See you on the beach - the thread for Hideo Kojima's DEATH STRANDING

*rocks BB way too quickly*

Death Stranding (2019) @giantbomb @jeffgerstmann @taswell #DeathStranding pic.twitter.com/CIsjHTgE47

— Jacob! (@JacobGehnert) November 9, 2019

18 hours deep, still in chapter 3. happily building roads.

the design and aesthetic are top notch. i love that HD means you can really read all the dumbass slogans kojima slathers over every surface. even the corny music works, when it swells up and the camera pulls back crossing a giant open space. the upward-floating debris, the weird tendrils hanging from the hovering overpasses, the porter bots wearing little shoes and singing to themselves.

trudging slowly over wet sand with an enormous stack of high-performance underwear crates is fun. putting ladders in stupid places is fun. getting and sending thousands of likes is fun. rocking the baby is reasonably fun (and i spend most of my day entertaining an irl toddler). feel like most reviews don't mention that the game is actually fun and satisfying to play. when you do something stupid and drop every fucking thing you are carrying (a rare occurrence unless you are not paying any attention), mashing triangle to pick stuff up is hilarious. it's got a similar feel to snake picking stuff up in mgs, it's a really fast animation and when you mash it norman reedus goes fucking nuts throwing shit back on his cargo stack. feels good.

love the bananas story and setting.

the walking simulator is my favorite game genre and this sounds fucking awful to me

it's too bad everyone established "walking sim" as a flippant term for narrative adventure games because now that there's an actual walking sim we don't have a term for it that won't cause confusion

how does the online element of this game work? online players can affect the landscape based on things they leave out for each other... but does that mean that technically you might be able to bump into each other and if enough people play it there could be thousnads of Reedus's walking around? I take it that's not the case?

i've already floated 'stumbling simulator' tbf xp

“Drudgery sim”?

xp it's asynchronous, it'll load some amount of other players' constructions into your game, prioritizing people on your PS friends list, but you're not actually in the same instance of the game world as anyone else

'Slow Gaming'

other people can contribute to your constructions and vice versa so the resource accumulation/distribution is less onerous. i like upgrading ppl's stuff when i don't feel like hauling a zillion kg of metal back to whatever knot city.

i think the cutscenes' emphasis on connections and logistics are telling but what really gives it away is calling the bandits MULEs. i feel like kojima is in direct dialogue with M.U.L.E., advancing a vision of radical generosity over that game's free market ruthlessness.

so let's go with "post apocalyptic socialism sim"

aw shit, i think by mentioning MULE you just made me buy this goddammit

it rules forks just do it

damn u

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Box4XDvBSgE

I am kind of disappointed because it seemed like I was going to finally meet Mads' character and you.. kind of encounter him? not really. I'm sure it'll come later.

This is the first game where I've gotten something that seems like it could cause lethal damage after having some random incapacitating items and I feel really hesitant about the idea of shooting people. Those MULE guys seem like assholes, but do I really need to injure them that badly?

“Drudgery sim”?

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses)

that's sort of what i like about gaming, ultimately at a certain point they all boil down to tedious drudgery. commit this otherwise useless sequence of button presses to muscle memory. this vision of gaming has been around for at least as long as pac-man - i remember as a child reading books on how to get good at pac-man and it was all rote execution of patterns. we pay money for the chance to do routine things.

This thread is the manifestation of the game I was most looking forward to, please update with tales of dystopian banality

the irony of the fact that this will take until Wednesday to deliver is not lost on me

I think the banality aspect has been oversold, to an extent. There have been a number of games with interesting landscapes, but I can't remember many details of them past rote pathfinding. Might have to jump over some rocks, may encounter an impassable area. In this game, not only is the world very beautiful, but the obstacles seem meaningful. Do I set up a ladder to make it past, or do I go around and use my tools later?

When I connect a new area, will I discover that the other way up a hill that seemed insurmountable on the map already has a series of ropes and ladders placed by someone online, making my journey that much shorter? There's a joy of discovery to it

yeah, the game isn't boring at all. in its insistence on paying attention to your surroundings and to your movements it's not at all unlike metal gear solid, just without the trappings of Tactical Espionage Action. that absence is the engine of Gamer Backlash, plus i think there's a (faulty) collective assumption of rebuke in that absence.

