Death Stranding Reviews
Death Stranding is an excellent game with a lot of content and a ton of unique angles. The story is straight-up dumb a lot of the time and things can get tedious and clunky, but the thrill of exploration and making your own way overcomes all obstacles. Just like. Ugh. Sam Porter Bridges.
Slow, weird, and indulgent, but a true original, and a journey that will linger in your mind long after it's over.
With production values that are through the roof and an extremely engaging story, Death Stranding is among Hideo Kojima's best games. The moment-to-moment gameplay, however, falls short due to its repetitiveness, and the long stretches without any real action make it difficult to recommend the game to all open-world fans. Death Stranding is something different, and only approaching it with an open mind will reveal the brilliance of its themes, its characters and its hauntingly beautiful dystopian world.
Death Stranding is a wholly unique and fresh experience that will surely appeal to only a few, and the surprisingly engaging experience of essentially being a delivery man in the post-apocalypse is hypnotizing. Kojima's standout weird and wacky writing is left unhinged here, and that can excite some or terrify others, but the truth is that Death Stranding on PC is definitely the ultimate version of such a very, very strange game.
As thrilling as it is boring, as fantastic as it is mundane, but one thing's for sure - there's truly nothing else like it.
A masterpiece class of game design which surpasses your every expectation.
Even if Death Stranding’s narrative was good — and it’s not — a game needs to have actual gameplay. What you find within is abysmal; frustrating, tedious and beyond repair — even with the addition of DLSS on PC. It is to be avoided at all costs.
Most big-budget games just don't take risks these days. With Death Stranding, Kojima has taken one million risks, and virtually all of them pay off. Like the box art says, it's "a Hideo Kojima game," and there's nothing else quite like it.
Death Stranding is an interesting look at what makes a game a game, and not much else.
It's hard to avoid the cliché "This game is not for everyone" when reviewing Death Stranding. It's equally hard to recommend it to anyone who doesn't like to walk a lot in video games. Even so, if you're open to new experiences in AAA games, you might be surprised, as long as you don't expect good writing and short cutscenes. Finishing the game after about 40 hours, I can say that it was mostly a solid experience with engaging, polished gameplay, excellent sountrack and stunning visuals.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
This could very well be your Game of the Year, and with a game as “connected” and polarising as Death Stranding, it will no doubt keep us talking, theorising and speculating for years to come, and that is truly something spectacular.
Gameplay and storyline complement each other perfectly to form a coherent whole - a feat that Kojima has long striven for, but never quite achieved before. Not least because of this, Death Stranding is a rare masterpiece that will no doubt gain cult status over the years. The quality of the title is beyond any doubt, and although critics will always find flaws, Death Stranding is like a glimmer of hope in the face of an entertainment industry that is so painfully choking from a lack of innovation.
Review in German | Read full review
This is a contemplative odyssey that is ultimately a story about the triumph of the human spirit in spite of entropy.
I challenge anyone to say that Death Stranding is a walking simulator or that the video game medium is not as expressive as cinema and once again I invite you to get closer to this work.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Though it won't be for everyone, Death Stranding is an unconventional yet satisfying game with top-tier storytelling, wonderful acting, and a fantastic, off-the-wall story.
If leaden pacing, meddlesome gameplay, and turgid storytelling is Kojima’s way for us to “build bridges” with one another, I’d rather have the wall be ten feet higher.
Death Stranding is the most original game I've played in this generation. And it is to be appreciated that there are still creators who decide to skip the established conventions and have the courage to go a step further and present such different and personal proposals, such as Death Stranding. Kojima returns to the world of videogames with a surprising, emotional, original title. With an impeccable technical finish, a great script and a staging that will take a long time to forget. Kojima again exceeds expectations.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Death Stranding is not for everyone. This isn't the first game that asks players to push through and grind. Ask anyone who's played Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. But that game asks you to fight through chaos and fury. Death Stranding asks you to embrace the process of work and the journey, trusting that you'll feel rewarded at the end. For my part, I did. If you think of a Kojima game as an event, then you should know what you're signing up for. That's the best way to enjoy it. If not, you'll be in the middle of a beautiful landscape, wondering what the hell you're doing out there, maybe even a little stranded.
The vast wilderness laid out in front of you, with a simple objective to deliver a package. It sounds boring, but it’s far from it. It sounds simplistic, yet it’s anything but. It’s a beautiful capture of the way games are meant to be. The best ones not only provide hours upon hours of entertainment and fun gameplay, but they make you ponder the important questions. They get you to fall for their characters and become so invested that you have to see what happens next as quickly as possible. They deliver upon the premise of being game-changing. That’s exactly what Death Stranding has done. Is it perfect? No. But it isn’t supposed to be. Writing this game off as so many people did initially is one of the biggest tragedies to happen in the industry in quite some time. You owe it to yourself to play and experience everything Death Stranding has to offer. Get lost in the moments that matter, and feel for these characters as we did.
Death Stranding is a game about connections, common understandings and hope. It's also a game where the earth can swallow you up and you can be attacked by a giant tar monster. It manages to do both of those things whilst maintaining a consistent story and tone on its way to being one of the most compelling games of the generation.