"If nothing else, [Kojima] is exceptional at straddling the line between lowbrow and highbrow concepts, making it difficult to discern whether something is clever or stupid." This is quite possibly the most succinct explanation of what makes Kojima's stories both so appealing and so frustrating. Bravo.
That's what makes Kojima good, in my opinion. He's like the Paul Verhoeven of video games. If he has something to say, he says it, without wasting time trying to appear respectable. It's the opposite of what you usually get from AAA games; copying the aesthetics of highbrow movies and prestige TV but not having anything deeper to say than "revenge bad".
@@notesscrotes4360 eh kojima has always been at the forefront of the cinematic experience : cutscene heavy, epic/moody osts reminiscent of movies, attempt at poetry dialog... Now he could add celebs to the mix. Writing wise He USED to know when to stop bothering the player. Not in death stranding though, which is funny enough, the same problem revenge bad citizen kane of gaming-man had in his latest magnum opus™. Gameplaywise both make goofy as fuck game that is only serious on the surface level. Kojima's has more replayability and interesting system for sure.
@@notesscrotes4360 I agree about AAA games who copy and say nothing, but I don't agree about Kojima being akin to Verhoeven. I see what you're getting at, sometimes Kojima does on the nose commentary, but it's usually surrounded by a mystifying amount of nonsense masquerading as art.
@@garion333 I don't agree for a second that his stuff is "nonsense" or trying to "masquerading" as art. Yeah he can make alot of over the top stuff that can seem ridiculous like dialogue and some scenes being overly blunt but Kojima likes to do cool stuff that's visually and narratively cool and awesome to see for his audience and himself. Sometimes it doesn't work but for the most part it does because his games embraces the surreal aspects of things. Imagine Metal Gear Solid, and then strip away Psycho Mantis, Gray Fox and Otacon, remove the sections where you're expected to look at the game case or put the controller up to your arm so the vibration heals you. It's easy to see how without the charm of these stranger elements, Metal Gear Solid would feel a lot more generic.
No matter what I think of the game, I'm happy that a weird, hyper specialised, experimental game with a massive budget and not from a previously established IP exists. It is new, and I'm at the point where anything new and creative in a world of remakes, remasters, rereleases and sequels is a gift.
The idea that we should celebrate anything original is extremely dangerous. Also , nothing in this game is original. Literally , nothing. There is not a single mechanic in the gameplay that has not been done before.
@@zoisantonopoulos7999 I disagree with your entire post. While not getting into "single mechanic in gameplay" as one of those anoying pedantic arguments people make that tend to consciously ignore how something is implemented, how it functions within other systems, and how it has in-game feedback with narrative implications. You say it's "extremely dangerous", which is a big claim and yet don't justify it. So, why is it extremely dangerous?
@@Hoopla10 Since English isn't my native language you writing like that kinda confused me at first glance but i read your comment again and it became clear how lost you really are. I will break it down to you. When i am talking about how there is nothing original in the gameplay i am referring to everything from movement to zip line usage. Teleportation even , everything is like what you would expect from your typical triple a game. So i ask you , what is actually original in game? It's like when people said tlou2 had an original feature where enemies call eachother by name which was a lie. Metro exodus and control are 2 games released before tlou2 and have this feature. Secondly , about the dangerous idea. This can be proven mathematically , historically or by simply using common sense. As a mathematician i would tell you that since a new idea has a probability p of being good and q of being bad , assuming it follows the Bernoulli or binomial distribution , it is undeniable that we will experience bad original ideas with a probability = 1-p. As someone that loves history i would tell you that there are countless ideas which proved to be dangerous. Slavery is the easiest example. Another example can be the thought of a race which is above the rest. Finally , using logic , ideas are created by humans and humans by design are flawed thus using Aristotle's logic , the ideas of humans can be flawed as well. Here , look how easy i made it for you to understand.
@@zoisantonopoulos7999 You have LITERALLY proved my point. I LITERALLY explained why I feel your argument (without needing this wall of text to know this is the sort of pedantic almost autistic argument you were making). The thing is you probably feel you're special or unique, but by your first post, those first few words I knew what sort of irritant you were because there's so many like you. I explained why I find it a reductive argument, I'm not going to explain again. I'm not lost, I asked a question. This is what you said "celebrate anything original is extremely dangerous". Not EVERYTHING original. Removing value from it. I would argue that it doesn't matter whether there's a value on a new idea. That fact we have new ideas should be celebrated alone. We can decide separate to that whether it's something that has a negative/positive impact. Your implications (or how I read it) suggest no new ideas is probably better and certainly shouldn't be celebrated (seemingly because a negative outcome has a probability, like that's some revelation lol). Humans are flawed but they are also creative (see I can do that too). Look what a condescending little c u next tuesday you made yourself sound in the process. Don't bother to reply, I wont read it.
25:18 this is an extremely pedantic criticism of what is probably the best review of Death Stranding i've ever watched, but film actually does receive similar criticisms because it's derived mostly of other mediums. Stanley Kubrick once said his favorite aspect of filmmaking was editing because it was the only aspect of the medium that was distinctly its own (acting is derived from plays, cinematography is derived from photography, & writing is writing). That is why some people will say a film has "bad writing" if it's too wordy or "doesn't look good" if there is too many static shots, etc etc. Your main point still stands, i'd just thought i'd specify. Always a great day when you post my dude!
What do you think about Kojima's point that games can't be art because they are amalgamations of other arts? I find it a very stupid statement myself, you could say there's a couple of arts that are amalgamation of other arts and no one thinks of them as inferior for being so. I think a much better critique of the validity of games as a vehicle for artistic expression is that games are utilitarian or aim to provide a service (fun) first and foremost, which would be at odds with their narrative quality, but even that is very debatable
Something I've been saying for a while is that the reason films are called their own while games brag when they imitate film-making is that the art and history of film-making is viewed as this unifying endeavor, one that is carefully focused on balance between these different elements and figuring out what would work when the scales are turned (like in the introduction of talkies, in experimental film meant for audiences or for film professors, in adaptation from one media to another). Video games, probably because they are thought of as toys, seem to actually be viewed in the public eye as amalgamations of different art pieces. The actual synthetic unity of "game making" as a process that one could plan out is something that is easily replaceable (but still worse than a great single minded approach) with a great set of teams - good programmers, good art design, and good writing. When there isn't a real unity, one department can actually hold up the rest of the project. This distinction between film and gaming isn't a bad one - it's totally understandable, because we don't have to trust directors to do things like make your dvd players, decide the best composite of CD, but video game designers follow a much more hierarchically locked system that can easily turn into fifteen different projects like the ultra-realistic games do with their art design, or into a buggy mess like Star Citizen because the single man in charge wanted to appeal to people in the wrong way. Movies rarely just don't work at all if the director was misguided about only a portion of the project.
Also worth mentioning Alan's Moore's ongoing criticism of the movie adaptations of his graphic novels, and how those are stories designed precisely for a specific medium. Otherwise a brilliant analysis, as always.
DS dialogue be like: deadman: sam, do you know [thing]? sam: [thing]? deadman: yes, [thing]. it's [simple explanation of [thing]] sam: oh, right. [specific name of [thing], denoting sam's familiarity with [thing] and lack of need for further explanation] deadman: yes! [further explanation of [thing]]
Sam was a ludicrously boring character. Oh, he just has social anxiety and ass phobia? There are places in the story where there is literally no reasonable explanation for Sam having zero comment, i.e. seeing a tangible human for the first time during the couples mission TWENTY HOURS in to the game. I was yelling at my screen like, "yo, this is crazy! ...SAM?! HELLO?"
@@kylerclarke2689 I agree that sometimes he HAD to do comments, for example in the Mama sequence. But Mala Morgan deserves only "Wtf I'm doing here" faces 😂
@@inscrutablewut regardless of the mockery. DS is not for everyone. Didn’t think for a second this game was gonna be enjoyed by everyone as it’s different in its slow paced terrain traversal approach. I personally love it a lot but it’s understandable that some others are not gonna so much. It most certainly does not “suck” at all. It’s understandable if you find it boring or uninteresting but to me and a lot of people can find it engaging and compelling to find traversal and land exploration calming and a relaxing experience. I love the game myself but even I know some other people might not enjoy from its slow paced passive non violent nature so it’s definitely not for everyone.
@@peri5966 the link cable wasn't asynchronous though... It was just a multiplayer feature to battle and trade there and then in that single moment with someone you actually know in person infront of you. It's fully different
I like the idea of logging the placement of objects before the servers go offline. I had actually thought that would be a good idea for Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, so that some popular messages could be preserved in the game forever after the servers go offline. They also could have cloned some player co-op and PvP character profiles from the servers and added them to the game via a patch. That way, there would still be an illusion of the MP aspects of the game, even after the servers go offline.
Hi, I'm a person that lives with the same issue that Sam has (though I have admittedly worked very hard to get past it, thanks in part to Death Stranding). I'm at that moment where you talk about how unbelievable Norman's portrayal of aphenphosmphobia (or 'Haphephobia') is, but I have to say, from a personal standpoint, it's really not. The world is different in Death Stranding, but in the real world, it's actually a pretty stark portrayal. It could have been better, but as a baseline, it felt fairly accurate to me. People don't often take into account that you may be unable or unwilling to touch someone. They can (and will) get up into your business without realizing this or without giving you much of a chance to back off. Reacting to this calmly, or without real outward hostility can be difficult and requires a fair amount of self control. Outside of this, in some cases I've found, being physically close to someone does not always evoke that feeling of fear or anxiety that characterizes my phobia. I am not the be-all-end-all for this (obviously) and highly suggest you seek out opinions and dialogue from relevant persons in the future, should it become relevant.
I also have Haphephobia, and I would say that you have characterized it pretty accurately. I generally am most discomforted by someone standing directly behind me, but I have learned to more or less hide this reaction after many years. These days, I may dislike someone's proximity, but unless they actually try and touch me I mostly just grin and bear it for the sake of not offending anyone.
There is an interesting argument to be made that the reality of something isn't conveyed well to audiences, and their expectations of an imitation is more likely than of something wholly accurate. I haven't played death stranding, but it is possible that a realistic portrayal would come across as overly normal, as it's difficult to convey how many emotions people conceal and hide in a video game. My takeaway is that Matt felt that the characters acted without much variation. The writing seems to be that each of them are a product of their environment, and this would potentially undermine a realistic phobia within a scifi world that seems to already pick and choose what it takes seriously. The delta between the characters is too low, maybe. Even if a personality trait, disability, whathaveyou is a fundamental part of the self image of a human being, it may not mean much in a narrative that is based on overt themes. I think a lot of really great works are very blatant about their characters - take Tennessee Williams' naming conventions, the villain of pretty much any movie, the visual parallels with theme that any good movie tries to set up to combine mood with the meaning of the movie. I still think though that there are really powerful narratives when dealing with realistic problems that people don't often address, especifically when people are forced to confront the things they try to hide. Subtle problems and conflicts have to be carefully developed. (I mean most of what I say to be about narratives in general, not about what Death Stranding should have done) Now that I think about it though, Matt may not be comfortable with the inundation of detail that science fiction usually provides that seemingly leads nowhere, even if it loosely develops the feeling and theme of the world. I'm just kinda rambling at this point, lol.
Thank you for sharing your personal experience, I’m sorry you had to deal with such ordeal everyday. I’m glad Death Stranding has eased it maybe in some way, it’s a tough world out there and we are all dealing with something, Death Stranding has a special part in my heart for the calm it brought me.
I don't have that but I do hate people standing too close for no reason when they don't have to. Get away, idiot people. My personal space starts 6ft back. Don't step on my heels.
