Why Is Death Stranding SO BAD?!

[Music] [Music] [Music] video kijima sits alongside the most influential game creators of all time he pioneered a whole new genre stealth with metal gear and solidified it with Metal Gear Solid and his knack for crafting expansive deep and often confusing storylines is well known within the gaming community Valken after going through the bull crap with Konami and the awful way they treated him and his departure Kojima set his sights on a new project exclusive to the ps4 and while diehard fans were throwing shade at Konami for their abhorrent Metal Gear survive they waited with bated breath to see what Kojima had in store death stranding a bold innovative title that Kojima envision would create a new genre of games was teased to the public after years of waiting and speculation it released and the results were polarizing very polarizing but what is it about death stranding that leaves people either loving it or despising it how could could Jima do wrong what's up with the story and all that weird stuff and most importantly how did the gameplay turn out well let's saddle up our cargo plug in our BB and cringe our way straight into this the game takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where the deaths stranding a cataclysmic event allowed beach things to appear in the world of the living does that sound confusing yeah it is tons of bad stuff happened and most of humanity is holed up inside isolated towns requiring Porter's or delivery boys to take precious supplies where they need to be this training begins with a cryptic monologue that sounds like it was written by a twelve-year-old once there was an explosion a bang which gave birth to time and space once there was an explosion a bang which set a planet spinning in that space once there was an explosion a bang which gave rise to life as we know it and then came the next explosion I'm no English teacher but I've gotta deduct points for the repetitive use of the word explosion please consult a thesaurus then we get a cool little montage to music that shows off the setting and we see a motorcycle trudging along through the desolate landscape it's soothing and unsettling at the same time this man is obviously running from the coming storm I can tell you if he doesn't like rain wouldn't last a day in Washington there's a bunch of birds and deer fleeing - and holy crap they're all dying crows are falling right out of the sky and it's clear that some horrible disease is killing them quickly this is a pretty cool scene and sets the dreary tone very well yes the rain and death stranding is called time fault and it causes rapid aging and death to whatever living thing it touches except plants for some reason and it damages cargo but not buildings also if everyone knows about time fall in this universe don't you think people would be smart enough to like wear masks look at this poor bastard who didn't come prepared Oh God that black tar heroin is headed straight for you run my dude run [Music] it's games trying to be serious and I just killed somebody with my motorcycle what the [ __ ] Sam hides in a cave or the monsters track him down they walk around and they walk around some more and they keep walking it looks like the whole world is made up of mud because they leave handprints everywhere now death stranding is trying to make this scene tense and frightening but to me it has the opposite effect so apparently the BTS can't be seen which makes things much easier for the animators and they can't see anything either and they also walk on giant human hands or they have giant hands for feet they only leave one print at a time and the thumbs clearly for a right and left hand [Music] from the tracks they lead me to believe the creature looks something like this and it walks like this death stranding does a horrible job of showing and explaining the threat to the point that it becomes unintentionally hilarious rainbow not a rainbow baby come lick what's up there's a rainbow thing there's a route oh what a [ __ ] rainbow are you trying to kill me no way am I gonna go outside and look at a rainbow that shit's dangerous so when you have a fictional sci-fi world that's weird and unnatural if the protagonist is as unfamiliar with the setting as we are it makes it easier to explain how the world works what's different about it you see it's done in like Star Wars with the force its energy surrounds us and binds us Lord of the Rings with the Rings so we understand what the rules of the universe are an expository dialogue will feel more natural because the things our character doesn't understand are explained to him and to us as well but death stranding starts spouting out jargon nonsense almost immediately tears Carol allergy what allergy so you have tombs like me I do tell me what that is I've got the extinction factor what's this right here what the hell are you talking about what's your level lady I just started the game I'm in the prologue didn't they just kill you with my motorcycle a crypto buy it a date stop talking to me like I understand what you're saying why are you eating bugs right now what why are you eating bugs because Sam already knows this stuff the dialogue comes off is forced overloading the player with information and things they don't understand and yes it's all because I'm a dumbass and can't comprehend the deeper meaning behind things and totally has nothing to do with horrible writing let me make one thing clear I don't have a problem with death strandings ambiguous confusing and weird story I have a problem with its poor pacing and execution there is a bar for entry with this game you must be this patient 15 hours to potentially enjoy it slow burning stories can be great when done right but the game intrigues the player quickly establishes likeable characters and gives us a taste of the best gameplay it has to offer it's easy to stick around death stranding does