In case you lived under a rock in the last decades and don't know the author of this game, I'll provide a brief introduction. Hideo Kojima is the author of Metal Gear, a stealth-action series that started in 1987 and ended in 2015 with MGS V (with some spin-offs along the way). After the last chapter, Kojima left his historical publisher Konami, allegedly tired of its interference in his direction.

Instead of retiring, Kojima decided to double down in the gaming industry, founding his own gaming company where he has total control over the product.
Death Stranding is the first product of his new company so, for the good and for the bad, is a 100% Kojima creature. The game he always wanted to make.

Reviewing a game like this is not an easy task, more so if I want to keep the spoilers to a necessary minimum. Perhaps the best way to tell if this game is for you is comparing it to another game, like Skyrim.
Are you the type of person who in Skyrim kinda ignored the quests to wander off in the wood, or maybe to climb that mountain in the most awkward way possible, just because it was there and you wanted to see if you could?
Then maybe this game is for you.

Are you instead the kind of person that spent hours trying different weapons/armours, who maybe modded the game to increase the monsters difficulty, ignoring most of the non-combat related aspects of the games?
Then maybe this game is not for you.

Are you the kind of person that was always overencumbered and desired to have a better logistic awareness and some inventory management skills?
Then maybe this game has something to teach you..

Lets make this clear since the beginning: Death Stranding is a game about making deliveries. That's all.

There are some action-stealth elements, and some boss fights, but the whole game revolves around delivering cargo between different points in a fairly big map. On foot, mostly.

Still with me? Great.

So, why so many people seem to enjoy so much what is essentially a sequence of glorified fetch-quests? Because the inner loop of the game is actually very compelling.

For example, aside from some little problems that mostly occur in narrow spaces, the movements on foot are very responsive. You can walk, run, jump, climb, crouch and...shift your balance. Yes, because you are carrying dozens of kilos of cargo on your back. You have momentum. You have a centre of mass that depends on how the cargo is organised. You may want to strap the heavier cargo at the bottom of your "backpack" and the lighter parcels on top of it, to gain stability. Or you can just rely on the automatic arranging feature that, mercifully, will take care of that for you. The balance must be kept against your current momentum and the environment features, like the terrain slope, wind or flow speed if you need to cross a river.

To help your journeys you can bring a variety of different tools, like extendable ladders, that can be used to climb to an higher ground or placed horizontally to walk over a cliff, a small stream or another obstacle.
Of course all these tools occupy a slot in the "backpack" or on a vehicle and have a certain weight, so you need to plan ahead and maybe leave some cargo in favour of that extra ladder.

There are bigger structures that can be build anywhere in the map, like a bridge or a watchtower, that allows you to scout the nearby area, or a generator that will recharge your exoskeleton and vehicles standing nearby. Speaking of vehicles, they are very useful to cover vast distances and bring extra cargo, but unless some infrastructure is already present (generators, bridges etc..) they are often more trouble than what is worth.
Last thing you want is to abandon a car, leaving precious cargo, because it ran out of battery or due to the terrain being too irregular at a certain point.

The game is designed to be played at your own pace. You can take your time in your deliveries and enjoy the amazing landscape and music (more on that later). The sole actors actively hostile to you are bandits and some entities that I can't really describe without incurring in spoilers. Both are limited to specific regions that are often marked on the map. These represent the main action-stealth element of the game. Bandits are the most active in pursuing you but, unless you are in dire need of the resources they hoard, their area can be avoided most of the times.

Now, there is something about the gameplay that clicks almost immediately. You'll become quickly accustomed in reading the detailed map and know what to bring and what to leave. You'll place markers on the map - that are also visible while walking - to pass through the fastest and safest path. There is nobody to suggest you the best path, or what to do. Every delivery is fundamentally planned by you. A measure of skill is similarly involved in all activities. Learning to scan the terrain, interpreting the different slopes and running shifting the balance accordingly, will make an apparently impassable terrain a walk in the park (quite literally).

The progression is made in terms of equipment and stats. New vehicles and equipment (e.g. different types of exoskeletons) are unlocked progressing the storyline and improving the relationship with the different characters. This will also unlock better versions of already owned equipment. Customisable upgrades for your backpack are unlocked the same way, as well as cosmetic mods. Stats (like how much weight you can carry, stamina recovery etc..) will improve overtime depending on the delivery performances (e.g. how much cargo you brought, how damaged, how fast you were etc..).