Setting up my zipline network through the mountains was, without a hint of exaggeration or hyperbole, one my favorite gaming experiences ever. planning, mapping out routes, climbing to the top of every peak, at one point i even busted calculator and did some simple trig to better optimize a t-junction. i agree that everything after becomes much more monotonous, bu ti will never forget those hours connecting the entire map.
And I think that is part of the point of it, it is meant to be a reward for people who have already experienced everything inbetween a few times or conquered that challenge. I have a sneaking suspicion that the monotone comes when someone is a bit more completionist than I am and feel obligated to get every shelter to its max rating and complete the majority of all package deliveries.
@@lostsanityreturned I would wholeheartedly agree that is when I lost it with the zip line and highway mechanics myself. That being said, why would you go through the trouble of setting up zip line networks if you never intended to go back and do optional quests? It doesn't even take maxing out a shelter before they become super boring well before that point. It's hard to describe- building these networks was one of my favorite parts of any game for a long while now. That being said, as soon as I finished I wanted the challenge of walking again. The only way I can describe this experience is "cannibalised gameplay".
@@peckc16 At that point I just took as many deliveries as I could to a single location. Until I needed the carriers to pull the cargo. Then I just used the zipline and highways to make the trek back for more deliveries less of a pain. Because Death Stranding is at its best when it's at its most difficult. It must be hard because people like myself, you, and Matosis think the game is clearly too easy. But then again there are plenty of people who think the game is a total pain in the ass from start to end and constantly fall over somehow.
This. Exactly this. Yes, reusing your routes is monotonous and becomes routine. But the initial exploration and climb were such a unique and awe inspiring experience for me. Death Stranding is a game I absolutely love, and I think I would I loved it even more if it was "only" a hiking game with future tech instead. I often want to go back to this game just for the traversal, but everything around that now puts me off and gets in the way of me enjoying the moment to moment gameplay. Pleas some game dev out there... Copy this gameplay and make it a full hiking game, I beg of you ♥
The upside down Rainbow is a real phenomenon called Circumzenithal arc that come from refraction of sunlight through ice crystals. In Death Stranding it is caused by the sun refraction on Chiral crystal that are always in the air around BT thous why a upside rainbow will always show up around them.
Do you like the game? I love the game myself as I adore the game design, aesthetics, characters, and world but even I know some other people might not enjoy it from its slow paced passive non violent nature so it’s definitely not for everyone.
even though this game is flawed i’ll still always respect and appreciate it just because it’s an actual work of passion. compared to shit like Assassins Creed where they literally made the game grindy to pressure you into microtransactions exp boosters, Death Stranding isn’t a soulless product. It’s Kojima’s personal work of art for better and for worse
I love the game myself as I adore the game design, aesthetics, characters, and world but even I know some other people might not enjoy it from its slow paced passive non violent nature so it’s definitely not for everyone.
And once again, Death Stranding reminds me of how incredible Noby Noby Boy’s title track is. Thank you, Genius Kojumbo. Jokes aside, I absolutely agree with the frontloaded difficulty and subsequent tail off in any challenge. The very first BT section is, with no exaggeration, the hardest time I had with the game. After that it was generally smooth sailing. I’d like to impart that I honestly feel the mechanical depth of the game is something to be admired. The physics for the bike are downright atrocious but the system used for throwing objects is wonderful. I just honestly hope someone can reign Kojima in for the next IP he works on because, while this current year has definitely impacted how I see the game (thank you for not mentioning it at all which would have definitely dated the review), I can’t give it all too much credit. Whitelight had a great dissection of the “oh that’s a cool theory” into immediate “oh the theory is just actually a completely correct thing how the hell did they know that?” BS that Death Stranding regularly employs. And I absolutely agree on the online implementation. A long, meaningful impact on the world would have gone a long way to me putting down more stuff but, as you put it quite well, it’s self serving gratuitousness that ultimately serves to bolster your own ego even though you did it all for yourself without really thinking of anyone else. If that’s the dichotomy that Whitelight sort of missed the mark on then I’m happy that you’re the one to introduce that severe oversight into the discourse. Kojima just needs a team that will challenge his ideas at some point, rather than allowing unbridled creativity from one person entirely. It’s ironic that this is the same man whose studio had an anonymous tip box for things that could make the game better when all I can imagine is Kojima running all the shots because the worst of his prior games runs rampant here. Still enjoyed it though.
I honestly wonder what getting kicked out of MGSV early did to Kojima, because he's stuck in this dichotomy of having his name printed over everything and that being a major selling point, but also keeping this as the flagship title of his new studio and the entire team that's attached to it. I have no doubt that he tries to run his studio more similar to a film than game studio with him as a director, but he has to do this with the knowledge that he is the auteur creator who got chucked from his own project possibly in part due to his auteur-ness. He's definitely in a weird spot.
@@4423reborn It's around the point at where the characters are discussing Amelie as an extinction entity in the line of the ones that have come before, completely preserved by umbilical cord etc etc, from the Dinosaurs to the mammoths. Except how they know all this and how they're hitting all these points on the head at the same time and getting them pretty much almost universally correct is such a plot contrivance that it beggars belief. Usually Kojima stories are factored around characters being completely in the dark to hundreds of sub-plots that all thread together and yet Death Stranding basically has omnipotent gods for a supporting cast.
I think the "kojima really needs an effing editor" effect came late in this game for me. I think around the "Princess Beach" line during all the late game exposition. I think I paused the game and just sat there. In MGS4 it was precisely when Ocelot was standing on a boat doing finger guns. In MGSV it was the literal moment I saw Quiet.
When I first heard about Death Stranding, I was interested in the setting and world, but the gameplay looked extremely boring to me. However, when I got the game for half off, I was completely sucked into the game and put 120 hours total, platnuming the game. It really surprised me how engrossed I got into it.
It's interesting because I had the opposite reaction. The early previews of all the weird imagery left me with the impression that Kojima was being weird because he was known as that weird, avant garde guy who made Metal Gear, not because the weirdness was saying anything at all. Once I saw the gameplay I was intrigued about how Kojima would make such a basic gameplay loop satisfying so I checked out a lets play only to see a 45 min cutscene of weirdness with no gameplay in sight, deciding there that the game wasn't for me.
@@chazzergamer The gameplay it´s something you can only understand how it feels by playing it. It´s hard to explain but walking through unstable terrain while balancing your weight, avoiding rocks, climbing riffs, crossing rivers, etc. it´s a very engrossing experience. Add to it that you can build roads and stuff to make your trip easier and it becomes downright addictive. Obviously you have to put up with hours of weird cutscenes but i think it´s worth it because what this game offers is quite unique and not easy to find elsewhere.
@@moralesfox I trust that it is engrossing, I do have my suspicions that people only stuck with the game for as long as they did due to Kojima’s name being on her box (and the “Artist vs Corporation” narrative that surrounded the game at the time) but I don’t think so many fans are that committed to defending their idol. It’s just that the cutscenes are an absolute deal breaker for me, I can’t stand a game that would rather be a film than a game and Death Stranding reeks of that. But despite me knowing DS will not be my thing I’m glad it exists if only to have weird auteur games be given a big budget, hopefully this will be something the industry follows.
@@moralesfox This is the same feeling I had toward a different game, Dragon's Dogma. Even though it's an Action RPG, I think the same principle applies. I saw a video of the game and was turned off by the dated visuals, even for the PS3/Xbox 360 era, and long stretches of walking across the environment. However, once I got around to playing it, I liked the combat and how the game initially restricted fast travel to encourage you to explore the world. There's a feeling of satisfaction for exploring uncharted territory and seeing how far you traveled through hostile land to find a new, unexplored location. Dragon's Dogma being so fun despite looking boring when watching someone playing is the main reason why I gave Death Stranding a chance.
@@chazzergamer I am not sure more film than game really suits death stranding. This is far from MGS4 style presentation. It has two large chunks of cutscene. At the start, and at the end. And while I loath the introduction cutscene train... The end somewhat makes sense while being super lengthy, it isn't something that would suit being playable and wraps up the game world/story effectively.
@@pedroholsbach8592 you disagree that I had a challenging day, that the day itself was tiring or that I was pleased to see a new video from a creator who’s work I enjoy? When I posted the comment (within 5 minutes of the video being posted) I had not watched the video. And I’ll freely admit that Death Stranding isn’t a game that I intend to play or appeals to me personally. If you disagree with Matthew’s opinions or thoughts on the game, that doesn’t really relate to my comment about being pleased to see a new video by this creator. I’m genuinely curious so hope you have the time and inclination to reply :)
@@pedroholsbach8592 Ah, gotcha! Its so hard to tell when people are being serious with comments and replies! My intention was hoping Matthewmatosis might see the comment and be pleased that his hard work had lifted somebody's spirits :D The guy makes great content, after all :) I left a comment a while back, that was intended to be helpful (it was a VoD of a fighting game tournament stream that was frequently ripped and reuploaded and heavily monetised - so I suggested removing the 8 minutes of "stream starts soon graphic" from the video and it might make it more palatable for the audience) and had somebody have a right go at me for it lol I was accused of not being able to operate the timeline slider or skip the video ahead. Instead of, y'know, wanting to see the creators of the video get the attention they deserve for the hard work they put in. Aaanyway, you probably didn't need to know all that. Have a great day, Pedro!
@@baitposter and a walking sim at the same time. Very believable. Death Stranding is a PoS, and Kojima is a hack with exactly ZERO talent. But fanboys can't admit it, ofc.
@@MetalGearyaTV I was never a fan of Kojima games before Death Stranding. As Death Stranding is one of the few hiking sims ever made _(as in, you can engage with the terrain, not just hold W or the stick in a direction),_ with beautiful vistas and collaborative infrastructure construction that you just don't see anywhere else that isn't a survival-crafting game like ARK or Rust, it's quite cozy. It sounds like you just have a bone to pick with Kojima games. Personally, I think Death Stranding has shit writing for its overarching story and the main story dialogue, though. The side stories of important characters _(e.g. Cliff, Heartman, Mama)_ are the only good part about the main storyline. Kojima needs a writer.
Death stranding is a weird experience. I love that finally an open world game put some effort into making traversing the world interactive and not just a sightseeing trip, waking while managing your weight feels natural and interesting, and building roads and ziplines feels incredibly rewarding. But all that progress makes the game too easy and trivial, driving in a road is barely interactive, and ziplines literally just are not. There is a chunk of this game that i love to play and think there is nothing really like it elsewhere, but it´s over pretty quickly and what´s next is just another openworld game and a bunch of menus.
When it comes to facial animation, I thought most of it was good/decent, rather than embarassing, but there's a scene with Die-Hard Man at the end of the game which had probably the best facial capture I've ever seen either in a game or film. It was genuinely astonishing
The facial animation is the best that exists currently, I have no clue how this reviewer came to his conclusions, including on the footage he showed while making it
He broke my brain when he brought this up... His point was basically, Devs know that its not perfect and sometimes looks weird so don't even try because in a few years a game will do it better.... And then he talks about the last of us which is a prime example of realistic graphics that looked phenomenal when it was first released but now compared it with DS and it holds no bar against it... Just because the tech isn't perfect to the human eyes doesn't mean you can't give it your best... I genuinely can't believe he called DS's Real time mocap Primative... The cinematics in this game were what kept me motivated (although i did love hiking through the landscape w/low roar), I never had a problem with Sam's beach scene and felt everything that Kojima wanted me to feel, Mama's scene in the rubble was a bit off putting because of how close the camera was, it really lit up the jank in the mocap around the mouth... And then like you guys said before me Diehardman's scene at the end of the game was the best mocap performance I have ever seen (if not one of the best performances I've ever seen) Also what was he talking about with Tory baker, he has some of the most mild scenes when it came to mocap and i saw no issues their ...
