![]() ![]() The cutscenes are dumb and fun, yes, but they are also maudlin. It’s like The Pilgrim’s Progress if every character were high. Or, I should say: Its script is nonsense. To be clear: Death Stranding’s story is nonsense. Image: Kojima Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment I imagine many people playing the Director’s Cut will feel the same. This is not the first critique of Death Stranding to talk about the COVID-19 pandemic, and it won’t be the last - players who returned to the game in the months following its release quickly related to its lonely inhabitants and isolated populations. I didn’t put much stock in the public realm because I didn’t know how much I needed it. One day rushes by in a blur the next is taut and endless, and it’s all you can do to get outside, go for a walk, and remind yourself that the world is still spinning. Death Stranding is acutely aware of how time can fluctuate. One of the game’s (innumerable) plot devices is timefall, a precipitation that rapidly accelerates the aging process of anything it touches. It’s as if Iceland, New Zealand, and Bolivia collided at the exact moment the Large Hadron Collider jettisoned interdimensional goop across the world. in miniature, the same way Red Dead Redemption 2 is, except it stretches from sea to sea, complete with Eastern cliffs, amber waves, and the Rocky Mountains giving way to the ambling beaches of the West Coast. Geographically speaking, the map is the U.S. I relied on these anonymous and asynchronous acts of support as I made my way across Death Stranding’s surreal interpretation of America. I left a ladder of my own up a steep slope just a few hundred yards ahead - what else could I do? They made the game that much easier for me. That player will never know how much that ladder helped, but that’s beside the point. I was cornered.īut someone had placed a ladder across the ravine, and I escaped the ambush. I came to a ravine, out of stamina and out of ammo for my stun gun. On my return trip from the forest, an enemy pack of AI waylaid me and chased me across a field with almost no cover. We’re paving roads and building shelters and leaving useful tools for anyone that needs them. In Death Stranding, there are other players on the server. Of course, I wasn’t alone in that forest. What’s new in Death Stranding: Director’s Cut? And sometimes this will end with me in the bottom of said chasm, surrounded by busted boxes and a haze of regret. Sometimes I’ll just say screw it, and boost my motorcycle - carrying a precarious stack of briefcases and steel jugs - up a slab of rock and over a chasm because a customer needs his crafting materials before they decay. When my cargo is too heavy and I’m wading through the current of a strong river, I also have to shift my balance. I account for harsh weather forecasts and unfavorable wind patterns. As Russ Frushtick pointed out in our 2019 review, Death Stranding’s delivery orders are actually pretty damn fun once the game gets out of its own way. But more than that, I’ve found it to be hypnotic.įor a game revolving around what are basically fetch quests, I rarely get bored. I’ve heard people call Death Stranding meditative, and I don’t disagree. If you want curated lists of our favorite media, check out What to Play and What to Watch. When we award the Polygon Recommends badge, it’s because we believe the recipient is uniquely thought-provoking, entertaining, inventive, or fun - and worth fitting into your schedule. Polygon Recommends is our way of endorsing our favorite games, movies, TV shows, comics, tabletop books, and entertainment experiences. I have played roughly 60 hours, and I’ve been entranced the whole time. It is also propulsive, soothing, and immense. What I can say is that Death Stranding is still preachy, plodding, and indulgent. It adds extra missions and helpful tools to the game’s arsenal, but I can’t say whether they improve the overall experience because, well, I never had much of an experience to begin with. It explores the importance of community and social ties. This time, I saw the closing credits.ĭeath Stranding: Director’s Cut is a strange game about an insouciant messenger delivering cargo to dozens of outposts across a fractured, post-apocalyptic America. 24, 2021, Kojima Productions will release Death Stranding: Director’s Cut. I promptly deleted it from my PlayStation 4. it was a plodding, preachy, indulgent mess. I played the role of an exhausted man transporting boxes to a bunch of jerks scattered across a decimated U.S. I played it for 15 hours and didn’t enjoy a single one of them. 8, 2019, after three years of nebulous trailers and confusing gameplay demos, Kojima Productions released Death Stranding, its first project as an independent studio. This isn’t just a review of Death Stranding: Director’s Cut.
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