Death Stranding Review: Pros, Cons, And Rating

Death Stranding released on November 8th, 2019 and has left gamers with mixed feelings. What makes the game so controversial? Why do gamers have such mixed reviews?

Join G FUEL team members Zach Dickerson and Wes Nemecheck AKA Wes Nemo as they break down the pros and cons of the game, and give it an overall rating in this official G FUEL Death Stranding review:

Video Transcription

Hey, what’s up everyone, welcome back to another G FUEL Game Review. My name is Zach, and today we are going to be reviewing one of the most hyped games of recent memory, Death Stranding.

Death Stranding was developed by Kojima Productions and lead by studio director Hideo Kojima. This game features a star-studded cast in Norman Reedus, Mads Mikkelsen, Guillermo Del Toro, and many more.

The game takes you on a confusing journey through a broken United States where a catastrophic event known as the Death Stranding left the entire country’s infrastructure severely damaged. You play as Sam Bridges, who is a Porter that is tasked with connecting and delivering cargo to cities known as KNOTs.

Pros

So now that you have a small slice of knowledge regarding the background of the game, let’s get into the review. The first thing that I noticed when playing Death Stranding is the strange dichotomy of the focus of the game. While on the one hand you obviously have focus on the setting and narrative without an emphasis on gameplay, you also have a huge focus solely on gameplay that doesn’t touch a narrative.

It sometimes feels like I’m climbing a rainy mountain on Breath of the Wild. Except that’s what the majority of the game’s terrain feels like. Now if you were to get rid of the two most important elements in this game, those being the setting and narrative, what you have is a diverse inventory management system and FedEx Simulator.

Kojima Productions

Death Stranding also has a unique, shared single-player experience where players can place ladders or ropes nearly anywhere, and they will show up throughout everyone’s game world. When you come across a structure that was set by a player, you have a small window to smash the like button which updates for everyone.

Kojima Productions

Now they most likely added this because it was a cool feature. But it could also have greater meaning in the fact that games and social media connect the entire world. And we should utilize these platforms like tools that bring people together instead of tearing people apart.

Kojima and his team did a masterful job with the design of the game world. Even the smallest rocks can trip Sam, leaving all of his precious cargo scattered around, which can sometimes be funny and most times extremely infuriating.

Death Stranding is all about the human connection to the world and technology. For instance, Sam’s handcuffs are not only used to protect him, but they are also a device for communicating with those in the world around him. These handcuffs are primarily worn by those in the Bridges organization to facilitate logistics and data collection. This could be a metaphor that they are binding themselves to each other in hopes to reunite the American people.

Kojima Productions

Death Stranding’s vast narrative features remarkable character development that will leave you wanting more. But more so, the graphics are incredible. But that is to be expected, especially with today’s games, the voice acting, animations, cutscenes, and mostly everything that supports the narrative is nearly perfect.

Kojima Productions

Cons

So now that we have gone over quite a few things the game did right, let’s get into some negative aspects of Death Stranding. Starting off I will say the first 10 hours of this game is quite slow, and it won’t truly start to ramp up until you are connected to the Chiral Network. The gameplay in the first 10 hours is primarily walking from destination to destination, but the end game makes up for it featuring vehicles, motorcycles, and super futuristic zip lines. So don’t feel bad about rushing through things. It gets better.

Now if you don’t like games that make you think or have yet to understand a single Kojima MGS game, then you might want to pass on Death Stranding. But if you want to explore a vast open-world with a strong narrative, I strongly recommend picking up Death Stranding. Kojima definitely delivered with this game, yes the pun was intended!

For my final verdict, I give Death Stranding 4.5 scoops out of 5.

Disclaimer: This graphic is a ranking system used to rate video games and video games only. Do not use this as a guide for consumption.

Thank you for watching this G FUEL game review! If you have any suggestions on what game we should review next, be sure to let us know in the replies. And also don’t forget to share this review and let us know if you plan on buying this game. Until next time, this has been Zach, and I will talk to you guys on the next one.

Top image via Steam/Kojima Productions