Whether or not you thought it looked "good" or even "astonishing" now is missing the entire point. Ocarina of Time looked astonishing when it first released, yet here we are 30 years later and it looks terrible now relative to new games. As Matt said, the same will be true for this game's facial capture in 30 years, probably even more so.
On one hand I would love him to finish it for completion's sake. But also it'd probably be the same critique of AAA games homogenizing into a monogenre from the God of War review
MGSV is an incredibly weird game to talk about. It’s probably my second favorite of the series but I find it impossible to recommend to people. I guess Death Stranding is no different.
@@breedlove94 I dont think modern games homogenized MGS at all though. MGSV didnt have an open world sinilar to any other game. It focused on making each mission diverse and incredibly repayable rather than the usual AAA trend of making open world missions incredibly linear and strict one and done affairs where they play put differently each time and the devs likely dont think about the experience on repeat playthroughs. And V went one further and had probably the least filler traversal sections of any AAA game. The travel time between points of interest and core gameplay in MGSV is never more than a minute while Assassins Creed or GTAV give you several minutes of moving through a city, watching cutscenes, spending several minutes traveling from the mission start to the actual level, ect. Though based on this video and things Matosis has said in the past it looks like he made the same snap judgements about V as everyone else and let the Konami drama convince him that the game was incomplete, though that's a complete myth.
@@Tamacat388 @Thanatos388 ooh, hard disagree. There seemed to me to be even less variety than Peace Walker; vast majority of Ops boil down to extracting a single target. The maps feel largely empty and the commute to the mission area, especially early on if you want to go with D-Dog and Quiet, is a chore. The core gameplay is immaculately polished (likely refined before the late development drama happened) but it has the same problem I have with "play your own way" design in that it's easy to fall into the optimal play style that it becomes quickly monotonous. And we may never know what exactly went down at Kojipro at the end, though all I can say is that I finished Chapter 1 today and I said for the first time about a Kojima game "Wow that was underwritten" That being said I *totally* get why that loop gets its hooks into people.
Why would he waste time with it ? Me and my brother both sank over 80 hours into it each to receive the most unrewarding, uneventful and simply illogical ending in the entire series. Which is saying something. I'd much rather Matthew doesn't waste his time. After all - he was mad enough to supposedly clear Death Stranding twice. That in itself is an incredible feat of self-sacrifice. Video Gojira should get his shit together. And go back to actually making varied, charming, interesting games that also know how to pace themselves and when to actually end and not waste the player's time with unmemorable grind that dulls the mind. Because these are not games he's making anymore. They are experiments. With only difference being that usually those who are being experimented on get payed for it, unlike here, where we are actually paying money to be experimented on instead. Fucking has-been genius fraud with a bloated ego.
His thoughts on Bloodborne (and all games after it) are pretty much summed up in his "Lost Soul arts of Demons Souls" video. A full review would be cool but it would probably just be hammering on those points a bit more with some positives thrown in. He didn't seem to be as enthralled with Bloodborne as everyone else seemed to.
@@BillytheEntertainer I love the game myself but even I know some other people might not enjoy from its slow paced passive non violent nature so it’s definitely not for everyone.
@@Brenryz Not even fucking close. This game is NOT even close to "garbage", that's just absolute nonsense. It's understandable if you're not interested in the game but the fact that you think that anyone who likes this game is invalidate in just asinine. It's not a game for everybody and that's fine as not every game has to please every person. If you don't like it and find it boring, that's understandable but don't act like an ass and shit on those who do.
I love this game. I am playing the directors cut right now, this play through, I’m grinding out every region. It’s so much work but this play through is very rewarding. I also have spent days collecting resources for roads. This game has this “like” system in which other players can like you for for that task, building roads, upgrading other players structures, delivering lost cargo for players, doing delivery requests for players, etc. If you grind that out and slowly take your time with the story as well, you get praise and it helps out. Building roads is so rewarding cause it levels up your bridge link status. Zip lines help a lot as well. I think you grind roads, side missions, tasks, it really starts to help out. Grinding out takes days, weeks, but it’s rewarding. I accidentally collect others people’s cargo, goods, lost cargo, and resources all the time. I will clean out a whole safe house of its resources to get stuff built. And then you can just fill them up again too. MULE camps are goldmines. I love this game. Once players start to see what you’re doing and what you’re building, everyone starts to help out cause everyone is catching on. Like the mountain trek, that is a mission! It just takes a while, even Higgs tells ya: “aren’t you getting tired of the grind?!” The directors cut is a huge improvement as well. There’s new types of structures, new weapons, new added story lines, and more. I love this game lol
"Getting an S Rank at a delivery" made me laugh so hard I imagined the mailman running to my house, doing a backflip while he throws the mail inside the mailbox, hitting it perfectly, only to look at his smartphone and be like "Aw crud, got an A Rank again. Guess I need to be more stylish"
just a little tidbit..dunno if people have pointed it out already in the comments, about the nuke...that was done as a fourth wall breaking joke i dont remember where exactly, i think its on one of the journal files, Higgs says somethin like "maybe it was dumb to write nuke in the package, but i couldn't resist. who the hell reads labels these days?" (essentially referencing players usually not paying much attention to item descriptions...and i guess Sam acting clueless in the face of having the information right in front of him represents those players) now whether or not it was worth it to put such an immersion breaking event in the main story to serve as the punchline of a joke most people will never get, that's another discussion...
Yep, I thought it was a genius prank on players. Sam has never seen higgs without the mask but players have because of troy baker and yet so many players delivered the nuke to south knot city, hell even I found out by accident while on my way to south knot city
It may be a joke, but after watching TheRadbrad play through DeathStranding it seems to be more of a statement on how unattentive the average person is. If I remember correctly he walked into the city twice before even looking at the package.
This is definitely one the best and most balanced reviews I've seen for this game. This game probably has as many good aspects as it does bad. While I absolutely can see why some would be turned off by the flaws. I absolutely adore this game for the brilliant aspects of the gameplay and world building.
Frog Glen no I like this review because it is. He didn't jerk the game off. But he didn't condemn it either. I don't completely agree with this review, some of matt's problems didn't bother me as much but I can why he might've been annoyed.
@@frogglen6350 I think that was kinda of a douchbag response. You can disagree and respect a review's points when their valid enough and have good reasoning.
I quite like the "multiplayer" aspect of DS. It feels like the end of Nier Automata, where *SPOILERS* you don't know who you're helping because you can't see them, you try to help people because you're a good person. Seeing the likes is just a confirmation that someone has been helped by your contribution. Which I remember liking at the time.
I heard it said that gameplay can be split into 3 categories: planning, execution and improvisation. I'm going to use a stealth game as an example. >Planning would be figuring out what is an optimal path through a set of obstacles (guards, security cameras, trip wires, etc) without triggering some kind of fail state. The goal for planning is to always be as close to optimal as possible. >Execution is going through the commands which allows said plan to worked through and with good timing and intuition of what each action shall result in. This would be actions requiring you to duck behind a wall, to avoid detection at a given moment in time. Execution's goal is to execute what you want as fluidly as you'd like. >Improvisation is where the plan and execution goes wrong. This would be where a guard spots you and this triggers an alert phase. You have to scramble to safety/hiding, to get back on track. You've be thrusted into an unfamiliar situation where you lack the same level of control, as before. The goal is thinking in a limited time frame or a space where you lack foresight to identify the best options. The goal of improve is to return to the familiar. For stealth games this would be waiting out an alert phase. I bring this up because I think all games have all three of these elements, all be it in different percentages. People will want different experiences from different games but normally we want ones which cater to each one, at some given time but also switches between them, to avoid stagnation. This is worth considering in game design. Most people can recall an experience in which improvisation was so unwanted, that they'd rather reload a previous checkpoint. There are also instances where the execution is so trivial that its not worth engaging in and it just becomes little more than Quick Time Events. As for filling in the pattern, there are times in which once we deduce the best plan, there is little else to get us to think about it. Its like a game where dodge rolling is the fastest form of land transport, do you end up dashing everywhere, to save time. Its like that. What I am saying, is that gameplay should have depth in all three of these categories to maintain engagement and thus enjoyment.
Nice point. I usually value gameplay by punishment/reward system, and I believe that DS has a good system in place -- for example you can either bring more equipment with you and have an easier time in traversal, but less packages delivered or vice versa. But it's not punishing enough, it's hard to die as Sam or break a package, it's almost impossible to lose. So much so I believe having a really hard difficulty would fix most gameplay problems. Guess in your system improvisation is what DS lacks, even though it's best moments come from unplanned events.
After umming and aaahing for the past year I finally got this game on sale (I was worried I'd regret paying full price for a game that sounded so divisive). I'm less than 10 hours into the game, barely scratched the surface but I can honestly say I love the game. The slow pace, the item management, the simple nature of just getting from point A to B whilst listening to the soundtrack. It just clicks for me and is an experience unlike any other I've had in a game. It's just been a breath of fresh air for me from all the other types of games that I'd normally opt for.
@@skaterdude7277 duct tape one of my kids to my chest and drink monster energy drinks whilst yearning for that Silent Hills game we never received. Sounds bliss.
no it isn't. in fact, i only just now learned it worked that way from you. all you need to do to S rank deliveries through the mountains is set up a zipline network that takes you from one porter to the next and will take you up the mountain on one end and down the mountain on the other. BTs can't attack you while you're ziplining.
The fact that games like this can still be made has given me a glimmer of hope. Even if you dont even like the game you have to admit its refreshing to see a game come out that was made with nothing BUT passion instead of the usual company mandated money making machines we get so often.
I agree. Even though you could argue that a narrative medium needs its own way of telling instead of borrowing it from another medium, which is my biggest problem with the game. You can't expect people who are not into games to find any artistical intent in a story that essentially is a less good movie. Something thats quite difficult to discuss is the relevance of Death Stranding as a piece of art. I've seen countless attempts of people who like the game trying to explain it as something greater that what it shows. For me a game will make me reflect on ideas way more if they introduce them in an interactive manner and without expecting me to understand what it wants me to understand. Ironically I find a game like Death Stranding to be the primary reason why games struggle to be artistically relevant and culturally legitimate.
@@XanderVJ Hmm... Let's reflect on that misguidance. Books are an art form, primarily because of the way it distinguishes itself through form : which means that an idea or a story can have way more impact with this form rather than with another. This form has through years and authors expanded because of the techniques that they developed. These techniques does not apply to cinema, because it has its own techniques. Why is 2001 so important for cinema ? Because of the literary dialogues ? No. Because it used its filmic techniques to show instead of tell. That's why it's so influencial as well. In fact what makes it unique as a film is how it did'nt care for the book all that much. Now of course video games borrow lots and lots to cinema in order to tell its story, and Death Stranding is the epitomy of that trend with over 11 hours of cutscenes, some of them so long that it becomes ridiculous. Discussing the cinematic quality of these scenes is another subject entirely but the point is that none of it would be even half as good as the best movie out there. That's just how it is, and if you don't agree just remember that applying interactivity in a film has almost always in the past resulted in hollow garbage. To be inspired by cinema is one thing but to use cinema that much would be like watching a film where the main character reads a novel to you without even moving his eyebrows when he's surprised.
I think this is an important take away. Whether someone likes Death Stranding or not. It can't be denied that's it's a different, fully functional, good looking, single player game. They need to keep them coming. I find it funny that a game with no microtransactions is getting flak for having a giant monster energy add in it. oh? that sign over there says Pepsi? I don't care as long as I'm not constantly reminded or attempted to go to the PlayStation store for some new character item, or piece of clothing.
