DEATH STRANDING
Life’s a beach and then you don’t die
“DO AS I SAY, and it will all make sense,” says Guillermo Del Toro’s character near the beginning of DeathStranding. That might as well be game director Hideo Kojima talking directly to the player, because, as with much of the MetalGear Solid creator’s latest title, little does make sense. Even if you do as he says.
Set in a post-apocalyptic world, DeathStranding at least has a unique apocalypse. The worlds of the living and the dead became connected, rain began making things age (known as "timefall"), and invisible ghosts now wander the landscape, violently exploding any living people they touch. What remains of humanity has retreated underground, but the cities have become disconnected. Your job is to wander roughly from east to west across the US, delivering cargo to cities, connecting them to a "chiral network" that'll magically solve everything, and avoiding the explodey ghosts (BTs), human terrorists (MULEs), and weirder things.
The cast, featuring captured performances from Norman Reedus, Lindsay Wagner, and Mads Mikkelson, in addition to Del Toro and others, makes for a remarkable-looking game, as does the reimagining of the US as a broadly green and gray environment, slick with rain and filled with snow-capped mountains, waterfalls, wide, empty plains, and dense forests. Despite some excellent ruined cities, this is the America of the hiker or the hunter, always keen to offer up a cave as shelter from the timefall, while also not afraid to throw deer off cliffs in their haste to escape from the BTs.
Lead character Sam Bridges (Reedus) is a porter for an organization called Bridges (go figure) whose job is to walk and deliver cargo. Sometimes he picks up extra cargo on his way, lost by previous expeditions, to the delight of those he delivers it to, but mostly he walks, staggers, slips, climbs, and keeps himself upright while wading through torrential rivers. His journeys are enormously detailed, the game as keen to show every effect of the rocks beneath his feet as it is to put his face front and center, filling your screen with his marked skin and scrubby facial hair. He’s immortal, and can sense BTs in conjunction with a baby strapped to his chest—and that’s not the weirdest thing he comes across.
A stamina system determines how long he can put up with the effects of the environment, and overloading him with cargo will make it harder for him to recover when a sharp turn pulls him sideways. Grip, which makes him hang on to his pack straps, can be applied to stop him falling over, but a fall—along with spending too much time in the timefall— will damage his cargo, reducing the rating he receives when it’s delivered.
DeathStr anding, with its long cutscenes, unintelligible technobabble, and characters that span a range from the creepy to the semi-normal to the deeply weird, is unmistakably a Kojima game, and one we’re glad to see make its way to PC. There’s a lot to take in, but it’s at its best when you’re left on your own to explore the glorious landscapes and the way Sam shimmies around cliff edges, making the long trek to get there worthwhile.
Death Stranding
BEACHED Excellent performance; great to look at; compelling weirdness.
BREACHED You’re a delivery boy; Kojima games are something of an acquired taste.
RECOMMENDED SPECS CPU, i7-3770 or Ryzen 5 1600. RAM, 8GB. GPU, GTX 1060 6GB or Radeon RX 590.
$60, kojimaproductions.jp/en, rated M