Death Stranding - Endgame Review - Part 2

 

Overall review.

Here's comes the brutal part.

First of all, the title of the game should be changed to reflect the contents or the game's plot more effectively. Instead of calling the game "Death Stranding", it should be renamed to something more appropriate such as "Social Media Stranding", or "Like Mongers Stranding" or "Delivery Boy Stranding". I think those names should be more accurate in describing this game to those who wants to buy it. 

I have also noticed that this game has some of the most basic level "problems" which I was surprised to find in this game. I will list down some of these "amateurish" problems which I feel the game is suffering from.

1). Genre of the game.

While it is true that Hideo Kojima San had (one can say singlehandedly) created the Stealth Genre in the game which other games adopted, I'm at lost at describing what genre Death Stranding belong to. Is it Online game or Offline game? Because there are both features in this game and it is very annoying to say the least. Is it Action game or Stealth game or WRPG (Western Roleplaying Game)? Cos we all have a certain aspect of each in that game but nothing to say what genre it belongs to. 

From what I have seen, Hideo Kojima San seems to have mixed it all up into a very confusing mixture in a fit of passion to create and end up with a mixture the gamers (like myself) had a very hard time swallowing. Truth be told, I wish they could not add the Online version onto this game as I find it annoying to see the map littered with useless things like posts from other players and it is very hard to read my own map, especially when I have created landmarks and points to use as navigation marks. 

2). The battle are repetitive and quite boring.

A game's enemy plays as much role in exciting the players as much as anything else. Enemies which can hunt you down, stalk you, ambush you, gang up on you and so forth could really make a difference in a difficulty of a game and bring in the fun factor as well. Unfortunately here, I did not find any such "features".

In Death Stranding, you will face off with two type of enemies - the Mules (humans) and the BT (black spiritual humanoid creatures). At first, the Mules can be quite daunting and troublesome as they could attack you in a group with electrical-based projectile weapon which could short-circuit your vehicles. The best way to deal with them was to avoid them. However, once you have unlocked the non-lethal weapons (like the riot shotgun - which is the best weapon to deal with them as they could rush at you), you find them easier to deal with. All you need to do is stand behind something like a large boulder and just wait for them to come to you.

BTs on the other hands are really annoying characters. The whole thing about holding your breath does work sometimes but I usually just drive through non-stop (unless the game specifically demands you stop and fight by stalling the vehicle). It took me couple of turns in fighting those dolphin-squid-whatever thingy before I found a pattern to their attacks and could even guess which direction they will be coming out of that black goo (Hint : Watch the waves formed when the creature goes into the ground. The biggest wave indicate which direction it is moving and where it could likely to appear). 

3). The Map is confusing as hell

Whoever designed the map, direction finders and the damn compass for this game should be dragged to the streets and beaten to a pulp. Never have I came a cross a game with such a bad map system as I did in Death Stranding. You put a marker North, and when you head North, your map indicated you were heading South. The road indicator to show the best possible route from one point to another always takes you across an uncross-able ravine or a deep river or the enemy territory. 

I also read somewhere that you can reuse the route you had established for yourself but there is no indicator what route I had taken and sometimes, the infrastructure I left behind (like ladders, ropes, ziplines etc) does not appear in the map either, making the task of navigating in the game a sort of mental gymnastics.

4). Items does not make much difference in term of strength and effects in the game.Some items are pretty useless.

The game items like rifles, shotguns, shoes, floating carriers, Armour etc does not indicate how they are differ from their previous version. For example, the level 3 shoes. They seems to get damaged about the same time as level 1 shoes. The Chiral Shoes (gold in color) seems to be far better than the normal shoes you could get through synthesizing it but the game made it that you can only get Chiral shoes as gift and not something which you can make for yourself. Armour is a useless item as it could only increase the weight you carry (I never used them, despite of going into fights often as method of gathering resources (both from Mules and BTs). Same thing with Shotguns and Rifles. I do not see a different in performance, especially when both weapons can be used in similar manner (you hide behind a large rock and shot people in the face with a shotgun). One thing I did notice in performance is that the floating carriers (which is very useful) are capable of carrying better quantities of objects compared to the previous version BUT I'm disappointed at the way the game uses them. Level 3 carriers able to carry about 600 Kilograms of weight but somehow, become "full" after only half that amount. It get damaged pretty quickly, especially during rain and in battles. 

5). The cargo become damaged too easily. 