@@TheGekko135 So let's compare it with another fully functional single player triple AAA game with no microtransactions, DLC, digital edition or bonus preorder that was actually released the same year : Sekiro. It does'nt need cinematics. It has a few but overall the story would'nt be crippled if you took them away whereas as you said, it is the case for Death Stranding. In fact take them away completely and you would never see or interact with any other human in the game, except when you have some girl to carry. I did'nt mention Monster Energy but now that I think about it it's true that Sekiro does'nt have those. Sacrificing immersion for some good-looking actors that are way too expansive is something not every game does, indeed. So it's different, I agree. Jokes aside, there is obviously a lot to appreciate in Death Stranding and I would'nt talk about it if I did'nt care about it. .
Several months ago, I started watching a 12hr cut scene/play through of Death Stranding. I dropped about half way. Then your video popped up. So I finished that 12hr video just so I could happily watch yours with context. :) Thanks for the great work, Matt!
i somehow remember seeing your majoras mask review 8 years ago and to this day i still believe your reviews are top notch and underrated. you have reviewed almost every game that has made a significant impact on myself, and its a joy to see how someone else experienced the game in a more clear and concise review. good work man!
Like the search for One Piece and the wait for Half life 3. But on a serious note, I love the game myself as I adore the game design, aesthetics, characters, and world but even I know some other people might not enjoy it from its slow paced passive non violent nature so it’s definitely not for everyone.
Trip from Edge Knot to Central Knot was the best time i had in DS and gaming this year. It felt rewarding that i built all those structures not only for myself but for other players, especially since other players supported you, not only that but frequent Large BTs added more to the sense of haste, not only that but a pack of those BT Lions made me feel more threatened than the Big whale BT. I was also hoping the 5 star relations i made with random NPCs (all of them lmao) i delivered packs to, had more impact at the end, maybe even contributed to finding Sam but the emails were sufficient i guess.
"Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. We all want to pretend this looks good, but I know you see what I see. Just look at it with open eyes." It feels good to know I'm not alone in this belief. Games shooting for realism have always had this issue, but every generation everyone acts like game graphics are now indistinguishable from photos, to the point where I feel like I'm the only person who sees the overly glossy skin and weirdly-aliased strands of hair.
Depends on the game I would say. MGS V still looks shockingly good to my eyes for example. Yes, it's not indistinguishable from real life photos, but the characters atleast aren't as uncanny as Death Stranding.
The only time I had a problem was Sam's crying. Otherwise I dont think its gonna age any worse or better than Kojimas other games which didnt get facial acting rants from Matosis despite how silly Raidens face looks in that game. Not to mention that even Uncharted 1 still looks good enough that it's not hilarious yet so I dont think Death Stranding is in as much danger as Matosis thinks?
Does it really? Back in 2004, if you posted a screenshot of GTA SA online and tried to pass it as real, everyone would recognize it immediately despite it being one of the “most graphically intensive” games of the generation. Whereas you can post a screenshot from GTA V from 2014 into a 2020 post and you’d likely convince many people it was real. Games like Control even splice in live action footage of their main protagonist and most people didn’t even notice. I’d argue we’ve reached a point with graphical fidelity that things are realistic enough that unless you know what to look for, most people may not be able to tell if something is a screenshot or real. This is why some people aren’t that impressed with the PS5 and XbX’s graphics as it’s what we already have but better rather than an enormous step forward likely because we’ve reached very close if not there to photorealism. So unless In 20 years we come up some entirely new technology like SAO style VR that completely replicates our senses, I doubt Death Stranding or even most our current games would age too poorly
Kojima's attempts at making players feel smart by implementing small riddles really backfired for me. I was streaming for my friend on Discord and didn't hear that artist girl say that they throw bodies into the tar lake. My friend was already done with that part and told me to "think again" when I refused to enter the city with the bomb for obvious reasons. Since I didn't hear her, I had absolutely no chance of knowing about the lake and no way to figure it out, also the lake is way to small and right beside the city so it doesn't come to mind to throw a nuclear bomb in there. My first thought was to go to the crater of the old bomb attack, everything inside the blast radius of such a bomb is already gone after all. Making Sam sneak by the BTs and placing it in the old shelter to then flee the site while the countdown is ticking would have been adequate, with the lake method being a nice little treat for attentive players. Alternatively the lake could have a nice big round crater as hint. I was super frustrated when I hit that wall and it made me feel dumb when I had to ask my friend what to do. Same goes with the "Press R bumper to hug" in the final scene. Despite remembering that Die Hardman's bullets just passed through Amelie, I felt so much pressure that I fired anyways, then walking after her, not making it in time, Boom, world ended, connect again? Nice job Kojima, pausing the climax of your movie game with a mission failed screen. Not everybody blasts through the game in 10 hour bursts, writing a psychological profile of Sam, figuring out that hugging her now (also from a gameplay perspective, since you never hug anyone ingame) is the obvious thing to do. That was just sad, complete mood killer. And the BB thing. Standing in front of the incinerator, already being traumatized by Kojima's vague shit, I looked down on BB to trigger the soothe animation or whatever to get the "right" ending, nope, this time he decides to put me on rails for this in the worst way possible. Deadman tells Sam that he can take BB out of the container and try to reanimate it with a 30% (?) of survival. One OBVIOUSLY thinks that Sam would try to save BB at the first chance he gets. Nope he decides to burn it but then gets second thoughts, fucking bullshit.
I think the game should have been scaled down and had more focus on traversal, they tried to do too much. I enjoyed the game quite a bit though, it was an errie unique experience that im glad i had
Indeed. My favorite part of the game was, BY FAR, the gameplay. I enjoy Kojima's hit or miss weirdness, but I couldn't care less about it when actually playing the game, doing side missions, planning routes, etc, because that's where the meat of it was to me.
Thank you Matthew, your spin on just one game and what you conclude from it and everything in between puts gaming journalists to shame. Love your content mate
Matt’s wish for a controller that can properly handle the balance mechanics came true with the PS5 rerelease. Playing this game with a PS5 DualSense controller makes a huge difference. It’s almost like the game was developed with the DuelSense in mind. And what’s great is that the DualSense automatically works with the PC version, which is where I revisited the game. The haptics also help a ton with the feeling of weight and balance as well. I think if you haven’t already given the Director’s Cut played with the DualSense a shot, Matt, you definitely should.
A note on roads, the vast majority of roads I had in my playthrough on the PS4 were auto complete without my input, or ones I had started and then became complete the next time I started playing. I think I personally completed 5-6 auto pavers total.
A TH-camr providing quality, long form content every chance he can, even if it means a few months at a time, instead of churning out garbage every day. You are doing God's work, sir.
23:50 listening to this segment reminded me of a game called Foxhole on steam. Its a large multiplayer game wherein two factions fight out a huge war on a single continuous map. Twist is every single bullet, bandage, can of fual, gun, vehicle etc needs to be manufactured from raw materials by players and exist as physical things in the world that need to be shipped to the front. Supply chains, logistics, reinforcements are all player driven and controlled systems rather then existing in abstract. Whole sections of the playerbase devoted to just mining or shipping and resupplying in this online war game.
@@JeremyComans Well, it goes for the realistic view, which means that once you've optimized it, it's about following procedures. When the enemy is using actual strategy and trying to cut off your supply lines, suddenly being part of the supply chain becomes a lot more exciting. But the combat will always be the part that players gravitate to.
Hey Mathew, you know its unlikely you'll read this but I've had an awful day and this video is such a perfect way to turn it around, keep up the good work, really love everything you put out :-)
At first, I wasn't too sure about playing this game because some of the things I've heard about it. But you tackled my concern within 3 mins of the video. Watching footage of the game isn't enough to get a full idea of how it plays and it isn't just a game about "walking" , at least not how it usually works in other games. I stopped watching 3 mins in and now I'm interested in playing through this so thank you for clearing some things up for me. Looking forward to watching this later!
Thank you for including that Kojima quote about video games being more like a museum than a piece of art. In one sentence, the dozen dozen thoughts I've had on that topic coalesced. Kojima is a smart fellah.
Revisiting this review in 2022 since I randomly felt like replaying the game and kind of a funny little side element of the discussion about preservation - Death Stranding's servers are still up so I can't comment on how that's going to be handled, but The Tomorrow Children has apparently been brought *back* from the dead by the original developer buying out the IP from Sony.
I disagree with what you said about the ending part where Sam almost burns Lou. He thought Lou was dead and was going to cremate her. It was only when he saw her about tob e burned that he found the hope within himself that she could be saved. Death Stranding is set in a hopeless world, where Sam goes along with the hopelessness and follows other people's plans. Saving Lou is where he finds hope within himself, showing that he can hope, and we are left at the game's ending knowing life id going to get better because not only does Sam have a child to raise, but he has his hope restored to him.
I would counter Kojima's opinion of games as museums by saying that the construction of a museum is an art. Architecture, interior design, organization, perspective, atmosphere, funding, staffing, management, upkeep, restoration, writing, narration, cinematography, direction, and many other artistic disciplines work together to create the artistic object that is a museum, including all of its constituent exhibits. And in that way, I would say that yes, games are museums, but that does not stop them from being art. If you have a fine art museum, and in one corner you have reconstructed dinosaur skeletons, that dino exhibit is a blemish on the construction of the museum from an artistic standpoint, barring some justification to reunify it with the other pieces. It is bad art, because it detracts from the rest of the piece. This is why bad mechanics, bad writing, glitches, and more can damage a video game as an artwork without damaging the hyper-individualized quality of this texture or that sound file or those lines of code. Art is determined by purpose. If an object has a purpose, it's value as art is determined by its excellence in achieving that purpose. That is why trash is not art, and anyone who claims that it is (in good faith) must appeal to some purpose found in a subversive iteration of a pursued virtue. And even that sort of anti-art relies on the fact that it is indeed contrary to the nature of art, and its obvious low quality is in service to a more important, unifying purpose. (Don't take that last bit as an excuse for modern art, all of those hacks know how to recite it and it doesn't mean they're being honest when they do.)
25:18 I’m not sure I entirely agree anymore because there were some historical things like how when photography came about artists didn’t have to concern themselves with realism anymore which led to styles like cubism and Dadaism, which sort of gets at the same thing. Another example is the invention of the novel, which could tell much more detailed stories than poetry. Also, there’s a concept known as medium specificity that’s essentially what you’re getting at here. I stumbled upon it while looking into Soviet Montage Theory, which from my understanding is like an early way of achieving symbolism through photography- an example of the medium specificity of cinema. I think every medium has had some discussion related to what it particularly excels at at some point in its existence.
Just decided to give this game a try a few days ago, I'm enjoying it so far but I haven't had to grind much, hopefully the pacing continues like it is at the start. I'm partway through the second area now. Better to play without online features imo, it keeps the challenge higher and the need for resources and the right gear more significant.
I haven't played Death Stranding, but as I saw other people play, react, and describe their experiences I remember constantly thinking "This sounds weirdly similar to The Tomorrow Children." I felt a little crazy, like there's no way this huge Hideo Kojima game could actually mirror a dead indie game that most people never played, so I'm glad to see that crazy thought vindicated by one of my favorite reviewers, and glad I got to experience the game beyond the title screen.
you must've connected with some awesome people. i remember only about 80% of the road going from lake knot to its distribution center were built for me by other people but aside from like 4 pieces of road after that? i built it all with almost no help. and yes, i waited until i connected the relevant areas before putting materials in. people had contributed, but always just the bare minimum and never updated the stretches on their own.