the opposite and it's hard to give a game a good review when the first 10 to 15 hours suck major ass trying to comprehend everything the game wants you to at the pace it sets is like picking up Lord of the Rings halfway through and trying to make sense of all the names characters locations and rule so we meet up with this random guy and hop on a truck where he's carrying a corpse which is kind of weird throughout the prologue we are bombarded with terms and concepts that don't make sense to us and raise countless questions closest iterators to the north why do we have to take this corpse out to burn it got him on ice ASAP but who knows when he'll go necro what does going necro mean what's a bTW and just burn the poor bastard right here put all that Kairi limb in the air so close to town can't do it what skyrail IAM why does a burnt corpse release it into the air and why is that bad to do close to the city why do people keep crying why are you carrying an unborn child in a breathing pod you sicko how is that supposed to help us why does a bridge baby allow us to see BTS if the sound of breathing alerts them to our presence why doesn't the loud ass noise of this flickering robot arm droid alert them what the heck is a void out how come this guy Higgs can find out that the president is dead just by smelling us you must have no end of questions God you know I can usually get over a story that assaults you with foreign terminology if the characters are compelling and interesting blah the most off-putting thing about death stranding is its characters in the way they're written everyone in this world is irritating annoying weird talks too much or just plain boring to be fair they do flesh out the backstories of the characters and they have some redeeming qualities yet for the most part they totally repelled me from the story there are parts that I had to cringe myself out of the world of the living just to maintain my sanity rajaiah but I'm not that fragile the dialogue comes across like it was poorly translated or something the first and last female president of the United States surely you remember her she raised you and look it's got nothing to do with the actors they all did a great job with the material Die Hardman aka Basile exposition is that why are you wearing that mask it's not Halloween what's wrong with your face guillermo del toro does a great job as dead men but even he's a whack job homily is sterile as hell keeps asking Sam to make us whole again no thanks I already did that once before make it home again Sam Porter Bridges is our protagonist and he has got to be one of the most unlikable characters ever in a video game he's a straight-up [ __ ] very distant and quiet doesn't even engage in conversation when people spill their hearts out to him Bridget you're the president Jack listen to me do you kiss your mother with that mouth early on Sam somehow kills his own mom because he doesn't like people touching him and so instead of hooking her up to the vitals just lets her die how come you weren't crying then Sam you cried when an invisible monster walked by but not when your own mother passed away as a result of your actions come to think of it how come there's no medical staff next to the President of the United States while she's in critical condition were they all just waiting for her to die I mean he doesn't even care nobody else seems to either then there's fragile who's just the most later alligator one time she starts showering in your room while you sleep it's like dude sick get your own place this mama character prattles on about how she remembers being in the womb it's just grating listening to this the bad guy group are literally just referred to as terrorists don't get more generic than that our villain this Bane ripoff what's his motivation some men just want to watch the world burn cut paste put in the game he's he had truth is I don't much care for my face that's why I hide what he doesn't doesn't like his face is it because you wear bad eyeliner you [ __ ] up my face he has control of the beat he's somehow he can like summon them and teleport around and he could probably kill us at any moment but he just like summons a henchman and then teleports away to go do something pigs sucks so after the first five hours of awkward dialogue lengthy cutscenes and obnoxious tutorials the writers and animators get lazy and resort to MMO storytelling which is code for people constantly talking your ear off walk ten meters exposition dump make a delivery let me tell you about this thing you don't care about take a piss hey let me tell you how your piss is being used to forge new weapons cool I don't give a [ __ ] as a result of this bizarre writing and dialogue it's hard to connect with the characters or even understand them how do you turn walking around into fun and exciting gameplay that was the question Hideo Kojima asked himself when creating death stranding what he should have been asking himself is why am I trying to make a hiking simulator now seriously one of the reasons we play video games is so we can do things we can't in real life right the core gameplay of death stranding is picking up cargo from point a and delivering it to point B there's some combat in preparation but that's about it just so I'm not called a pessimist here is the good of death stranding it's a very unique game [Music] especially for triple-a titles if you're tired of well this then it's definitely going to be a breath of fresh air exploration it's very adventurous going into unknown territory hoping you are prepared for what lies ahead turning into a horror style game where you need to avoid BTS there are some great action beats in the gameplay the delivery side of things has a lot of different mechanics and learning them and playing the game right can be enjoyable at times the mini game of managing your cargo getting rid of things when you don't need them and picking