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Death Stranding celebrates its se𒅌cond birthday today, and it remains one of the most unique games ever created. Even now, it’s hard to com🅰prehend how a game of this scale was able to fulfil its creative vision with such unparalleled freedom. Yet here it is.
Hot on the heels of his emotional split from Konami, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hideo Kojima was given the economic and creative freedom to craft something entirely distinct, a game that didn’t seek to replicate anything that had ever been made before. That alone is an enormous undertaking given we exist in a world where the majority of triple-A blockbusters have grown into homogenous copycats that trade on tried-and-tested ideas instead of taking any substantial risk. We’re getting a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:remake of The Last of Us less than ten years after the original forced so many studios to cop🔥y its emotional sad-dad storytelling, which really does say it all.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Death Stranding chose to walk its own path, even if it meant losing all its cargo and eating shit down a jagged ravine along the way. It’s easily one of the most memorable gaming experiences I’ve ever had, partly because it was so steadfast in what it hoped to achieve, pulling me and my friends into its post-apocalyptic world wiღth a determination that remains unmatched. The majority of people didn’t seem to agree with how immediately smitten we became, but we didn’t care.
Granted, it’s▨ drenched in self-indulgent exposition and mechanics that feel designed to frustrate you, but this irksome nature eventually settles into one of satisfaction as you learn to navigate its harsh landscapes and gel with its unorthodox approach to pretty much everything. This is a weird game, but a special one. Upon its release it felt like Death Stranding was the popular game to hate. It was all about piss grenades and ridiculous character names, with many latching onto certain aspects and making the same jokes over and over and over because it seemed like the hip and trendy thing to do. They missed the point, failing to understand the fundamental human connection that Death Stranding was trying to establish, an exploration of empathy that is slowly but surely being lost in the modern age. The end result may have been a bit saccharine, but Kojima allowed us to form meaningful bonds with friends across the internet.
I’ve been writing about games for a number of years now, and I will remember the month I spent reviewing Death Stranding for the rest of my life. I was in a group chat with renowned Chad Death Stranding enjoyer Cian Maher and another friend of mine, and we spent ♕weeks deciphering exactly what this game was all about as w♔e progressed through the story and approached it in vastly different ways. Some of us rushed through the narrative to meet embargo, while others spent dozens of hours trudging through the open world doing every side quest they came across.
Every approach was valid, and each one was defined by a level of nuanced co-operation that felt beautifully natural. We didn’t have to make plans to uncover vehicles and structures left behind by one another, we simply came across them, smiling as I piled an avalanche of likes into Cian’s energy dispenser as it blasted out a Bring Me The Horizon track. When I recall such moments the game seems unabashedly silly, but those are the memories that stick with you, little snapshots into the past that continually prove that Death Stranding is capable of elicitin🌳g feelings that no other game can.
People often complain about Death Stranding’s world being empty and devoid of character, with each mission being a tedious trek across the unknown as you complete mission after mission in exchange for minimal rewards. But isn’t that kind of the point? The game’s opening hours aren’t subtle in describing how broken this world is. Humanity has regressed into solitary communities that pride themselves on isolation. The outside is too dangerous, populated by monsters who go﷽rge themselves on human su💞ffering.
As a porter who is tasked with uniting this vast nation, your prime directive is to slowly link these disparate outposts back together to form a sense of connection. When a new city or location is linked up to the Chiral Network, the entire region comes alive for the first time in years. The inventions of fellow players now flood the map, whether it be in the form of clumsy assembled vehicles or sprawling road systemsꦕ that make navigating this weird interpretation of America a breeze. Death Stranding can be frustrating, but intentionally so - once you embrace its thematic foundations and understand what it’s trying to say. Hideo Kojima isn💜’t exactly subtle, so if that message went over your head I’m afraid there’s no saving you.
Death Stranding is such a perfect exercise in melancholy. I’m an artsy fartsy bitch so I love media that causes me to ruminate on my own existence, and how my place on this mortal plane can be interpreted in countless different ways. We’re all living beings who will eventually perish, but Hideo Kojima’s accomplished walking simulator had me contemplating the vastness of the world we occupy and how striking its emptiness becomes when you’re thrust into the middle of 💮it. With the exception of a few mercenary stragglers and a bunch of creepy tar ghosts, Sam Porter Bridges is well and truly alone on his journey. Even the people he meets seem eager for him to step out into the unknown, so afraid to face their own responsibilities that they literally place them on the back of a man who wants no part in this charade.
His silence speaks volumes, with greetings and words of gratitude slipping off his lips with a tap of the touchpad, but moments like this are so rare that the silence always comes out on top. Death Stranding is a lonely game, but one where you never really feel alone. Thereܫ’s a permanent aura of companionship through each and every action you perform, knowing your footsteps will be left behind for someone else to discover long after the controller has been abandoned. Your quest is over, but the hardships endured to reach the finish line will act as stepping stones for those who follow.
There’s nothing else in the medium that manages to accomplish this level of camaraderie, imbuing you with a ray of hope throughout an ﷺinter🔜pretation of the apocalypse that is determined to leave you feeling lost, like there’s no way forward for humanity anymore. But there is, and Death Stranding is eager to make you smile, cry, laugh, and scream in anger at how strange and perfect it manages to be. It isn’t for everyone, but to discount it as a weird experiment from Hideo Kojima and nothing more is a vast disservice. Two years on, it’s still a misunderstood masterpiece I can’t sing the praises of enough.