22:49 Speaking of traversal, I think that games such as The Pathless (by Giant Squid Games) and Dishonored (by Arkane studios) offer fun and interesting means of traversal that make the game more fun to play, and adding to that, using those means of traversal leads players to discover corners of the world of the games that reward exploration. On top of that, both games feature achievements/trophies ("trickshot" in The Pathless, "Shadow of Darkness" in Dishonored 1) that encourage player to push the traversal system to its limits and achieve a degree of mastery of it.
Hurray, a new Video from the guy that caused me to fall in Love with high quality youtube content. Srsly, Mat you are Part of the reason I got rid of my tv and I still rewatch your old reviews from time to time
Whenever Matt gets genuinely upset or angry by something in a game, his feelings are so strong to the point where it feels like *I've* done something wrong Good video though
It feels quite real, and i aooreciate that over the feigned outrage commonly shown. To me its always been a part of his appeal. When he means it, he means it.
@@QuackerHead-j I was so disappointed when he complained about the advertising. It's funny, it's inoffensive, and its absolutely no different than the advertising that's been in every one of Kojimas games since 3. Death Stranding just gets it worse because westerners didnt know what Calorie Mate was. Or I guess blatantly advertising Triumph motorcycles and Playboy magazine and Apples iPod is cooler? A lot of the "aggressive" criticisms towards Death Stranding from this review and others just feels hypocritical to me when it's from people who had no problem with these elements in previous games. Where was Matthew goin nuts about reliance on facial performances when MGS3 has a ton of extreme close ups on eyes and tears?
@@Tamacat388 1. Why are you assuming he has no problem whatsoever with the advertising in previous Kojima games? 2. Did you even listen to the bit about facial expressions? His issue was *specifically* with trying to convey complex emotions with technology that isn't yet capable of delivering it, or at least didn't with this game. The issue isn't close ups of faces. How in the world did you come away from this thinking that's what he was saying?
Nothing wrong with putting the narrative of a game before the mechanics. The developers of Oxenfree shaped the game around the story (there is an incredibly talk about the game on the GDC channel) and the result was fantastic. The problem comes from being stubborn. While the Oxenfree developers put the story first, they were not against changing details and some things here and there to better suit the gameplay. It is almost like a game is a sum of all of its parts, and all of them need to work coherently with the others. The whole "putting gameplay first" works just fine if your game is entirely devoid of a story and plot elements, but if you want your game to be enjoyed and remembered for both being enjoyable and for having an engaging narrative, then you should put BOTH things first.
I think you would be interested in a relatively obscure game called Miasmata. Its core gameplay consists in traversing rough terrain, but this is not limited just to finding a best path as you walk from point A to point B. Because you do not have a complete map of the gameworld, but only a map of the area you start in, you also need to use triangulation to establish your current position and lay out the route to a destination you want to reach. Once you reach a new area, you can expand your map by using triangulation based on new landmarks you discover. This makes for very engaging (and original) gameplay.
About the facial animation and motion capture, I think that one of the character crying at the end of the game is one of the most believable performance I have ever saw in entertainment media.
Can't emphasize enough how much I agree with the "The Tomorrow Children" point you made. I initially thought DS would be more of a frontier type game, with players tasked to go into the wild as a community, and rebuild the world of the post-apocalyptia, but as details kept rolling in, i got more and more disinterested. I would like to imagine a parallel world, in which DS is that game, with character customization and minimal story, with heavy focus on community tools, but I'm just a sucker for such mechanics, so eh - guess another game could fill that void for me.
I was CONVINCED throughout my playthrough of the game that the story was building up to a big reveal where it turns out all the other online players were other Sams from parallel universes and there was going to be a big multiverse merging thing and get all meta about how he was a game character...
Just about to watch your review - I absolutely loved Death Stranding, I put well over a hundred hours in, but I'm still in the second area (chapter 9 maybe???). I have put it down for now but I'm excited for the rest of the story to play out.
I think this game will still look good in 20+ years, just as games like Flashback or Desert Strike etc still look good today. I thought the acting and face scans etc were excellent in this game as well, I think Kojima has ambitions of moving into films and I'm hearing that's what one of his next projects may be.
36:25 "It seems to set them up in order to demonstrate the rules and implications of its pseudoscience, rather than the psychological tolls those rules might have on people forced to endure them" And that's, in a nutshell, the problem Kojima has always had when it comes to characterisation and how the characters relate to the themes he wants to convey. Instead of psychological intricacy, you end up with sermons about what the digital age is all about or why top down control of information is bad. Characters end up being loudspeakers for whatever idea Kojima finds worthy of discussion
Yea. All Matosis criticsms of the writing and narrative aspects of this game bothered me if only because they were completely absent in his MGS videos where it was all way worse imo. I mean The Boss isnt even a character but she gets praised over Fragile and her actual personality quirks and love of squishy worm food? Just seems a bit hypocritical.
@@Tamacat388 You nailed. The Boss is just a person who appears everytime Kojima needs someone to explain the themes of the story. Doesnt have any role on the story.
The only part that I flat out disagree with is your part about Amelie. She is far from incomprehensible. To me, it feels like you must have not understood the concept of an EE (Extinction Entity). They appear to reign in the apocalypse. They become godlike and their mere presence begins to tear reality apart, regardless of what they feel about it. And so Amelie had spent a full life-time attempting to build humanity up to withstand her presence so that she could remain among the people she loved. But in the end, she felt bad for putting humans (Sam and Cliff) through so many trials that she thought "I might as well just speed up the process at this point, I'm literally just watching my loved ones die a cruel death" and so she roped Higgs into making that happen. The game ends with Amelie isolating herself on the other side, and closing the connection to the living (closing the chiral network) as is shown when Sam carries Lou outside into the rain and the rainbows suddenly being right-side-up instead of upside down as it is with timefall.
She's incomprehensible because of her jarring dialogue, overacting, and in general poor execution. She just rambles on at Sam. This is actually a huge problem in the game, characters "talk" at each other, but not "with" each other. The lack of actual conversation really brings the game down from what it could have been. And don't confuse artistic choices (such as the ending walking out in the rain with Lou) with the reality of the game world. It's symbolism, not realism. When you're allowed to keep playing in Chapter 15 (two weeks before the ending, but AFTER the events with Amelie) everything is the same as it was before. The chiral network still exists, and was never closed off. There's no doubting there are many interesting ideas in Death Stranding, but it's not as deep as you think. Most of it is just surface level, which is ironically why it didn't "connect" with many players. In many ways the storytelling is straight downgrade from the Metal Gear series, and most of those sequels were mandated by Konami. They weren't exactly passion projects the way Death Stranding was. So even under worse working conditions, Kojima has done much better with his metaphorical storytelling in the past.
I can't believe that in my 50s, I'm gonna be watching this 46-minute Death Stranding review again because the damn TH-cam algorithm will put it in my queue. I wonder if I'll see this comment or remember writing it. 2020 sucks
I can relate to the pain of constipation more than most other pains felt by video game characters, so Norman Reedus' face is very immersive for me Matt.
@@VargVikernes1488 Not even close. The game is not for everyone. Didn’t think for a second this game was gonna be enjoyed by everyone as it’s different in its slow paced terrain traversal approach. I personally love it a lot but it’s understandable that some others are not gonna so much. It most certainly does not “suck” at all. It’s understandable if you find it boring or uninteresting but to me and a lot of people can find it engaging and compelling to find traversal and land exploration calming and a relaxing experience.
@@Gadget-Walkmen I find the nonsensical pretentious drivel of a story much more offensive than the gameplay, actually. Nothing wrong with a delivery sim, if it was married to a good story.
@@VargVikernes1488 NOT even close at the slightest. Strongly disagree with that ridiculous bullshit claim there. Not a all “drivel” or “Pretentious” at all. The overall plot makes sense is well craft within the context of the universe even Matthewmaotis pointed this out, So it’s nowhere near this “nonsensical” at all. This game can come off as heavy handed at times with its dialogue but it definitely has something compelling to say. The game has long cutscenes in places and get story sorta slow but it gets to a point in the last few hours where everything is extremely complexing and emotional beautiful in the end of it all. It really all does make sense at the end and I would say pretty satisfying.
Great critique, left me a lot to think about. I think there's a few key points of contention I have, none of which override the overall points you're making. But I think the difficulty reducing as you unlocked stuff was part of the appeal for me, I think the streamlining helped instill that feeling that I was really making the world a better place by making it less complicated to deliver things to people in need. Mechanically, as a challenging game, it certainly became less engaging as it went, but thematically I felt more and more like I was making the difference that was intended. Additionally, I think there's a slight missed element on the topic of the real actors. My understanding is that Kojima wanted to specifically bring in artists (actors, musicians) he had a connection with, and allow them to make a tangible mark on the game, because it fit with his overall theme of building connections. In that sense, the real-people inserted into the game made for a reminder to me that the premise cares about the real people we connect with. That doesn't make the acting direction or writing any better, and certainly doesn't fix the issues with mocap, but to me it does justify the strange idea that I am seeing real actors as characters in this game about an alternate future.
"I have no idea what's going on in her (Amelie's) head most of the time or if she even has an understandable thought process in the first place". From my takeaway of the game: Amelie is depressed, she has nightmares about the Last Stranding just as every other DOOMS sufferer does. She points out she wanted to end it all but also regrets the action and wants everything to keep on keeping on. Which is the exact same conflict between Sam and Higgs, one wants to end it all and the other wants to keep on keeping on (more in action rather than in saying). I found the conflict between Higgs and Sam to be the literal embodiment of the conflicting thoughts within Amelie, with their resolution also being hers.
She basically "raises" both of them with her conflicting ideologies and whichever one wins decides the fate of humanity it seemed. What a psycho. In the same way The Boss tries to kill Snake at the end of 3 for no other reason than "we're soldiers, am I right?"
The bit about open world map traversal gameplay reminded me a lot of Minecraft. In that game traveling through a world is treacherous at first too, but it becomes ever easier when you modify the landscape, get more tools, etc. In a different way, this applies to Dying Light 1 as well; traveling the map felt a bit like an adventure, and part of the progress was that experience and leveling made it ever easier to move through it, to the point where the world felt less alien and familiar. Factorion and Satisfactorio also got a bit of an element of that. I'd love if more games take ideas like that, about traveling, isolation and community. Doesnt even need to be multiplayer. Most Open World games might pay lip service to those ideas, but are just too straighforward, feature packed and convenient for that to be a factor. Never really felt like I was truly isolated in something like Days Gone, despite a setting that looks like it shouldve been a primary feature.
Having hidden meanings or puns in names is common in Asian fiction naming sense. Just look up wuxia novels like Condor Heroes or of course the Ace Attorney Series. It used to be more understood in the West as well the importance of names as seen in the Bible or looking up the etymology of many western names.
The trivialization of deliveries is the most appealing element of the gameplay for me. Look at The Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind. At the start you walk slowly, having to save money up for bus fare. By the end you can Teleport and fly across the map, which ties into the games theme of interpretation. Are you fullfilling the role of reincarnated god king because you are one? Or are you becoming him by fulfilling the same tasks he did, the same achievements and therefore becoming just as powerful? Fulfilling those achievements is part of the prophecy so it might just be youre a random person who was simply put on a path to rise to power, allowing you to accrue enough power to beat the villain by trying to measure up to the tasks set before you by the prophecy. All that power trivializes the majority of the game once you have it. The streamlining of the game in Death Stranding accomplishes the same thing for the same reason, reinforcing the theme, in this case coming together. Difficult tasks vecome trivial as people aid each other.