up the right stuff is interesting the multiplayer aspect is a neat concept being able to aid other players actions and structures you make in deaths training can appear in other players worlds the more you help the more you connect with people the more you in turn receive aid it's nice to lend a helping hand when you take on multiple orders planning routes and main missions there's a lot of risk reward factors picking up lost cargo and delivering it for resources and likes the like system in general is pretty cool I love the whole construction aspect of it generators bridges ladders and it wouldn't be a Kojima game without a stealth element truth be told it's pretty fun encountering BTS you're on your toes as the music creeps into your brain and the little armed droid starts flickering wildly as you get close to them running into the Mules is pretty intense as well these guys will throw Electric Spears that you shoot you try to steal your packages and hunt you down to the ends of the earth why are you running overall it is a beautiful game just like real hiking you get to see some incredible views look at this old footage of me playing death stranding back in 2016 on a video nobody cared about the soundtrack is dope too and at times walking and running around can feel pretty serene I respect death stranding as a creative endeavor alright now let's talk about the bed of death stranding you do a lot of this [Music] in the same way that Sam takes on the difficulty of delivering packages so too is the player burdened by excessive mechanics and tutorials just as I have the unfortunate task of reviewing death stranding if you want to get an idea of just how many different mechanics death stranding implements go to the tip section and look there are hundreds of them you'll spend the same amount of time trying to keep track of the story as you are trying to learn how to play it's a [ __ ] nightmare when virtually every mechanic is there to make your task more annoying and tedious or worse take your [ __ ] packages away from you you got to shift your weight while running balance yourself going downhill don't damage the cargo repair it using a repair can spray trudged through water watch out for the black tar heroin that will drag you away don't let these guys steal your drink to refill stamina stand in water to refill canteen which holdup man this game can really drain your energy it's all about confronting the monster within if only I had some type of drink that could refuel my energy and quench my thirst oh wait I do Red Bull I've heard of product placement tie-ins outside a video game but inside one that's a new level of conceited especially when you consider the setting of death stranding a world where virtually all means of delivering goods have broken down yet somehow Monster Energy Drink as the means of production and delivery that no other company has [ __ ] sake damn dude you just just gonna chug that [ __ ] this price that's unhealthy also the magic canteen Sam carries around yeah it takes in water and then somehow turns it into monster energy drink it says it right there the hard parts of death stranding are easy and the easy parts are made hard once you get over the initial spookiness of the BTS you realize that they don't pose a significant threat other than inconvenience but let me tell you dragging me away from my packages and forcing me to play an extra five to ten minutes of death stranding nothing will scare you quite like that the Mules are threatening at first but that's the thing this isn't like a series of difficult boss fights you encounter the same things but once you have the tools to take care of the Mules and be teased you basically trivialize the game you build this road in the second area and you can just breeze past everything with ease is that the experience that we're going for it only has the illusion of difficulty the time trials you go through could give you twenty minutes to drop the nuke off and I could do it in three hey wait why didn't you just teleport the nuke out here the game's difficulty comes from how much it wastes your time although because the game is so easy you can pretty much breeze through without taking heed of a lot of the instructions so that's a plus there's a whole complicated ass rating system that I haven't even tried to understand so many numbers and [ __ ] going on it's just an over bloated game with so many bells and whistles but this isn't some convoluted RPG this is a game about walking even when you think you've gotten past all the tutorials the game can't seem to go five minutes without someone spouting expository dialogue or introducing a new mechanic Sam Oh what's up dude oh yeah you didn't tell me about that thing all right cool Sam what's up Hardman yeah I read you you can't really talk right now trying to deliver this package yo you're interrupting my morning run you just leave it alone dude what is it okay I guess I got it instead I hear you can use that piece I don't care assuming you shut your boss turn this how do I turn this thing off leave me alone shut your mouth skull-face about halfway through the game it introduces guns and it becomes a generic third-person shooter so move aside Gears of War fortnight here comes death stranding and that's about it for the gameplay you know Kojima stated he wanted to make a genre of game that did not exist and I think he's really just trying to capture lightning in a bottle again video games were in a much earlier dormancy back in the 90s when Metal Gear Solid came out and while I 100% appreciate his Drive ideals and respect him as a game developer my opinion of him has not changed and I don't think hiking simulators are the way of the future the concept is just too polarizing I could really only recommend this game to people who like to chill out maybe don't want a super tough challenge and are looking for a different nuanced gaming experience death