Well I liked it. Overall, it's an improvement on the first game by having an actual story, as amateur as it is, and characters with motivations and agency driving it, even if the acting is pretty shit most of the time. The best parts of this game are so good I argue it beats out anything from Metal Gear. It's a shame, then, that there's maybe around a half a dozen of these moments in the entire game—more if you count BT battles. The rest is just...
the plot.
Death Stranding is little more than Kojima's attempt to make a "serious" and "respectable" work in the eyes of the people he admires—Hollywood Jews and related celebrities. It's obvious this game is aping the big streaming shows from the COVID era, in the same way the first game had these strong theater vibes with many of its cutscenes. But Kojima can't write a "serious" or "respectable" or even Oscar-worthy trash if it came down to it. This is as much an overdone anime plot as any Metal Gear game, only with the most dull protagonists known to man, played by A-listers who may as well be amateurs (seriously, why is it that only Higgs' and Hardman's actors are the only ones who seem to give a fuck?). Ironically as a tv show it'd probably get universally panned for all of this plus the stupid contrived plot that takes forever to get anywhere interesting. And by then it's already over.
But... damn if that ending wasn't so awesome. Or the Higgs vs. Samurai fight. I could even forgive the stupid girlboss bullshit in the final push to Terminal when it became clear we were all working together as a team to kill the bad guys. The game promised me war but really it was just a protracted therapy session
. What's even the appeal... hardly see anyone talk about this game's plot anyway, outside of the flamethrower scene. Only few that do are fujos thirsting over Higgs, and Sam, sometimes even dressing up as him. Is this series for girls?
the impromptu dance number/music video in the middle of what's supposed to be a serious scene
God what a scene. It was fun, in a cathartic sort of way, and honestly the infodump preceding it wasn't all that good regardless. APAC was more or less trying to export its own torture onto the rest of humanity under the guise of saving them from the Last Stranding... like people being stuck in ze pod forever isn't going to lead to the same outcome regardless. Then Die-Hardman reveals he did a double betrayal on
them from the very beginning so none of it mattered anyway. You might as well just start dancing then. Funniest part: if you look up videos of it you can find all sorts of people deluding themselves into thinking this a better scene than it really is.
for all his crying kojimbo cant let go mgs. that ending is ripped out straight from mgs4 except gayer
The ending is ripped from Metal Gear Solid 1, just like everything else. With every other "homage" in this game I think Kojima has absolutely no idea how to make games anymore after 20-odd years of Metal Gear and movies rotting out his brain. I doubt he even plays games anymore, if he ever did. The core gameplay is ripped straight from MGSV it may as well be a really fancy mod made in that game's engine. Wish they included octocamo. If anything would benefit from it, it would be these massive sprawling open worlds and not the tiny maps in urban settings from MGS4
I just couldn't imagine being able to relax after a hard day of wagie work, potentially at amazon - just to come home and work as a dystopian amazon delivery boy in your "escapism".
It's pretty clear from the game and the fanbase this was made for a class of people that will never, ever work such a job in their lives but will act like they care about those people that do. And fujos. Tons and tons of fujos.
Oh yeah I forgot about the gameplay. It wasn't anything that ever genuinely challenged what the first game brought to the table. Any new features were little more than gimmicks and sidegrades of what already existed. The coffin board was really cool though. Just wish it wasn't so
bumpy. Delivery aspect is somehow even more tedious than the first game. Still not even done with maxing out all the facilities
. I'd rather be done with this
before the big finale.