I can understand your frustration with Fragile being yet another awkward presence yet I think her character makes a lot of sense. Her father had started the company and she felt she had to continue on the work whether she truly felt comfortable with the job or not. As someone who's not particularly fond of customer service yet had to do it anyways, I felt a strong connection to Fragile, how she acts and tries to do her best despite everything seeming to fall apart around her adds to this connection. Every other character at least seemed comfortable with their profession and place in the world but she seemed desperate, though I could simply be reading into things too much and projecting, testament to Lea's acting either way. Story wise it also makes sense that the only characters who weren't awkward were (I think) pre stranding, even if she does work customer service there's still not a whole lot of interaction between people in this world. The last scene between her and Sam is also kind of heart breaking to me yet strangely fitting for the arc and is somehow much more memorable to me than the del toro hug at the end, perhaps because I related to her more and becuase as you mentioned Sam's asimphosimphobia wasn't portrayed in a realistic way so it felt less impactful for him to get over it. It's a shame that not every character had an end game cutscene wrapping up their arc so I'm glad she at least got one.
@J Munna Dude there is so much little crap like that in this game. The game does tell you somewhere, but so much of it falls to the cracks on the first playthrough.
I enjoy your videos, but one thing I disagree with is the the notion that "you're left with nothing" once highways/ziplines get established. There are some games where efficiency is its own reward. It's like complaining there's "nothing to do" once you get strong enough in RPGs to one-hit-kill enemies from the earlier areas, or if you build a self-sustaining farm in Minecraft and no longer need to scavenge. Achieving efficiency to reduce formerly long-winded gameplay elements isn't a design flaw in those games, so why is it considered so here? You're still forced to not use the Chiral Network for new story beats, so having absolute speedy mastery over areas that were previously barren *is* the goal and achieving it does not diminish the gameplay. Most games have fast travel systems; Death Stranding makes you build your own and doing so doesn't hurt its goal as a game. One thing people don't acknowledge much is that Death Stranding is part city-building simulator in a sense. By the second half, making systems that connect different cities run like a well-oiled machine is just as important a part of gameplay as traversing terrain is. Just because it starts primarily as a walking, terrain-traversal simulator doesn't mean its subtle genre shift to larger-scale structure planning is a betrayal of itself.
Do you like the game? I love the game myself as I adore the game design, aesthetics, characters, and world but even I know some other people might not enjoy it from its slow paced passive non violent nature so it’s definitely not for everyone.
I agree. Not only that, ziplines have the limitation of carrying only cargo that's on Sam and nothing else, so big hauls can't be done through them, especially on timed missions. I even took the time to set up floating carriers for some missions and walked to my goal as I felt it was the best way to tackle them, so I'd disagree that ziplines trivialize the game as much as the video makes it sound like they do. They are fantastic for traversal, and make several missions much easier to complete, but they definitely don't become the ONLY way to complete them. Your point about the new areas is also spot-on. Traversing through the snowy mountains the first time through was tough, and being able to connect to the network and set up ziplines for ease of access AFTER "conquering the mountain" on foot was very satisfying to me.
Agree with you 100%. I find this review overly critical of the game, and completely missing the point and heart of Death Stranding. First things first: before you connect a region to the chiral network, nothing is built. It's pure raw terrain. That means the game loop of on foot exploration is always renewed. Second thing: It is actually fun to build roads and structures, and creating a working Zip Line network is no joke. I had a lot of fun figuring out ways to procure and transport materials for road construction, and actually spent HOURS setting up Zip Lines. Those hours were actually hours of exploration, including climbing to the highest places because they are good spots for Zip Lines, bringing ladders and anchors and other exploration materials, and generally having an awful lot of fun conquering the moutain. Third thing: Your Chiral Bandwith is limited, making the number of structures you can build limited. Increasing that CB is actually huge incentive for increasing your Connection Level with all the people you deliver things for, making every mission count. You cannot just come to the mountain and build Zip Lines everywhere. You won't be able to. So building a Zip Line network also means building up your CB level, you cannot build a network right out of the gate, 'trivializing' everything. Zip Lines are actually end game content. Last thing: The game does take into consideration you might have a Zip Line network. The missions are actually more varied than you may think. Some of them require you to keep your package chilled. Some of them have so much package you have to use a truck, or floaters. Some of them require you to carry your package by hand, making zip lines impossible to use. Some of them have nothing to do with zip lines, requiring you to retrieve packages from Mule Camps, from rivers, from BT infested areas, from perilous mountain slopes... And yeah, it does feel quite good having conquered the land at the end, particularly in this game, which makes you feel the reality of land and distances and weight like no other game before it!
This is so cathartic for me. It's so rare a critic says all the things I wanted to say while *also* teaching me things about the game I know I'll be able to viscerally appreciate if I come back! Thanks for your consistently great work!
I'm glad you addressed some finer details in the traversal mechanics, and you're right on the imbalances, but I'm more sympathetic to some views expressed by Noah Caldwell-Gervais. He didn't say this exactly in his video, but I think the quasi-"social" shared-infrastructure mechanics in a sense ARE the core gameplay, it's counter-intuitive because it's almost entirely optional, but I think the themes and motifs were meant to invite the player to engage with said mechanics in a subtext of 'altruism without promise for reward', including the reward of immediate contact and direct interaction. I think the uncertainty in knowing whether or not our actions benefit others compliments the extremely narrowed spectrum of "communication" available to the players, I only once found myself minorly inconvenienced by another players actions, there was no room for the kinds of toxicity I've come to expect in online spaces. On the other hand it was eerily lonely and isolating, and so I felt myself appreciating what little bits of benevolent interaction I could, despite how indirect, mediated, and uncertain they were. I think a similar duality is meant to be experienced regarding playing as "Sam Porter Bridges" the mythic Johnny Appleseed esque hero and an anonymous nobody contributing to systems that will retain little if any memory of them. Similarly while the game makes satirical points on "likes" and acknowledges their superficiality, but it retains some sincerity as well; sometimes the best we can hope for is a small simple gesture of positivity like a thumbs up, it's not immune from becoming a bad thing, but sometimes it's a decent enough comfort in a world starved of interaction.
Death Stranding Review
"Nobi Nobi Boy released in 2009..."
Well it was the first Strand-type game
@@MCHellshit noby-type* keep up
I rolled my eyes because it's become his routine a bit.
"If nothing else, [Kojima] is exceptional at straddling the line between lowbrow and highbrow concepts, making it difficult to discern whether something is clever or stupid."
This is quite possibly the most succinct explanation of what makes Kojima's stories both so appealing and so frustrating. Bravo.
@man0z What?
That's what makes Kojima good, in my opinion. He's like the Paul Verhoeven of video games. If he has something to say, he says it, without wasting time trying to appear respectable. It's the opposite of what you usually get from AAA games; copying the aesthetics of highbrow movies and prestige TV but not having anything deeper to say than "revenge bad".
@@notesscrotes4360 eh kojima has always been at the forefront of the cinematic experience : cutscene heavy, epic/moody osts reminiscent of movies, attempt at poetry dialog... Now he could add celebs to the mix. Writing wise He USED to know when to stop bothering the player. Not in death stranding though, which is funny enough, the same problem revenge bad citizen kane of gaming-man had in his latest magnum opus™. Gameplaywise both make goofy as fuck game that is only serious on the surface level. Kojima's has more replayability and interesting system for sure.
@@notesscrotes4360 I agree about AAA games who copy and say nothing, but I don't agree about Kojima being akin to Verhoeven. I see what you're getting at, sometimes Kojima does on the nose commentary, but it's usually surrounded by a mystifying amount of nonsense masquerading as art.
@@garion333 I don't agree for a second that his stuff is "nonsense" or trying to "masquerading" as art. Yeah he can make alot of over the top stuff that can seem ridiculous like dialogue and some scenes being overly blunt but
Kojima likes to do cool stuff that's visually and narratively cool and awesome to see for his audience and himself.
Sometimes it doesn't work but for the most part it does because his games embraces the surreal aspects of things.
Imagine Metal Gear Solid, and then strip away Psycho Mantis, Gray Fox and Otacon, remove the sections where you're expected to look at the game case or put the controller up to your arm so the vibration heals you. It's easy to see how without the charm of these stranger elements, Metal Gear Solid would feel a lot more generic.
If you disagree with even one of my points, I'm deleting my channel.
Damm your quick
Keep up the great videos
Whitelight the man himself!
i watched that 7 hour analysis, he better agree
Watch and learn whitelight. Just kidding I watch your vids all the time
No matter what I think of the game, I'm happy that a weird, hyper specialised, experimental game with a massive budget and not from a previously established IP exists. It is new, and I'm at the point where anything new and creative in a world of remakes, remasters, rereleases and sequels is a gift.
Especially in this era where AAA games are expensive as hell to make, so publishers aren't as interested in taking risks.
The idea that we should celebrate anything original is extremely dangerous. Also , nothing in this game is original. Literally , nothing. There is not a single mechanic in the gameplay that has not been done before.
@@zoisantonopoulos7999 I disagree with your entire post. While not getting into "single mechanic in gameplay" as one of those anoying pedantic arguments people make that tend to consciously ignore how something is implemented, how it functions within other systems, and how it has in-game feedback with narrative implications. You say it's "extremely dangerous", which is a big claim and yet don't justify it. So, why is it extremely dangerous?
@@Hoopla10 Since English isn't my native language you writing like that kinda confused me at first glance but i read your comment again and it became clear how lost you really are. I will break it down to you. When i am talking about how there is nothing original in the gameplay i am referring to everything from movement to zip line usage. Teleportation even , everything is like what you would expect from your typical triple a game. So i ask you , what is actually original in game? It's like when people said tlou2 had an original feature where enemies call eachother by name which was a lie. Metro exodus and control are 2 games released before tlou2 and have this feature. Secondly , about the dangerous idea. This can be proven mathematically , historically or by simply using common sense. As a mathematician i would tell you that since a new idea has a probability p of being good and q of being bad , assuming it follows the Bernoulli or binomial distribution , it is undeniable that we will experience bad original ideas with a probability = 1-p. As someone that loves history i would tell you that there are countless ideas which proved to be dangerous. Slavery is the easiest example. Another example can be the thought of a race which is above the rest. Finally , using logic , ideas are created by humans and humans by design are flawed thus using Aristotle's logic , the ideas of humans can be flawed as well. Here , look how easy i made it for you to understand.
@@zoisantonopoulos7999 You have LITERALLY proved my point. I LITERALLY explained why I feel your argument (without needing this wall of text to know this is the sort of pedantic almost autistic argument you were making). The thing is you probably feel you're special or unique, but by your first post, those first few words I knew what sort of irritant you were because there's so many like you. I explained why I find it a reductive argument, I'm not going to explain again.
I'm not lost, I asked a question. This is what you said "celebrate anything original is extremely dangerous". Not EVERYTHING original. Removing value from it. I would argue that it doesn't matter whether there's a value on a new idea. That fact we have new ideas should be celebrated alone. We can decide separate to that whether it's something that has a negative/positive impact. Your implications (or how I read it) suggest no new ideas is probably better and certainly shouldn't be celebrated (seemingly because a negative outcome has a probability, like that's some revelation lol). Humans are flawed but they are also creative (see I can do that too).
Look what a condescending little c u next tuesday you made yourself sound in the process. Don't bother to reply, I wont read it.
25:18 this is an extremely pedantic criticism of what is probably the best review of Death Stranding i've ever watched, but film actually does receive similar criticisms because it's derived mostly of other mediums. Stanley Kubrick once said his favorite aspect of filmmaking was editing because it was the only aspect of the medium that was distinctly its own (acting is derived from plays, cinematography is derived from photography, & writing is writing). That is why some people will say a film has "bad writing" if it's too wordy or "doesn't look good" if there is too many static shots, etc etc. Your main point still stands, i'd just thought i'd specify.
