Gaming reviews

High-performance playtime

It’s best when Death Stranding shuts up. Being a game by Hideo Kojima, it’s naturally filled with bizarre characters, lengthy screeds of exposition, and indulgent cutscenes. But it’s in the long, quiet stretches between all this, when it’s just you hiking alone across a stark, haunting post-apocalyptic wilderness, where it really shines. In these moments, Death Stranding is quite unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in a game – or any other medium for that matter.

That’s not to say there’s no value in the plot. When you’re not being bombarded with backstory, it’s pretty interesting – and deeply weird. You are Sam Porter Bridges, a courier delivering cargo across what’s left of the United States. A supernatural cataclysm called the Death Stranding has driven the last of humanity underground, leaving the surface plagued by soulsucking ghosts called BTs and rain that ages anything it hits.

Your mission is to hike across

North America, connecting scattered settlements as you go. Why Sam, though? He’s a talented porter with a reputation for getting things delivered on time. But, more importantly, he can detect otherwise invisible BTs with the help of a tiny, creepy baby strapped to his chest.

The majority of your time in Death Stranding is spent out in the open, plodding slowly from one place to another. It’s essentially a feature-length fetch quest. But the environment, and the challenges it throws at you, makes these trips worthwhile. The landscape is serenely beautiful, with a grand sense of scale and a bewitching atmosphere.

But it’s not just for show. Death Stranding is secretly a brilliant hiking and mountaineering simulator, and every piece of rough terrain you encounter is a puzzle to be solved. If you rush things, Sam can trip, stagger, lose his balance, get swept away by powerful rivers, or slide down steep inclines – losing or damaging cargo in the process.

Some jobs seem impossible at first. Standing at the foot of a mountain, snow whipping at its peaks, fragile cargo stuck to every inch of your suit, you wonder how you’ll ever get over it. Along the way you might have to slip into Metal Gear Solid mode and sneak past BTs, or deal with extreme weather, including disorientating blizzards.

Disappointingly, story is Death Stranding’s weak link. The broad strokes are great, and Sam’s mission to connect a fragmented civilisation is an effective hook. But so much of the finer details are told in uninteresting ways, whether it’s through lengthy cutscenes, overlong text-heavy emails, or rambling radio chatter.

Slow, weird, and indulgent, but a true original, and a journey that will linger in your mind long after it’s over.