These sites are ad—free

Mind of Hideo Kojima

Kojima said Death Stranding being about his deepest thoughts and views [of our world and life] and wants the world to become together. World peace!! This being connecting ‘strands’ and building ‘bridges’, but little he told that the gamers have to do this monotonous and boring job 40 hours. Sometimes your personal views of life and world should just stay inside you head.

From the very beginning of the game, all the characters explains things to Sam like he was born yesterday into that world. It doesn’t make any sense, but was the only way to explain all the bizarre things of the game to the player. Them continuing explaining things throughout the game, but they’re just pointing out the obvious and not adding anything valuable to the game. Even the plot itself is absolutely tenous and sometimes not making any sense, because it’s full of plot holes and inconsistencies.

Maybe that is Kojima’s ultimate technique to write intricately odd plots that easily are full of aspects that cannot be explained, or he himself even haven’t figured them out yet, and fixing this issue is just ignore them for later Heureka-moment.

Normally this wouldn’t never be tolarated in movies, tv-series and books, because the viewers need to be in some type of comprehension. Things have to make sense and not to be just pile of random stuff stitched together. In Death Stranding many situations are childish and serious moments [especially dialogues] are such cringe-worth badly written that I facepalmed myself most of the time. I’m pretty sure it’s nothing to do with a bad English translation, but rather purposely written by master-writer-wannabe-movie-maker Kojima himself.

Can you imagine there are enemies who have gone high/crazy from the ‘likes’ they got from online :D really; enemies high of Facebook likes. This has to be a joke :D I kinda understand the poorly made metaphora behind it of nowadays’ people living with the ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ and whatnot, but adding it to such context is just… horrible.

Players knows the best

Funny, when watching videos or reading fan theories (made according to all the videos and info released before launch) were those that interested me the most of this upcoming title. All the fan theories and ideas were MUCH, much more interesting, imaginative and well-thought than anything Death Stranding gave us in the end. To be honest, if the game would’ve been even close what many fans thought, the gameplay would’ve been more worthwhile. Kojima truly should hire those fans!!

I just wonder what he have thought, when reading fan theories and (hopefully) realizing how washy his creation was going to be compared to them.

The writing is actually SO BAD, that even the characters’ names are ridiculous and unimaginative, that they feel like quickly scraped concept ideas (FRAGILE, MAMA, DEADMAN, DIE-HARDMAN, HEARTMAN, BB, BEACHED THINGS), trying to be something spiritually meaningful, but only what they do is spoil the player by giving up their true agenda.

The Walking Death Stranding Hollywood

The character that I hate the most is Sam himself (SAM PORTER BRIDGES) *ugh—sigh, pun intented*, Norman Reedus’ acting job is very much like in The Walking Dead; one dimensional without any facial expressions, grunting most of the time and having no strong personality. This suites his role in The Walking Dead, but can he do any other acting role? I’m not sure and maybe the reason Kojima wanted him was the fact he liked Norman in the series, but poorly understood copying the exact same role (including the motorcycle, hairstyle and overall appearance) to Death Stranding simply doesn’t work. He seemingly wanted to use Norman’s current popularity and flair, rather than bothering to write him a appropriate new role. The same treatment almost goes with the other famous actors that got big roles in the game (such as GUILLERMO DEL TORO, MADS MIKKELSEN, LÉA SEYDOUX, TROY BAKER, LINDSAY WAGNER).

Feels like they are Kojima’s personally favourite Hollywood actors, rather than perfectly fitting into the game and story. This just gives another stamp on Kojima’s forehead that he’s not very credible upcoming film maker, when he doesn’t understand how basics of writing a role and finding the perfect actor for it works. I’m pretty sure some none-famous never-heard new actors would’ve made much better job fitting to the roles, giving Death Stranding more personal look, by being something were not used to see with the actors.

Kojima himself directing Death Stranding shows that the upcoming movies from his studio are likely going to flop, if he’s keeping up this kind of sloppy work. It’s a real shame that the huge potential of Death Stranding was all splurged and that is what annoys me with all this. Having all the tools (studio, funding, workers, artist, idea-ish, concept-ish) and he just couldn’t use them the best way possible. Maybe Konami could keep him in some kind of legally-sane state and after Kojima was released from them, he didn’t know how to work on his own. [Maybe this was the reason he was fired from Konami? For wanting to make some absolutely cracked Silent Hills game containing his absurd thoughts of worldpeace and connecting everyone by strands (whatever that ultimately even means).]

