What even is a Death Stranding anyway?
Welcome back everyone, I hope you had a great weekend doing whatever you were up to. As you read in the last post I was pushing on to the end of Maneater on PS4. Well I am very happy to report that I not only finished the story but I have now also added it to the platinum collection. I enjoyed it for what it was, a dumb eat ‘em up, but it did leave me needing something a little more substantial in the story department. Which leads me very nicely onto the rest of the weekends gaming.
There are some great sales on the respective online stores, so I was able to pick up a couple of sports titles cheap. First off Fifa 20, I’ve been desperate to give Volta a shot since launch and I’ve just not been able to get round to getting a shot of it yet, which may seem a little unbelievable considering the game launched about 9 months ago and yet here we are. I haven’t had a proper chance to get to grips with it yet but the little I’ve played has been fantastic and I am very much looking forward to playing some more in the very near future. Secondly, after getting to play Super Blood Hockey last weekend, I spotted it going for less than £5 on Switch. So I snapped it up because it was so fun. I think it will probably excel in multiplayer, but as hyper violent hockey games go I could do a hell of a lot worse. Expect both of these games to be mentioned a fair amount over the coming weeks.
Then there’s Death Stranding. I am actually at a loss for words a little bit where this game is concerned. I have been a fan of Hideo Kojima’s for around about 20 years. Metal Gear Solid is as important a series as The Legend of Zelda and Doom are in shaping me as a gamer. I, for a time, was able to complete the tanker portion of Sons of Liberty in under 8 minutes, my only real foray into the world of speed running. Hell, Metal Gear Solid 2 was the reason I finally caved and bought myself a PS2. So when, at E3 2016, Kojima announced his first game post Konami, I was excited. I saw trailer after trailer and the excitement built. Then the game released and, due to, in equal parts, a backlog, a PS4 that sounded as though it was trying with all its might to finally achieve lift off, and a lack of funds at the time, the game launched in November of 2019 and Christmas was right around the corner, I decided to leave it for the moment and told myself I’d pick it up in a sale on PSN or I’d pick it up second hand.
But that sale never came, and the lockdown happened which meant my bimonthly trip to the local game stores would be postponed for a while. It was fine though, I have a backlog that I can’t seem to stop adding to, and when all else fails I could always hook the N64 up and play WWE No Mercy, (let’s face it, No Mercy is a better option than anything 2K have put out recently, better gameplay, better story mode, and yeah it might look like garbage today but it was what we had to make do with at the time and I still love it today.) But in the back of my mind was a little voice saying, “you know you still want to play Death Stranding, you need to know why Norman Redus is butt naked on that beach. Also what’s the deal with that creepy baby, and Guillermo del Toro, and those creepy floating guys…”.
So cut to the day before I put this post up. My girlfriend and I had just come back from a walk to get some supplies, she had decided to go upstairs to do some work which left me on my own, with Death Stranding. From the moment the game loaded up and I was being asked to tweak my settings my jaw was on the floor. The photorealism on display is truly breathtaking, I mean I’ve been to places in the north of Scotland that don’t look as real as this game. I’ve seen people in real life that look as though they’ve been created using CGI and yet the characters on my TV screen look as though they are acting in a Ridley Scott cinematic masterpiece.
I’m not too far into the game at the moment but what I have played has been interesting. I’m not really sure what is going on in the story, but it has me hooked. I want to find out what the hell is going on, what the deal with the things floating about is, why is the baby in the jar important, and who Die Hardman is and why is he wearing that mask. Kojima has always been one of the best storytellers in video games. The way he can craft this huge narrative that has you wondering what exactly is happening and then out of nowhere hits you with an explanation is impressive. It helps that the games he makes are always very well performed, designed, and scored as well as written. Death Stranding is no different. I am so very much looking forward to diving deeper into this one.
Well that about wraps this one up. Before you finish up though drop me a follow over on Instagram & Facebook I share some screenshots and videos of my antics playing the games I talk about here.
Have a great week.
J
JayblesPlaysGames 