Always a great day when you post my dude!
What do you think about Kojima's point that games can't be art because they are amalgamations of other arts?
I find it a very stupid statement myself, you could say there's a couple of arts that are amalgamation of other arts and no one thinks of them as inferior for being so.
I think a much better critique of the validity of games as a vehicle for artistic expression is that games are utilitarian or aim to provide a service (fun) first and foremost, which would be at odds with their narrative quality, but even that is very debatable
Something I've been saying for a while is that the reason films are called their own while games brag when they imitate film-making is that the art and history of film-making is viewed as this unifying endeavor, one that is carefully focused on balance between these different elements and figuring out what would work when the scales are turned (like in the introduction of talkies, in experimental film meant for audiences or for film professors, in adaptation from one media to another).
Video games, probably because they are thought of as toys, seem to actually be viewed in the public eye as amalgamations of different art pieces. The actual synthetic unity of "game making" as a process that one could plan out is something that is easily replaceable (but still worse than a great single minded approach) with a great set of teams - good programmers, good art design, and good writing. When there isn't a real unity, one department can actually hold up the rest of the project. This distinction between film and gaming isn't a bad one - it's totally understandable, because we don't have to trust directors to do things like make your dvd players, decide the best composite of CD, but video game designers follow a much more hierarchically locked system that can easily turn into fifteen different projects like the ultra-realistic games do with their art design, or into a buggy mess like Star Citizen because the single man in charge wanted to appeal to people in the wrong way. Movies rarely just don't work at all if the director was misguided about only a portion of the project.
Also worth mentioning Alan's Moore's ongoing criticism of the movie adaptations of his graphic novels, and how those are stories designed precisely for a specific medium.
Otherwise a brilliant analysis, as always.
@@jacobogarcia8111 And yeah, look at how many movies people say work better as books, due to the nature of prose/narration/description.
DS dialogue be like:
deadman: sam, do you know [thing]?
sam: [thing]?
deadman: yes, [thing]. it's [simple explanation of [thing]]
sam: oh, right. [specific name of [thing], denoting sam's familiarity with
[thing] and lack of need for further explanation]
deadman: yes! [further explanation of [thing]]
Brilliance
That's just an elaboration of the traditional Snake-way of maintaining a dialogue lmao
Sam was a ludicrously boring character. Oh, he just has social anxiety and ass phobia? There are places in the story where there is literally no reasonable explanation for Sam having zero comment, i.e. seeing a tangible human for the first time during the couples mission TWENTY HOURS in to the game. I was yelling at my screen like, "yo, this is crazy! ...SAM?! HELLO?"
I’ve seen this comment a thousand times already
@@kylerclarke2689 I agree that sometimes he HAD to do comments, for example in the Mama sequence. But Mala Morgan deserves only "Wtf I'm doing here" faces 😂
The first nobi nobi type review.
The first strand-type game.
@@inscrutablewut regardless of the mockery. DS is not for everyone.
Didn’t think for a second this game was gonna be enjoyed by everyone as it’s different in its slow paced terrain traversal approach. I personally love it a lot but it’s understandable that some others are not gonna so much.
It most certainly does not “suck” at all. It’s understandable if you find it boring or uninteresting but to me and a lot of people can find it engaging and compelling to find traversal and land exploration calming and a relaxing experience.
I love the game myself but even I know some other people might not enjoy from its slow paced passive non violent nature so it’s definitely not for everyone.
@@Gadget-Walkmen basically, whether you like it or not, you have to admit what it chooses to do it does right
@@HelloKolla Chooses what to do is right what? What do you mean?
@@Gadget-Walkmen i think he just means it gets delivering packages right. can't agree personally
A minute in and I'm learning that the first "stranding" game, is in fact the second "nobi" game. Liked and favorited.
Oop, you forgot The Tomorrow Children! Death Stranding is the THIRD Nobi type game 😉😁
the first strand game I played was probably dark souls
A S A N O B I G A M E
@@StayFractalesque it was actually pokemon red/blue with the link cable 😎
@@peri5966 the link cable wasn't asynchronous though... It was just a multiplayer feature to battle and trade there and then in that single moment with someone you actually know in person infront of you. It's fully different
Be honest Matthew, did you write a 45 minute review just to let loose your frustrations over no one knowing about Noby Noby Boy?
I love you
You're a cutie
Truly a Strand Type love comment!
love u too :)
I-i love...spending time with you.
Hiding! It's great to see you here!
I like the idea of logging the placement of objects before the servers go offline. I had actually thought that would be a good idea for Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, so that some popular messages could be preserved in the game forever after the servers go offline. They also could have cloned some player co-op and PvP character profiles from the servers and added them to the game via a patch. That way, there would still be an illusion of the MP aspects of the game, even after the servers go offline.
It would be a true shame if 'Try finger but hole' were lost to future generations
@@FluffyWhiteCloudsYay or 'amazing Chest ahead'
Hi, I'm a person that lives with the same issue that Sam has (though I have admittedly worked very hard to get past it, thanks in part to Death Stranding). I'm at that moment where you talk about how unbelievable Norman's portrayal of aphenphosmphobia (or 'Haphephobia') is, but I have to say, from a personal standpoint, it's really not. The world is different in Death Stranding, but in the real world, it's actually a pretty stark portrayal. It could have been better, but as a baseline, it felt fairly accurate to me. People don't often take into account that you may be unable or unwilling to touch someone. They can (and will) get up into your business without realizing this or without giving you much of a chance to back off. Reacting to this calmly, or without real outward hostility can be difficult and requires a fair amount of self control. Outside of this, in some cases I've found, being physically close to someone does not always evoke that feeling of fear or anxiety that characterizes my phobia. I am not the be-all-end-all for this (obviously) and highly suggest you seek out opinions and dialogue from relevant persons in the future, should it become relevant.
I also have Haphephobia, and I would say that you have characterized it pretty accurately. I generally am most discomforted by someone standing directly behind me, but I have learned to more or less hide this reaction after many years. These days, I may dislike someone's proximity, but unless they actually try and touch me I mostly just grin and bear it for the sake of not offending anyone.
There is an interesting argument to be made that the reality of something isn't conveyed well to audiences, and their expectations of an imitation is more likely than of something wholly accurate.
I haven't played death stranding, but it is possible that a realistic portrayal would come across as overly normal, as it's difficult to convey how many emotions people conceal and hide in a video game. My takeaway is that Matt felt that the characters acted without much variation. The writing seems to be that each of them are a product of their environment, and this would potentially undermine a realistic phobia within a scifi world that seems to already pick and choose what it takes seriously. The delta between the characters is too low, maybe.
Even if a personality trait, disability, whathaveyou is a fundamental part of the self image of a human being, it may not mean much in a narrative that is based on overt themes. I think a lot of really great works are very blatant about their characters - take Tennessee Williams' naming conventions, the villain of pretty much any movie, the visual parallels with theme that any good movie tries to set up to combine mood with the meaning of the movie. I still think though that there are really powerful narratives when dealing with realistic problems that people don't often address, especifically when people are forced to confront the things they try to hide. Subtle problems and conflicts have to be carefully developed.
(I mean most of what I say to be about narratives in general, not about what Death Stranding should have done)
Now that I think about it though, Matt may not be comfortable with the inundation of detail that science fiction usually provides that seemingly leads nowhere, even if it loosely develops the feeling and theme of the world.
I'm just kinda rambling at this point, lol.
Thank you for sharing your personal experience, I’m sorry you had to deal with such ordeal everyday. I’m glad Death Stranding has eased it maybe in some way, it’s a tough world out there and we are all dealing with something, Death Stranding has a special part in my heart for the calm it brought me.
@@fangkc "Keep on keeping on!"
I don't have that but I do hate people standing too close for no reason when they don't have to. Get away, idiot people. My personal space starts 6ft back. Don't step on my heels.
Setting up my zipline network through the mountains was, without a hint of exaggeration or hyperbole, one my favorite gaming experiences ever. planning, mapping out routes, climbing to the top of every peak, at one point i even busted calculator and did some simple trig to better optimize a t-junction. i agree that everything after becomes much more monotonous, bu ti will never forget those hours connecting the entire map.
And I think that is part of the point of it, it is meant to be a reward for people who have already experienced everything inbetween a few times or conquered that challenge.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the monotone comes when someone is a bit more completionist than I am and feel obligated to get every shelter to its max rating and complete the majority of all package deliveries.
@@lostsanityreturned I would wholeheartedly agree that is when I lost it with the zip line and highway mechanics myself.
That being said, why would you go through the trouble of setting up zip line networks if you never intended to go back and do optional quests? It doesn't even take maxing out a shelter before they become super boring well before that point.
It's hard to describe- building these networks was one of my favorite parts of any game for a long while now. That being said, as soon as I finished I wanted the challenge of walking again. The only way I can describe this experience is "cannibalised gameplay".
Agree. Setting up a zip line network was incredibly rewarding. I wouldn't have it any other way.
@@peckc16 At that point I just took as many deliveries as I could to a single location. Until I needed the carriers to pull the cargo. Then I just used the zipline and highways to make the trek back for more deliveries less of a pain. Because Death Stranding is at its best when it's at its most difficult.
It must be hard because people like myself, you, and Matosis think the game is clearly too easy. But then again there are plenty of people who think the game is a total pain in the ass from start to end and constantly fall over somehow.
This.
Exactly this.
Yes, reusing your routes is monotonous and becomes routine. But the initial exploration and climb were such a unique and awe inspiring experience for me.
Death Stranding is a game I absolutely love, and I think I would I loved it even more if it was "only" a hiking game with future tech instead.
I often want to go back to this game just for the traversal, but everything around that now puts me off and gets in the way of me enjoying the moment to moment gameplay.
Pleas some game dev out there... Copy this gameplay and make it a full hiking game, I beg of you ♥
The upside down Rainbow is a real phenomenon called Circumzenithal arc that come from refraction of sunlight through ice crystals. In Death Stranding it is caused by the sun refraction on Chiral crystal that are always in the air around BT thous why a upside rainbow will always show up around them.
Do you like the game?
I love the game myself as I adore the game design, aesthetics, characters, and world but even I know some other people might not enjoy it from its slow paced passive non violent nature so it’s definitely not for everyone.
@@Gadget-Walkmen Game was addicting for me. 2nd fav game of 2019 Sekiro was 1st.
@@prettzzell9301 Glad you love it. As for me too.
@@prettzzell9301 keep on keeping on!
COOOL. The game is still trash
even though this game is flawed i’ll still always respect and appreciate it just because it’s an actual work of passion. compared to shit like Assassins Creed where they literally made the game grindy to pressure you into microtransactions exp boosters, Death Stranding isn’t a soulless product. It’s Kojima’s personal work of art for better and for worse
I love the game myself as I adore the game design, aesthetics, characters, and world but even I know some other people might not enjoy it from its slow paced passive non violent nature so it’s definitely not for everyone.
The 6th in a series of 4 reviews on the Metal Gear Solid series.
more like flaccid gear
@@dikasmusha6194 why "flaccid"? huh?
7th if ya count Rising
"death stranding is not unconventional enough" is exactly the take i wanted.
Unconventional is kinda subjective in this sense. I dont think it was ever really the point.
@@loubloom1941 what do you by subjective
@@teratoma. Means he does feel like it's not unconventional enough.
@@symbolicjohnson7 i understood first post, i'm asking the guy who says it's "subjective" and "not the point" when he hasn't elaborated on either
Exactly the take I expected knowing his taste. And I completely agree.
And once again, Death Stranding reminds me of how incredible Noby Noby Boy’s title track is. Thank you, Genius Kojumbo.