Game-changer in video game industry? Not so much

Gameplay-wise Death Stranding is poor and lacking, as well. All the balancing things with carrying the cargo was plain dull and getting on my nerves rather quickly. Carrying packages from place to place, sneaking past those BTs and if they got me, I ended up to underworld and I had to kill a boss to get myself back—now thinking of—to the actual hell of continuing the torture of endless walking simulation. All the bosses in the game were a way too easy, even in the maximum difficultness (HARD) the game was rather easy.

It’s just so exasperating that the game has some interesting and peculiar aspects and ideas and I can see where Kojima was aiming for, but the bad execution just kills them. I can guarantee there were good ideas and thoughts, but being (as Kojima says) ‘game-changing title in the video game industry’, in the end it’s nothing sort of.

The good things about Death Stranding is the visual beauty. Sadly, most of the areas are vast and empty. The characters, in the other hand, look insanely detailed and realistic from up close, but some having plastic-like skin making them look rather unnatural. All the objects look nicely detailed as well and the game technically performed well without any issues (played with PS4 Pro).

Hello, No Man’s Sky 2019!!

The reason of over-marketing and using famous actors, is perhaps to cover all the rest lacking things. It’s sad that Kojima had to go this low, rather than make a good game. Sony said they haven’t seen a studio make a video game this fast, well it’s easy and fast to make a game if there isn’t much of content in it. The advertisement of this game was insanely exaggerated, Kojima probably knew Death Stranding is trash and wanted to market it like No Man’s Sky with lying to the audience to make the copies fly off of the shelves. Well, if Death Stranding follows the same route, then in 2 years it probably have actual good content in it.

[Clarification: No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games fulfilled all the promises after 3 years of the launch]

Death Stranding is absolutely overrated and raised too high just sake of the name Hideo Kojima, who tries to be like some superstar Hollywood film maker—well then do movies and not games since Death Stranding is like watching a never ending movie i.e. not much to do than watch—especially extremely long cutscenes that were more tiring than interesting. It became very clear few years ago, when I saw Kojima’s social media updates that always contained something to boost his ego. Started hanging out with his new best friends (mostly Hollywood actors) as showing everyone how famous and important he is.

It actually got interesting towards the launch of Death Stranding and I remember commenting on his Twitter that ‘can we see something else than photos taken off-screen Sam sitting on the grass in empty playing area?’ since half of the year the updates were just like that. It was then when I also realized that the game is going to be bad.

I say, if you must “experience” this garbage, then simply watch non-commentary walkthrough videos on Youtube. You shouldn’t waste your money on this, if you do then be ready not to expect much from it, since it doesn’t contain anything than empty world and empty your pockets. [I had pre-ordered limited Death Stranding Collector’s Edition, but after reading players’ comments and reviews I decided not to spent 200€ on something that is horribly bad. Instead I just got the game, because I wanted to write a review of it. Otherwise I would’ve not bought the game.]

How much costs 10/10 review? Your dignity, that much

It became obviously clear all those reviews with perfect score, that came out before release day, were bought from big outlets. Truly sad and desperate move from Sony/Kojima to hide all the crap and make players buy Death Stranding, since once they have payed, the goal of collecting money into their pockets is fulfilled. When players got they hands on the game at launch, it didn’t took long when the TRUE reviews started to come out. Mostly players were disappointed of… everything, and those players who hadn’t played the game, thought it all was some kind of trolling and review bombing. Yeah, of course, when others’ opinions and thoughts doesn’t meet with yours = it must be a troll.

Honestly, players should start to demand refunds from wrongly advertised product—which might be even a criminal act, actually—and not very ‘world peaceful’ move from Kojima.

If he so badly wants to ‘connect the world’ and ‘people stay connected’ [as he keeps obsessively repeating over and over again in his social media updates] then maybe he should start a journey to walk across the globe with a ‘strand in his hands’ trying to ‘connect people’ [again, whatever that even means? Thinking of Human Centipede] and see how much FUN that is—doing the same thing over and over again.

Like Kojima said, his studio is going to do movies from now on… well, maybe that is the best move since if the games are this bad from him, he should quit being a game developer. At least he got good starting money from Death Stranding for his upcoming movies :] good luck with that.

(Review copy was not provided by publisher)

1/5

“The death sentence for players”

RELEASE DATE: Nov 8, 2019

GENRE: Action

DEVELOPER: Kojima Productions

PUBLISHER: Sony Interactive Entertainment

PLATFORMS: PlayStation 4

PC

These sites are ad—free