Death Stranding review: An experience unlike anything else I’ve played in a long time

It’s a big call to make, but this game is an experience unlike anything else, and you’ll be thinking about it long after it has ended.

Are video games art or entertainment?

It’s been debated ever since the 1980s, and Death Stranding, developed by Kojima Productions and published by Sony on the PlayStation 4, is the best embodiment to date of the “Why not both?” answer to that question.

The game has been the subject of a long prerelease campaign that has left gamers and journalists alike more confused with every trailer Sony has released.

Something about ghost-detecting babies? Norman Reedus as a courier of some type? It’s in the future but there’s been an apocalypse? Mads Mikkelsen is in it too?

I will say it now: Despite all the weirdness in the promotional materials, the game makes sense and is very, very good – Game Of The Year candidate good, in fact.

Your character, Sam Porter Bridges, is portrayed by Norman Reedus – best known for his role as Daryl Dixon in The Walking Dead.

It’s hard to explain the plot of the game without spoiling a lot of the surprise, but in a nutshell, the game is set in a future America where a supernatural event known as the death stranding has occurred, destroying the country, unleashing ghosts on the world and forcing survivors into settlement clusters known as Knot Cities because apparently no one wants to give anywhere an actual name anymore.

In comes your character, Sam Porter Bridges – portrayed by Norman Reedus – who is a porter (courier) working for a company called Bridges that is trying to rebuild the United States of America by re-establishing a national package and mail delivery network, along with internet connections, between the various Knot Cities and outposts scattered across what remains of the country.

In essence, it’s the same premise as David Brin’s excellent 1985 science fiction book The Postman (a personal favourite of mine) and the 1997 Kevin Costner film based on it.

It’s not all just about delivering stuff and reconnecting America’s internet either – the traversal mechanics are really impressive, and I frequently found myself taking the most practical and realistic route, which usually wasn’t the shortest one.

Carrying cargo is a key part of the game, although there are enemies in the world who want to relieve you of it for their own purposes.

Cargo management is extremely important too – balance and weight play important roles, and navigating your way to your destination in challenging conditions is extremely rewarding with a real sense of achievement when you finally get there.

The controls just “feel” right too in a way that’s hard to explain in writing but translate really well to what’s happening on screen. There’s a real sense of relief in managing to keep your balance on a precarious mountainside crag and a sense of despair when you lose your balance, fall off a ledge into a fast-flowing river and watch your cargo get swept downriver into hazardous or difficult-to-reach territory.

Lost cargo features quite prominently in the game because you can pick up other human players’ cargo and deliver it for them as well as entrusting your own cargo to other players (in general) if you won’t be able to reach your destination.

On more than one occasion I would find lost cargo at a bend in the river or near the bottom of a difficult cliff – it was obvious how it ended up there – and since it was marked for a destination I was visiting, I would pick it up and deliver it, earning some in-game “likes” and a warm fuzzy feeling in the process.

What was interesting was seeing how it worked to help me too – there were times I lost cargo due to falls or deep rivers or enemy attacks and would get a message the next day or so later saying that another human player had recovered and delivered my lost cargo.

This co-operation with other players extends beyond picking up their mislaid luggage, however – when you set up a ladder or a climbing rope or build other utilities, it is available for every other player in that world. I lost count of the number of times my journey was aided by a well-placed ladder or useful climbing rope, and I went out of my way to set my own up for porters who would come after me too.

You don’t have to travel everywhere on foot – there are a few vehicles available that can make deliveries somewhat easier.

The graphics are absolutely stunning – I don’t know what sorcery Mr Kojima and his team have invoked, but the game world looks almost photorealistic, the character animations are first class, and the visual aspects are all just amazing in general, especially on a 4K HDR TV.

This is backed up by having several established actors in the game, including Reedus, Mads Mikkelsen, Léa Seydoux, Guillermo Del Toro and Troy Baker.

Despite being a great experience, the game does have a few flaws.

There is some jarring and egregious product placement in an early part of the game, and Death Stranding is very heavy on the whole “You have to save America” thing, too – apparently, it’s never occurred to anyone to go and see what’s happening in Canada or Mexico.

The scale on the maps is really out of whack, too. I might be at a location planning to travel to somewhere else, and on the map it may look like it’s going to be a real hike, but in reality I can literally see my destination from my starting point and can walk there in a minute or two.

That’s not to say the maps are small – far from it, and navigating them can be quite involved and treacherous – but given the otherwise blinding levels of polish in the game, it’s odd this appears to have been overlooked.

Also, you’ll rarely encounter other people in the world, with the exception of some enemies. There are a small number of fellow AI porters wandering about, but in my entire playthrough I saw maybe two; for the most part I was entirely on my own.

The performances from the main cast are excellent and superbly animated too.

Your enemies come in two varieties – supernatural entities known as BTs (ghosts) and Mules, who are essentially rogue couriers who have formed a cargo cult and like to go around stealing it wherever possible, often at gunpoint.

BTs are the souls of the dead trapped on Earth, and they’re mostly invisible except at very short range. If they come into contact, they will turn into a sort of tar-like pool full of figures that will try and drag Sam into it. If they succeed, Sam gets dragged into a mini-boss fight with a BT monster, and if he loses, it triggers what is known as a Voidout – essentially a nuclear explosion that will obliterate part of the map. This is, as you can imagine, not a desirable state of affairs.

As if atomic bomb ghosts and armed cargo cultists weren’t bad enough, even the weather is out to get you – rain ages anything it touches, causing damage – so getting caught in a storm can easily destroy your cargo and your equipment too, further adding to the challenge.

Director Hideo Kojima has said connection is the key theme of Death Stranding and this comes across very clearly in the story – sometimes a little obviously, though.

Being fairly avant-garde in some respects, it can be a challenge to keep up with everything the game is throwing at you story-wise, but the actual game aspects are very well done and innovative, and I found myself thinking about the game well after I’d finished playing it.

All in all, Death Stranding is an experience unlike anything else I’ve played in a long time and one I highly recommend you arrange express delivery for.

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Originally published as Death Stranding review: An experience unlike anything else I’ve played in a long time