When you hear the complains people who don't like DS have, in 99% of the cases the problem for them is the gameplay. So, if I've piqued your interest on what you have read so far, you can just stop reading any further and buy the game right away.

Everything else that follows is what make a good game, with some interesting, unique mechanics, arise to a masterpiece.

Death Stranding can be defined as a singleplayer game revolving around a strong multiplayer component.
Let me elaborate.

When you reach a new destination for the first time you connect it to all the previously visited delivery points. This is a central part for the story progression of the game, but in doing that you also become connected to other players. Once a place is connected, the buildings done by other players start to leak to your game and, at the same time, your structures in the area have a chance to spawn in other players experiences. Even the most frequented paths become sometime visible as a sort of ghostly footstep, to guide you towards the safest passages. Useful structures can be voted, and the more a structure is voted, the higher is the chance it will appear to other players. Structures can be upgraded disregarding who built it in the first place. Some infrastructures, like highways, give massive advantages in the game, but they are meant to be built mostly as a group work.

Structures can be customised attaching a song to them, or with a small hologram of a character, just as a way to present your building to other players in a nice way. Special markers can be placed anywhere to signal a danger ahead, suggesting a direction, or just giving encouraging messages. It's just another way that make you aware that other people are there, doing what you are doing right now.

Sometime I felt compelled to take a a small detour just to place a bridge, or a watchtower in a certain place that might be useful to someone else. Later I was notified that my structure have been used, and I got some likes out of that. Those "likes" are actually important, since is a sort of XP used to increase your stats.

With the removal of the direct interaction of the chat, or even seeing other players in game, spam and toxicity is gone. All is left is a sense of collaboration and connections, with very little downsides.

What can I say about the story? Well, the story is weird, complex, original, filled by self-fulfilling names (Bridges, MULEs, DOOMS factor..) and overcomplicated jargon. The story is narrated through a series of non-interactive cutscenes that will increase in length and frequency. The story is consistent, deep, and masterfully narrated. The story is beautiful. The story is not just an excuse for the gameplay, but it's the strand (no puns intended) that binds all together. It brings elements from Kojima favourite movies, and you won't get too far before recognising elements of Akira or even Neon Genesis Evangelion.

The story is a thing that will stay with you long after you finished the game, and with around 50h to reach the end (at a medium pace) it doesn't overstay its welcome.
The graphic and art in the game is superlative. Character textures are made using scansion of real world people whilst environment elements, like grass and stones, are similarly taken from real world places. Animations are made body-tracking Hollywood actors, who also voice their characters. With a similar formula it's very hard to go wrong.
Everything runs down like a movie and the cutscenes merge seamlessly with the gameplay. Aside some inside jokes, nothing feels out of place.

A lot of innuendos, occasional breaking of the fourth wall, surreal comical elements and self awareness moments of the characters are kinda the signature of Kojima. The game is also filled with little secrets, small details and hidden jokes that are so rare in the modern gaming industry.


The porting to PC has been done magnificently (and that by itself is a rare thing). I had a gamepad but I never felt compelled to use it. Keyboard and mouse works just fine. The game offers an uncapped framerate (quite stable even to slightly outdated rigs) and 4k resolution. It is also one of the few games at the moment to support Nvidia DLSS[www.nvidia.com] technology, which can be set either in performance or quality mode. This will boost the graphical quality without impacting to your performances. The end result is simply breathtaking.

A special mention goes to the sound effects and the music. The latter is particularly important to complete the whole idea of journey and to set the rhythm of the game. It is made by exceptional indie artists that have been handpicked by Kojima. The sole negative note (again, no puns) is that you can only listen to unlocked tracks in the private room and not in the open. It's probably made this way to have more control on the experience, still I'd like to have had this opportunity though.

This came out longer than intended, but this game is very divisive so I wanted to give a complete overview to those on the fence of getting it.

If someone told me that I would have enjoyed so much a cargo delivering game I'd have called him crazy. And yet, here I am. The story is long finished and yet I'm still sticking around focusing on maximising the standing with the characters, finishing their story-lines and unlocking the last half life items and achievements.
I've a huge backlog of games that await me, and yet I'm somehow driven to play Death Stranding every chance I get. And that's fine.

After all, those parcels ain't gonna deliver themselves ;)