Why is a game about being a delivery boy so good? Is it the infrastructure building mechanic? Is it the batshit insane storyline? Is it the fact that every mountain is climbable? Is it the reserved use of combat and massive punishments for killing people?

Who knows, all I can say is I haven't had this much fun with a game in ages.

    • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      That game is in a league of its own, I'm talking about AAA games with million dollar budgets.

  • RealAssHistoryHours [he/him,they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    My friend is a UPS driver and he said he would come home from delivering boxes to deliver boxes in Death Stranding. It was that good.

      • WalterBongjammin [they/them,comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        It's kind of like the game lets you have a little taste of what work might be like under communism (except with ghosts and delivery bandits)

        • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          3 years ago

          Delivery bandits are the counter revolutionaries.

          I do wish there was a re-education/recruitment mechanic like in MGS5. Where you could knock out a Mule and carry them to a distribution center to turn them into a porter. That way you could non-lethally clear an area permanently.

          • WalterBongjammin [they/them,comrade/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Yeah, that would be great. In general, I kind of wished that them and the ghosts weren't in the game. I just liked delivering things, having to navigate the ghost areas was what made me give up in the end

            • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
              hexagon
              ·
              edit-2
              3 years ago

              Ziplines make the ghost areas irrelevant, they're basically just level blocks. You go through once and set up a Zipline over it and never have to do it again unless you want to.

              You can also just tool up with grenades and anti-BT guns to kill the thing and the area is ghost free for like an hour so you can set up your Zipline unimpeded. They're super easy to kill once you have the hemetic rounds and the hemetic grenades.

              Those areas always exist on the shortest path to force you to take the mountainous/roundabout route until you're high enough level to just take them on. I think the game would be too easy without them.

    • PaulSmackage [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      My buddy is a truck driver who comes home from hauls in order to play euro truck simulator with his custom wheel setup. Something about the familiarity and the ability to fail without consequence.

    • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      He knocked it out of the park. I really hope the weird negative reviews don't permanently ruin him.

      This game is a genuinely unique masterpiece and honestly feels like it was written as a parody of the pandemic hero stuff lol. Kinda ahead of us time by a few months.

        • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Especially now that he has all the money and people expect him to be weird.

      • Des [she/her, they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        holy shit i just realized that it's basically a twisted prediction of the near future when he made it

        • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          3 years ago

          It's unsettling...they keep calling the delivery boy a hero, everyone's locked inside because the outside will kill you, if someone does go outside and dies entire cities get wiped out, you need a mask/hood to survive in the timefall, America's infrastructure is collapsing, just uncanny...

          • Des [she/her, they/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            very much so! my partner and i are planning on watching one of the cutscene "movies" put together soon and i think it's going to be sooo much more relevant now.

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    It never clicked for me, but I think I was playing it wrong. All the climbing was annoying. I hated sneaking around things I couldn't see. I hated sitting through four cutscenes to have Norman Reedus make poop grenades.

    I'm also a hoarder in games and I want to carry every single thing I see. The game actively punished me for trying to carry too much equipment, even though I'd usually have no idea how much equipment I'd need to take on each trip.

    That said I really respect the game for being something I've never played before. It really is a rare jewel. The scenery is gorgeous. I love that you can take a nap and you have a piss meter. There need to be more games like this one despite how much I hate playing it. I love its mere existence.

    • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      It was like Kojima wanted to make a game about forming bonds with other players and not one about killing (especially because killing someone means you have to spend 3 hours trecking up the mountain to an incinerator to burn their body before they go nuclear).

  • QuillcrestFalconer [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I looked at some let's plays and found it extremely boring. Looked just like a fancy walking simulator

    • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      It kinda is, but it's something that you need to play yourself to really get. The whole idea is that everything starts out super hard, but as you progress the game gets easier and you can use more structures and paths created by other people. You don't get the actual physical feeling of getting better just watching someone. You need to actually control the character and feel the progression from falling after stepping on a pebble to sprinting over a mountain with 200kg of medical supplies to save a dying mother.

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      It's...something. It's post-apocalyptic scifi where scary things happen sometimes but usually everything is really chill and relaxing.

    • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      Kinda? The ghosts are a bit spooky, but after the first few encounters they just become bosses. They're surprisingly similar to the Super Mario Sunshine bosses.

      Most of the game you're just delivering trinkets to people and building roads or ziplines to complete orders quickly.

  • blobjim [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Does the infrastructure building matter much? I haven't used it yet and I'm at Port Knock City.

    • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      Yes. Once you get to South Knot, you need the highway so you can deliver materials and do timed missions. Ziplines are essential to deliver fragile materials quickly, bridges make robot deliveries more efficient, as you play and people in your game start forging paths, the game gets exponentially easier to the point that you're driving around delivering tons of materials at a time in your van.

      When you get the BT umbilical knife, you can clear areas of BTs too and it's like you're slowly bringing the sunshine back.

    • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      You need most of them in the mountains, and have a pair for each moderately hard to reach area connecting it to a highway. That way you can pull up a truck and zip back and forth from the truck to the location until the order is finished.

      • TheModerateTankie [any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I set them up so I could zip back and forth through the entire map, and it payed off incredibly well in the end.

        • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          3 years ago

          Oh yeah, the ziplines feel like cheating sometimes. Especially when you have high bridge link and get other people's lines. Literally get to skip entire sections of the map.

    • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      Dead Man is dead, Die Hardman dies hard, Heart Man has a heart problem, and Sam Porter is a porter.

  • NewAccountWhoDis [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Death Stranding is one of the best games that I will never ever ever play again but was really entertaining and unique when I did it.

    • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      Kojima games have an insane wind up. Like you won't get critical abilities until like 15 hours in. In DS, you don't get the car until you make it most of the way across the map, and that comes before guns and the ability to do damage to the ghosts.

      As you unlock new abilities, it becomes this really interesting open systemic experience. Kinda like the Mario games or Dishonored games.

  • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    I love the part of the game where you disgustingly chug a Monster Energy TM.

    Oh and the shower that hides your naughty bits with another advertisement.

    Or lazily using real actors instead of designing unique and interesting characters because they knew it would make them more money.

    • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      Once you do the time fall farm mission it becomes a porter instead of a monster energy. I can kinda forgive it for being so hammy because it's such a goofy ass game.

      I'm sure Norman Reedus only said he'd do it of they plugged his show and they decided the best place to plug it was whenever you take a shit which is kinda funny.

  • zxcvbnm [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    The constant shoulder button balancing is bad ergonomics, but I like the overall concept. Building roads and ziplines is the most fun. Traversal ladders and ropes are really fun too.