So it's actually fun?

what if I told you in 2019, that a video game would not only get the idea of "likes" from strangers giving that kick of dopamine, but did so in a way that made it a constructive gameplay dynamic?

there are some abuses of it, like spamming of a bunch of signs that a player has to pass through near home locations, but overall it's a well-balanced mechanic

Still looking for clarity: if you play offline, that whole aspect of the game is nullified?

You get "likes" from doing certain tasks in the game, but the abundance of physical objects in the landscape won't appear

so there's no benefit to the likes if you're offline?

my understanding is that the online components don't require playstation plus

(if that is the issue)

I'm perversely avoiding any actual reviews or gameplay videos atm because every anecdotal comment somehow confuses me further re: what this game even is/is about. Which I find fascinating.

it's possible some of the structures are put up by the NPC porters (your job) in the game, as a few appear, but I don't know that anyone reviewing or even playing the game has done it completely offline

the "likes" are what levels up one of your five metrics

i've gotten likes from NPC porters for shit i've left lying around

OL, there's a backstory that at the core establishes this post-apocalyptic world, what the precursor event was, and some of the basics that differentiate this world from our own. The story starts to answer a lot of the unknowns, but a lot of it is "we discovered this technology, it did amazing things, and something horrible happened" with some additional elements related to the fact knowledge was lost in the chaos and your NPC peers are discovering the history as you are.

fwiw the thread (strand?) title here is a reference that becomes clear not far into the game

finally a game that can breach the high watermark set by bioshock for creepiest cosplay

oh man there's gonna be a thousand norman reeduses at comicon
fat reedus, skinny reedus, buff reedus, black reedus, ups delivery uniform reedus, amazon delivery uniform reedus, DHL delivery uniform reedus, asia reedus, sexy reedus, mecha reedus, dog reedus...

I'm wondering what point in the game unlocks the Chvrches song!

The non-score musical parts so far are ok, but I feel like Kojima has found a band that's halfway between Imagine Dragons and Coldplay

I guess I should say vibe-wise, since there's not just one band

This is actually pretty fun and addictive. I don’t think the gameplay footage really sells it. There is a kind of tactile satisfaction in hauling yourself over the landscape that doesn’t really translate well to someone not holding the controller.

Not without its problems. The MULE and BT enemy encounters seem really simplistic and half-baked. I’m down with de-emphasizing combat, but I wish those systems were a little more sophisticated.

There are certain elements that seem to be deliberately irritating. Trudging through BT morass, mashing buttons as monster arms tear cargo off your back while a baby is crying in your face via the controller speaker is a good example. But that stuff is relatively minor/brief.

I've only had one BT battle encounter so far! And it was right at the beginning, before I really got the dynamic. If you're cautious and well-stocked with grenades or some of the later weapons, you can knock those suckers back to the afterlife.

I kind of want to trigger a battle because apparently if you take out one of the larger enemies that appear, they drop a ton of crystals

gameplay in the looks a bit like a walking version of spintires, would that be accurate?

THE HEART-SHAPED BUBBLE

the president's henchman is 'die hardman' who wears a leather suit, cravat and METAL SKULL MASK 24/7 i can't

i ended up just running the fuck away from the annoying BTs at the incinerator, suddenly found myself at the edge of a cliff, and somebody named igor had left.... a rope for me! at the edge! i liked the shit out of it and rappelled away, thanks igor.

thomas i think spintires is more frustrating and lets you screw yourself over. here a modicum of attention will keep you upright.

love this game. just got the "speed skeleton" and i am booking it across this rock strewn ghost-scape. also i am getting the rhythm of infiltrating BT areas so it's less of a drag. stupid MULEs not so much. i'll figure them out.

I’ve gotten pretty good at shooting MULES in the face with my bolo gun. Drops em.

Game really starts opening up in chapter 3. Trucking my stolen MULE mobile down the highway, wind in my hair. Feels good.

just got the BRIDGES truck, really adds to the UPS vibe. loading that motherfucker up with claimed metals and ceramics all the way to south knot city.

Tracer, Igor was the guy in the truck with the corpse at the very beginning!

Ahhhh!

I've been trying to put a certain feeling into words and I think this is how one says this these days.. This game has big Tomb Raider 1 energy

Just NOT

Back to gta? Ugh

turn the difficulty way down!

it doesn't really matter, and I think the third one was the one I found easiest? if it's the one I am thinking of, I took out everyone but him with stealth

yeah the third one is the easiest and the last time. you're quite close to completing

I think a lot of people are taking the senseless player punishment of this game and somehow reading that as pleasure or innovation. It is neither

what do you mean by player punishment?