stranding is way longer than it has any reason to be even though I glossed over tons of optional missions skipped a bunch of dialogue it still takes 50-plus hours to complete and you know the game has issues when the most fun parts are where you can skip it it's a game that annoys you and tires you more than it challenges you isn't this what you've been waiting for this whole not even even talked about the whole connecting people thing as a member of bridges you're gonna work with the rest of us to rebuild America the goal of all these deliveries is to link everyone to the chiral Network and once you do you gain access to all sorts of helpful tools someone might give you some new schematics so you go to one of 70 different cities but not in the name which makes it real confusing to remember where the hell you are and it's this constant gameplay loop of gather packages orders take them to the new place link them with the network flash through boring dialogue do it over again for a game that's all about connecting people death stranding ironically makes Sam and the player disconnected from the events of the game it's like the writers can decide if Sam should be a fully voiced protagonist or a silent one during some cutscenes you will totally interact with people and another's he doesn't even open his mouth please I have to see him again I made this for him you know [Music] I'm ready to go right now if we want to just say you take me well I don't think I will it's extremely jarring because I'm like oh yeah Sam can talk as a result you don't really feel like Sam Porter bridges or a connect with him as you might Master Chief Geralt of Rivia the chosen undead Revan or whoever the world doesn't feel like a world and technically it's not supposed to because it's post-apocalyptic but it's just a bunch of barren wastelands a few copy and pasted settlements and hologram people that we never see in person is this what we're trying to save it doesn't give me much motivation even in our private rooms the people that visit are just Holograms apologies this is just a chiral graph so when we make life better for these random people by delivering their goods or thanked through a static projection and we don't really feel like we're helping we're only told that we are it would have added some life and character to the world if there are people like coming out of the shelter applauding and cheering you on maybe you see some sick old man who's making use of the medicine you delivered earlier that would make you feel something instead all we get is wow thanks here's something goodbye during the delivery for the junk dealer when you're like supposed to reunite two lovers this woman is giving you a huge spiel about how she loves this guy how she misses him thought he was dead and Sam doesn't say a goddamn thing he doesn't care he's just completely zoning out then later the two lovebirds are reuniting and Sam is just like can I thank you my likes now most of these subplots are ultimately pointless to the overall story yeah are there to try and add life to the world but they only make us feel more disconnected from it because they're so poorly written and forced that we don't care so it's just a waste of my [ __ ] time the point is that Sam and the player are very much stranded from the rest of the people and world overall death stranding comes across as a desperate attempt to revolutionize gaming and create a new genre a genre that for good reason has not become mainstream though who knows maybe hiking simulators will be the next big thing but I doubt it gameplay is tiresome monotonous and boring with small bursts of excitement that you'll end up skipping anyways just to avoid playing the game longer than you have to with all its kooky concepts of death beaches beached things Bridge babies the chiral Network and time fall the death stranding and everything else the game can be pretty hard to follow it is a very creative game and experience and world but creativity doesn't equal greatness at the end of it all the story tries to say something about moving on after death and the things that keep us binded to this world but it's message falls flat I'm in stano's of fetch quests cringy dialog a bloated runtime and boring gameplay if you were to cut out a bunch of the fluff this would have made for an awesome movie but it's a video game and the gaming aspect of it does nothing to enhance the story death strandings cryptic storytelling doesn't do it any favors and the abysmal dialogue only makes the excessive cutscenes an exposition more unbearable it stopped being unintentionally funny about five hours through so you can't even laugh at it after that the multiplayer aspect was a great idea and it's nice to receive help but what it all comes back to is the fun part of death stranding is skipping the boring parts which is all of the game maybe it was just Kojima's hubris that had this game turn out the way it did maybe he just thought his ideas were good no matter what but it kind of shows in the way he's reacted to criticism of the game still I have mad respect for the impact he's had on this industry and the strides he's made to see this project through to the end I can understand why some people might enjoy death stranding and while things do pick up in the later half it lacks exciting gameplay a compelling narrative and has an excessive runtime and that is why death stranding is so bad [Music]

Channel: The Act Man

Views: 1,296,404

Rating: 4.3514347 out of 5

Keywords: act man, The Act Man, act man review, Death Stranding, Death Stranding Review, Kojima, Hideo Kojima, Kojima Productions, Norman Reedus, ps4, exclusive, death stranding trailer, Death Stranding Story, sony, guillermo del toro, metal gear, horror, sci-fi, thriller, konami, death stranding explained, death stranding gameplay

Id: aJ0KmbSgMpE

Length: 29min 4sec (1744 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 15 2020