What's the deal here? The game seems to designed specifically to target the cargoes we are carrying instead of going after Sam in person. I got more "game-over" screens (mostly by resetting it myself) due to damaged cargo than by having Sam died. I think I got about three deaths (via Sam) when I was playing my game and I usually reset them (from my previous saved point). Anyway, the cargo are too prone for damage, even when you take steps to avoid them. I could unlock my carrier just outside any places where there are BTs (which I know cos I could put signs alerting myself and others to it) and goes into battle with them to clear a way. Still, I could end up with damaged cargoes later as if the BTs specifically goes to the place where I kept my cargoes. Later in the game when the roads are improved and I could drive, I could also see the same thing. The black "humanoid" goo could go after my trucks and grab the cargoes out of its storage or it could swallow the whole vehicle. Once the battle is over, I could end up with damaged cargo, even if the truck parked a few yards away from the battle.

6). Depressing characters. Kojima San ... PLEASE stop creating depressing characters. 

Every since Metal Gear saga days, most characters (if not all) made by Kojima San and his teams are depressing as hell. Their characters sucks the life and any traces of warmth out of you like a blizzard. Even if you find some nice character to like (like Emma from Metal Gear Solid 2), they will have some sobby background stories which makes the game experience suck. WHY IS THAT? Why can't you make a character which is funny, happy and relatable to normal human beings? Do you really think that people goes out to fight the bad guys because they were in someway abused or wronged in some way? REALLY? Is that what you think are the reasons for fire-fighters, doctors, police officers and military personal to sacrifice their comfort and risk losing life and limb every day out there in the World to keep the regular people safe? 

Kojima San, I'm sorry to say but you do not know the real World or depiction of Humanity. And creating characters who are "tragic" doesn't make your game any better. Your characters looks so "forced" (like a lump of rice too big to swallow but needs to be chewed constantly for hours before attempting to swallow) that many do end up choking on it. 

And I see the same thing here with characters in Death Stranding (matter a fact, I think it is a common theme in a lot of animes and mangas as well). Every character I see in this game are depressing as hell. They have a complex (and often unnecessary) background story which serves no purpose whatsoever and could have re imagined in a different way. Characters like Mama and Deadman could be reimagined as normal people with normal relationship problems or some researcher fascinated with the Beach (instead of having some sobby story about someone they loved got killed or something). Frankly speaking, it is ANNOYING to see characters who are not normal. Bring back the normal people for God's sake.

7). Skewed ending by default. [Note : Spoiler ahead for Death Stranding]

Frankly speaking, there is no worse game than one which forces you to do a mental gymnastic during gameplay ONLY to have the game end by taking the easy way out - which is to erase all your hard-work which you put in for hours and put the game at its default value. 

A few games does this. One of those games which I do remember is Final Fantasy 15. [Note Spoilers ahead for FF15]. 

It forced the players to spend hours playing the game, levelling up the characters, improving the skills, defeat those undefeatable enemies and some went as far as to buy DLCs to further the story more. ONLY to have everything erased at the end and make your character look like some poor loser at the end who have to kill himself to "save" the World.  The very idea that you had spend hours helping people, only for them to "disappear" at the end can be considered as one of the worst way a game could end. [End Spoiler]

In Death Stranding, the most annoying part at the end of the game is how they provided you with three regions to explore, create infrastructures, map out the travelling route and rise the status among the NPCs (through delivery you make), only to strip away everything at the end, and force you to stay at the first region where you have started. What happened to the infrastructure you have created by hauling heavy materials across enemy-infested regions? All gone, vanished, erased. There is no way for you to return back there and that sucks really bad. In term of replay-value, the idea that you will be wasting time building things or even making deliveries (which supposed to be the core of this game) makes this game lose its replayable value very quickly. 

Furthermore, if a player decides to skip all the deliveries he could make in the next playthrough simply because he knows that his hard-work will be erased, then how long could the game actually last? Without the infrastructure building and the deliveries across the region, I say the game could last about a week (7-days) at best, if you were to play the game for about three to four hours a day. So, who could want to buy a game which could last just a week? With zero-replayable value?

And with those seven "mistakes" I could see in this game, I could finish off my review of the game here. I do not know what Hideo Kojima San has in store for us in the future, but I hope it could be something "better" than this game. 

Next, I think I will write about an old Japanese RPG (JRPG) called the "Tales of ..." series, in conjunction with the new Tales of Arise which will be releasing soon. The "Tales of ..." series had been around as long as Final Fantasy series but not many people had played it.