I think a lot of people are taking the senseless player punishment of this game and somehow reading that as pleasure or innovation. It is neither

there’s actually very little punishment meted out! either to the character or to the player.

I know the “oh no, he falls a lot and it’s hard” thing gets a lot of coverage but even playing the main storyline quests without doing side tasks gets you sufficient gear to do the work relatively easily, and the internet content basically hands you bunker homes, road segments/ziplines, and gear.

It’s only as punishing as you want to make it

Sorry guys I was taking out some aggression on this game last night. I lowered the damn difficulty and dispatched Mads for the final time (?). Now trudging on across the map again with those hot air balloons full of black pus.

it really is crazy how much this game anticipates coronavirus.

it was really strange picking this up and starting to play it a week before lockdown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuiebiTBvDY

Started this last night, there was a point where I just wanted to save and quit but I had to get through 40 minutes of cut scenes before I could access the menu again.

👍

Went back to this after a year away. I was a bit rusty at first. There's so much lore and little control-aspects you get wrapped up in when you first start, it's hard to remember everything.
That said, one thing I remembered immediately was the landscape, the map. I know it's a cliché to say this but the Terrain really feels like a character in this game. You learn to use it, to negotiate it, to tame it, until you feel like you know each area like ab old friend.
I've spent the last couple of nights sinking time into getting more stars on my trousers and looking for memory chips (which are very hard to find).

What a great game this is. I’ll never revisit it but will recommend

Anyone still playing this? I'm close to platinuming the thing, along with listening to the DS audiobook (which is fairly entertaining in a way). Just need to do like a million more specific styles of delivery on hard mode without messing everything up. For a game that's fairly easy, that's not an easy challenge considering you often have to do a speed run with a lot of cargo to a place you haven't been in a while, so all the ziplines need fixing. Generally find I have to do the journey with plenty of chiral crystals and no luggage, then go back and do it again via the zips and with the luggage. It takes an awful lot of planning and foresight

I've just started it..

dl i genuinely admire the grind. i want you to keep reporting back.

Arguably the game really comes into its own once the story's out the way and it becomes more like a strategy city building game

So the rarest kinds of missions that you have to do in order to get the platinum are the time-based missions.

Nevertheless you have to do 20 of them in about a quarter of the alloted time limit on hard mode.

A strong zip line network is essential, but often it turns out that quite a few of the zip lines I set up earlier in the game have since been destroyed by timefall.

Now that wouldn't be a terrible issue until I get to a dead end: I can see the next zip line post, but it's dead. And inevitably, I'm bang in the middle of either a MULE camp or a BT area.

The only thing I can do is to sneak or fight my way to the dead zip line - which is usually in a really high-up place, hard to get to place - and fix it.

But then I get there, and I realise I don't have enough chiral crystals to fix the damn thing, and now I'm stuck up a horrible rocky cliff miles away from where I came from and even further away from where I'm going.

Chiral crystals are hard to come by. You can pick them off the ground and also drop off points will give you a few.

So obviously the best way to get loads of crystals is to get into fights with big BTs, which is very counterintuitive for me because I find the BT fights extremely stressful. I haven't really worked out a strategy for them other than run, jump, shoot, repeat. But it's a great way of farming enough crystals for me to rebuild these zip networks.

All that effort just to complete a single mission for which I'll probably never need that zip network again.

Still keeping on keeping on. These timed deliveries are ruthless. I zipped my way all the way from Geologist to EvoDevo, making a tiny error on my way. I made the delivery bang on 5 minutes and still didn't get the Legend of Legends

Plus I can spend a long time building the perfect zip network only to find that once it's completed there are no more valuable deliveries to make and I have to set up elsewhere

So I platinumed this the other week. It took a very very long time. For some reason I was expecting a bit more fanfare on reaching the platinum, but no, it's the same as if you get any trophy.

There is a DS shaped hole in my life now though. Part of me feels as though I could just play it forever, just exploring, making deliveries, making sure my ziplines are optimised to perfection, fighting BTs and Mules and gaining off the lucre.

Instead I downloaded Metal Gear Solid V. Now I've never really played these games before. I did watch a friend play one of them on PS2 a long way back now, but I remember nothing about it.

