the other side of the mountain

(Apologies for the typos, I really need a new phone and to get better at proofreading myself when typing on the fly)

I love Dollman. The guy who does the voice acting is fantastic!

Maybe it's time you had a shower...

it's really out of character when Sam breaks his RBF and has fun

there was that one time he tried playing the "shoe game" even though his boot was completely laced up so there's no way it would have worked, which he apparently didn't know, because he doesn't understand how boots work

Have we mentioned the very tiny hint of a smile he gives whenever he receives a new tchotchke for his backpack

"does anybody remember laughter??"

If you want a big dose of good-mood Sam, finish a VR training session

ah i need to do that. the game keeps telling me i need to do it.

Sometimes I think i like these games not despite their flaws, but because of their flaws.

One of these flaws are the large BT fights. These are either extremely easy or stupidly difficult. And it has less to do with skill than luck more than anything else.

The speed of a lot of these bosses does not match the speed of the game. Like much of the encounters in this thing, it is near impossible to stop yourself getting injured.

The tar slowing Sam down and sometimes making him walk in funny directions, coupled with the clunkiness of the weapons menu system makes me feel like it's the game itself that is fighting against me rather than the bosses.

Sam will be in the middle of getting ganked by three lion BTs, and instead of picking up the weapon on the ground and firing it, he'll just start do-si-do-ing round it like he's out for his morning exercise.

I also often don't know how to stop these fights from happening. There's me trying to speak into the disused Ghost Mech Factory, now overrun by BTs. I could use a grenade or a cannon. But instead I decide to do it the old fashioned way and clear them out by hand using the boomerang.

After meticulously socking what felt like at least a dozen BTs, one of them decides it's had enough of it. I try to run, but Sam, for some reason, decides he's just going to pace along gently.

Before I know it there's an entire lake of tar around me and I'm being pulled into it. I can't escape - the tar guys are everywhere and they pull me in.

Makes me wonder if this was meant to happen - perhaps the last BT is meant to get you and trigger the Lion fight, but I wasn't prepared for it. I had a single grenade gun and my boomerang. I could not defeat those BTs.