Death Stranding

Yea, use L2/R2 to steady yourself. I'm 72+ hours in and on episode 6. I still enjoy it. I find building out the infrastructure to speed up the deliveries oddly satisfying. As you make deliveries to different locations/hideouts they give you access to upgraded items that help with your adventures.

This is free on Epic Game store right now, today only.

So I know I'm like years late on this one, but just finished it. It's one of the best, and also one of the worst games I've ever played.

The cutscene thing is just...not really forgivable. In the first 2 hours I think I actually "played" the game maybe 30 minutes. In the last 3 hours of the game I probably played about 10-15 minutes. I absolutely loathed the credits sequence on the beach with forced interaction to make you pay attention, and then massive exposition dumps in between. It was kind of made up for with the stuff that came afterwards, but it still just dragged on forever. The BB theme run did make up for it a bit.

Someone needs to help Kojima figure out how to weave that shit into actual gameplay instead of making you watch a feature length movie at the end of playing his game.

As far as actual gameplay goes, I really enjoyed the tedium. Things like delivering packages, building the road network, 5-starring preppers, and making a sweet zipline network were all super chill and fun. What I didn't enjoy was basically any of the combat, especially boss fights. The controls just felt super janky anytime I was interacting with BT's in any way. It was FPS inserted into a game that didn't really feel good doing it, and so I really dreaded progressing the story and having to deal with it. Oddly, the flashback ones felt okay (probably because I used an AR mostly, and outside of crazy recoil, I'm good at FPS aiming). Which makes me think it's really the janky ass movement around tar and fucked up buildings where I'm struggling to jump on top of shit and whatnot that made me hate the combat.

It does feel a little like I need to go back and play through it again to really "get" the story, since when you get a 3 hour exposition dump you kind of forget what the hell is going on. But there's not a chance in hell I slog through this again.

I finished the game at 122 hours played the other day. I enjoyed the story and would put it in my top 10 games. It was such an odd game that I couldn't put it down. It wasn't like anything I'd played before. The part that bums me out was that I wanted to finish connecting all the roads and finish five starring some of the preppers, but the game became very linear at the end. Yes, I know once everything is over, it sends your back in time by two weeks so that you can complete everything, but now that I finished the game, I see no point. It was fun, and I enjoyed it more than I ever thought.

Now off to the next game, which I dug deep into my backlog and started playing Shadow of War.

Utnayan said:

We never finished dying light 2 you hooker.

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Lmao, I still have it installed waiting for completion.

Gator said:

I finished the game at 122 hours played the other day. I enjoyed the story and would put it in my top 10 games. It was such an odd game that I couldn't put it down. It wasn't like anything I'd played before. The part that bums me out was that I wanted to finish connecting all the roads and finish five starring some of the preppers, but the game became very linear at the end. Yes, I know once everything is over, it sends your back in time by two weeks so that you can complete everything, but now that I finished the game, I see no point. It was fun, and I enjoyed it more than I ever thought.

Now off to the next game, which I dug deep into my backlog and started playing Shadow of War.

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That's exactly how I felt, too. Prior to the end game story marathon, I was all about 100%ing the game. As soon as I finished I had literally no desire to play anymore.

Kind of a bummer.

Rajaah said:

What's the "point of no return" where the game becomes super linear and sucks you into this black hole of story marathon? With all this advance warning I'll be sure to do as much stuff as I can before that.

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The end of Episode 8 is where it begins to get linear. It's going to ask that you connect a Chiral Relay. Once that's completed, I wouldn't push further unless you are ready.

I liked the gameplay of the first. The story was also compelling.

My only real complaint was that towards the end it was just too much cutscene.

Valderen said:

I'm fucking hyped, 2025 can't come fast enough.

I know I’m in the minority but I love the first one, did 3 complete play through. Never done that for a single player game.

It’s one of my favorite game of all time there’s something about it that just hit the right buttons for me.

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I'm very hyped for this game. It can't come out soon enough. The first one was so fun and unique.

Mist said:

This game is like "There's this really interesting world and you deliver packages in it."

I don't want to deliver packages in this world. I wanna be a psionic commando.

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This seems like the perfect take, so I have to be missing something.

Help me, Bros