Have to say it's confounded me. I've no idea what's going on, even though I'm playing the prequel game. I feel like I've been dumped straight into it with no explanation of what is going on, what I'm really meant to be doing, nor how to do it. There's barely any introduction to the controls and it's all a bit frustrating. I've tried and tried to sneak past the enemy guards so I can rescue these kids in cages but they always see me and they always fun me down before I can run for cover. Not sure it's quite for me. I like the slow anti-violence of DS

Yeah Death Stranding has hardly any stealth bits and this is basically ALL stealth.

Use the binoculars to 'tag' enemies so you can keep track of them.

You can kill guards and then pick them up and dump them behind something to get them out of the way. Later on in the main game there's a really cool alternative to this.

MGS is actually mostly 'anti-violent' in the sense that firing your gun is almost always a consequence of failure to keep hidden and it feels very panicky and you know you've fucked up.

tw when I say killguards I mean sneak up behind them and grab them and then kill them. You can also choke them out to put them to sleep but they will eventually wake up, like the MULEs do.

That's cool. I couldn't work out how to do it (sneak up and strangle) though because the game tells you very little about the controls (I've been muddling my way through on the whole). When I go to the controls section it seems to take me to a website with trailers for the game(?!?)

Yeah it’s lame.

Once you’ve grabbed them you should see three options. One is to force a piece of information out, one is to kill and one is to choke. To choke them I think it’s literally the same button you use to grab them in the first place. But you’re already holding that down. So what you have to do is hammer it several times.

Uh oh.... there's a "Director's Cut"???

Ah PS5 only it seems -_-

what?? this is insane:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sHd62brMtc

I mean obviously I want to play this but the Fragile Circuit is far fetched even for this game

Didn’t know this was out! 10 dollar upgrade for the Director’s Cut if you own the original. I lucked out on a PS5 and have recently made a significant TV upgrade so I’m currently downloading.

Weirdly don’t feel super compelled to replay this even though I loved it the first time around? Enough additions and enhancements (this seems tailor made for PS5 controller bells n whistles) to make me want to give it a spin at least. May well end up dozens of hours in and obsessively creating zipline networks all over again.

I'm desperate to play the Director's Cut, and I only recently platinumed the original. It really really is worth going for those trophies if you haven't already and enjoyed the game

Recently hiking on the Cornish coast, and half the time clambering over rocks all I could think to myself was boy wish someone had left a ladder here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONfg5qeK_mI

STRAND TYPE GAMING

i knew this revive was for dunkey before i clicked

"The only thing he listens to is Radiohead"

I guess this is going here

2/2
"The LEGO Batman Movie" is a masterpiece that dares to step into this tacit understanding.

— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) March 14, 2022

I’m back on my bullshit (playing DS: Director’s Cut on PC)

Not sure how I feel about some of the additions, but the entire field packed with the floating balloon-like visible BT creatures was cool. I’ve got so many chiral crystals now.

Trudging through mountain passes in the snow remains a test of endurance, but one I appreciate

I did find a good use for the cargo cannon, though. I screwed up and managed to get my truck stuck in a treacherous rocky area when it was full. Built a cannon near it and got all the cargo to a safe harbor

I did find a good use for the cargo cannon, though. I screwed up and managed to get my truck stuck in a treacherous rocky area when it was full. Built a cannon near it and got all the cargo to a safe harbor

I think if I went back in it would be to get all the zip lines working. Those things are dope

Yeah, my save game I was working on was pretty early so I transferred it to the DC

Unfortunately it was early enough that my chiral bandwidth was low and I can’t zipline it up

As someone who platinumed the original version of the game a while back, I'll say that the real game starts once the story is over. It becomes a deeply strategic experience setting up those zip lines just so that you can shave seconds off each run

Based

So I recently realised I could transfer my platinumed PS4 game onto the PS5 Director's Cut. So pleased!

Bit miffed to find a lot of my zipwire network now has holes in it - that's not supposed to happen is it? Ziplines don't deteriorate just cos you left the game alone for a few months? Nevertheless, it's now saying a lot of my lines are out of range, despite me having placed them super carefully so I could get from one end of the map to the other in mere seconds.

I'm yet to do any of the cool new stuff. I understand there's catapults, a race track and a shooting range now?

They do deteriorate, I believe, regardless of whether you've been playing or not :(

It’s a feature of Kojima’s “strand-type gaming”