Jokes aside, I absolutely agree with the frontloaded difficulty and subsequent tail off in any challenge. The very first BT section is, with no exaggeration, the hardest time I had with the game. After that it was generally smooth sailing. I’d like to impart that I honestly feel the mechanical depth of the game is something to be admired. The physics for the bike are downright atrocious but the system used for throwing objects is wonderful. I just honestly hope someone can reign Kojima in for the next IP he works on because, while this current year has definitely impacted how I see the game (thank you for not mentioning it at all which would have definitely dated the review), I can’t give it all too much credit. Whitelight had a great dissection of the “oh that’s a cool theory” into immediate “oh the theory is just actually a completely correct thing how the hell did they know that?” BS that Death Stranding regularly employs.
And I absolutely agree on the online implementation. A long, meaningful impact on the world would have gone a long way to me putting down more stuff but, as you put it quite well, it’s self serving gratuitousness that ultimately serves to bolster your own ego even though you did it all for yourself without really thinking of anyone else. If that’s the dichotomy that Whitelight sort of missed the mark on then I’m happy that you’re the one to introduce that severe oversight into the discourse.
Kojima just needs a team that will challenge his ideas at some point, rather than allowing unbridled creativity from one person entirely. It’s ironic that this is the same man whose studio had an anonymous tip box for things that could make the game better when all I can imagine is Kojima running all the shots because the worst of his prior games runs rampant here.
Still enjoyed it though.
I honestly wonder what getting kicked out of MGSV early did to Kojima, because he's stuck in this dichotomy of having his name printed over everything and that being a major selling point, but also keeping this as the flagship title of his new studio and the entire team that's attached to it. I have no doubt that he tries to run his studio more similar to a film than game studio with him as a director, but he has to do this with the knowledge that he is the auteur creator who got chucked from his own project possibly in part due to his auteur-ness. He's definitely in a weird spot.
Can you provide a timestamp for that section in Whitelight's video?
@@4423reborn It's around the point at where the characters are discussing Amelie as an extinction entity in the line of the ones that have come before, completely preserved by umbilical cord etc etc, from the Dinosaurs to the mammoths. Except how they know all this and how they're hitting all these points on the head at the same time and getting them pretty much almost universally correct is such a plot contrivance that it beggars belief. Usually Kojima stories are factored around characters being completely in the dark to hundreds of sub-plots that all thread together and yet Death Stranding basically has omnipotent gods for a supporting cast.
Ken you are one of the last people I expected to see in the comment section
I think the "kojima really needs an effing editor" effect came late in this game for me. I think around the "Princess Beach" line during all the late game exposition. I think I paused the game and just sat there.
In MGS4 it was precisely when Ocelot was standing on a boat doing finger guns. In MGSV it was the literal moment I saw Quiet.
You finished Death Stranding because you enjoyed the game.
I finished Death Stranding so I could watch this review.
We are not the same
When I first heard about Death Stranding, I was interested in the setting and world, but the gameplay looked extremely boring to me. However, when I got the game for half off, I was completely sucked into the game and put 120 hours total, platnuming the game. It really surprised me how engrossed I got into it.
It's interesting because I had the opposite reaction. The early previews of all the weird imagery left me with the impression that Kojima was being weird because he was known as that weird, avant garde guy who made Metal Gear, not because the weirdness was saying anything at all. Once I saw the gameplay I was intrigued about how Kojima would make such a basic gameplay loop satisfying so I checked out a lets play only to see a 45 min cutscene of weirdness with no gameplay in sight, deciding there that the game wasn't for me.
@@chazzergamer The gameplay it´s something you can only understand how it feels by playing it.
It´s hard to explain but walking through unstable terrain while balancing your weight, avoiding rocks, climbing riffs, crossing rivers, etc. it´s a very engrossing experience. Add to it that you can build roads and stuff to make your trip easier and it becomes downright addictive.
Obviously you have to put up with hours of weird cutscenes but i think it´s worth it because what this game offers is quite unique and not easy to find elsewhere.
@@moralesfox
I trust that it is engrossing, I do have my suspicions that people only stuck with the game for as long as they did due to Kojima’s name being on her box (and the “Artist vs Corporation” narrative that surrounded the game at the time) but I don’t think so many fans are that committed to defending their idol.
It’s just that the cutscenes are an absolute deal breaker for me, I can’t stand a game that would rather be a film than a game and Death Stranding reeks of that.
But despite me knowing DS will not be my thing I’m glad it exists if only to have weird auteur games be given a big budget, hopefully this will be something the industry follows.
@@moralesfox This is the same feeling I had toward a different game, Dragon's Dogma. Even though it's an Action RPG, I think the same principle applies. I saw a video of the game and was turned off by the dated visuals, even for the PS3/Xbox 360 era, and long stretches of walking across the environment.
However, once I got around to playing it, I liked the combat and how the game initially restricted fast travel to encourage you to explore the world. There's a feeling of satisfaction for exploring uncharted territory and seeing how far you traveled through hostile land to find a new, unexplored location.
Dragon's Dogma being so fun despite looking boring when watching someone playing is the main reason why I gave Death Stranding a chance.
@@chazzergamer I am not sure more film than game really suits death stranding. This is far from MGS4 style presentation. It has two large chunks of cutscene.
At the start, and at the end. And while I loath the introduction cutscene train... The end somewhat makes sense while being super lengthy, it isn't something that would suit being playable and wraps up the game world/story effectively.
Regarding "Sam Porter Bridges" I remembered the name of the main character in Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash: Hiro Protagonist.
I personally thought it was a cheesy but stylish cool name. Sort of like a star wars one.
Seeing this in my subscriptions list really perked me up after a trying and tiring day.
I was gonna like your comment but then I saw that I couldn't, sorry.
@@pedroholsbach8592 you disagree that I had a challenging day, that the day itself was tiring or that I was pleased to see a new video from a creator who’s work I enjoy?
When I posted the comment (within 5 minutes of the video being posted) I had not watched the video. And I’ll freely admit that Death Stranding isn’t a game that I intend to play or appeals to me personally. If you disagree with Matthew’s opinions or thoughts on the game, that doesn’t really relate to my comment about being pleased to see a new video by this creator.
I’m genuinely curious so hope you have the time and inclination to reply :)
@@TomHeggie No, no bud. It's just a dumb joke. It was 69 likes. But now it's gone, so so is the joke
@@pedroholsbach8592 Ah, gotcha! Its so hard to tell when people are being serious with comments and replies! My intention was hoping Matthewmatosis might see the comment and be pleased that his hard work had lifted somebody's spirits :D The guy makes great content, after all :)
I left a comment a while back, that was intended to be helpful (it was a VoD of a fighting game tournament stream that was frequently ripped and reuploaded and heavily monetised - so I suggested removing the 8 minutes of "stream starts soon graphic" from the video and it might make it more palatable for the audience) and had somebody have a right go at me for it lol I was accused of not being able to operate the timeline slider or skip the video ahead. Instead of, y'know, wanting to see the creators of the video get the attention they deserve for the hard work they put in.
Aaanyway, you probably didn't need to know all that. Have a great day, Pedro!
People who called Death Stranding a walking sim are those who most obviously by and large didn't play it; it's a *_hiking_** simulator.*
Yeah, this changes everything. Still a game nobody asked for.
@@MetalGearyaTV
I've been asking for an open-world eldritch-ghost post-apocalypse game ever since The Spirits Within in 2001, thanks
@@baitposter and a walking sim at the same time. Very believable. Death Stranding is a PoS, and Kojima is a hack with exactly ZERO talent. But fanboys can't admit it, ofc.
@@MetalGearyaTV
I was never a fan of Kojima games before Death Stranding.
As Death Stranding is one of the few hiking sims ever made _(as in, you can engage with the terrain, not just hold W or the stick in a direction),_ with beautiful vistas and collaborative infrastructure construction that you just don't see anywhere else that isn't a survival-crafting game like ARK or Rust, it's quite cozy. It sounds like you just have a bone to pick with Kojima games.
Personally, I think Death Stranding has shit writing for its overarching story and the main story dialogue, though. The side stories of important characters _(e.g. Cliff, Heartman, Mama)_ are the only good part about the main storyline. Kojima needs a writer.
😅
Death stranding is a weird experience.
I love that finally an open world game put some effort into making traversing the world interactive and not just a sightseeing trip, waking while managing your weight feels natural and interesting, and building roads and ziplines feels incredibly rewarding.
But all that progress makes the game too easy and trivial, driving in a road is barely interactive, and ziplines literally just are not.
There is a chunk of this game that i love to play and think there is nothing really like it elsewhere, but it´s over pretty quickly and what´s next is just another openworld game and a bunch of menus.
When it comes to facial animation, I thought most of it was good/decent, rather than embarassing, but there's a scene with Die-Hard Man at the end of the game which had probably the best facial capture I've ever seen either in a game or film. It was genuinely astonishing
The facial animation is the best that exists currently, I have no clue how this reviewer came to his conclusions, including on the footage he showed while making it
That scene with him was incredible for a lot of reasons. I was a little sad he showed a clip of it without praising his performance, haha.
He broke my brain when he brought this up... His point was basically, Devs know that its not perfect and sometimes looks weird so don't even try because in a few years a game will do it better....
And then he talks about the last of us which is a prime example of realistic graphics that looked phenomenal when it was first released but now compared it with DS and it holds no bar against it... Just because the tech isn't perfect to the human eyes doesn't mean you can't give it your best... I genuinely can't believe he called DS's Real time mocap Primative...
The cinematics in this game were what kept me motivated (although i did love hiking through the landscape w/low roar), I never had a problem with Sam's beach scene and felt everything that Kojima wanted me to feel, Mama's scene in the rubble was a bit off putting because of how close the camera was, it really lit up the jank in the mocap around the mouth...
And then like you guys said before me Diehardman's scene at the end of the game was the best mocap performance I have ever seen (if not one of the best performances I've ever seen)
Also what was he talking about with Tory baker, he has some of the most mild scenes when it came to mocap and i saw no issues their ...
Die Hardmans confession was incredible
Whether or not you thought it looked "good" or even "astonishing" now is missing the entire point. Ocarina of Time looked astonishing when it first released, yet here we are 30 years later and it looks terrible now relative to new games. As Matt said, the same will be true for this game's facial capture in 30 years, probably even more so.
The mask is great for sneaking past bts. They can't hear you breathe with it on.
Epic...
Damn, why am I learning this just today when I finished the game Yesterday.
@@Agitated_Alien same here holy crap
And they reduce your stamina loss.
Damn, so cool! I love Kojima games for the hidden mechanics like this.
The MGSV footage makes me tingle. Still hopefull of part 6 of his four part series on metal gear solid series.
On one hand I would love him to finish it for completion's sake. But also it'd probably be the same critique of AAA games homogenizing into a monogenre from the God of War review
MGSV is an incredibly weird game to talk about. It’s probably my second favorite of the series but I find it impossible to recommend to people. I guess Death Stranding is no different.
@@breedlove94 I dont think modern games homogenized MGS at all though. MGSV didnt have an open world sinilar to any other game. It focused on making each mission diverse and incredibly repayable rather than the usual AAA trend of making open world missions incredibly linear and strict one and done affairs where they play put differently each time and the devs likely dont think about the experience on repeat playthroughs. And V went one further and had probably the least filler traversal sections of any AAA game. The travel time between points of interest and core gameplay in MGSV is never more than a minute while Assassins Creed or GTAV give you several minutes of moving through a city, watching cutscenes, spending several minutes traveling from the mission start to the actual level, ect.
Though based on this video and things Matosis has said in the past it looks like he made the same snap judgements about V as everyone else and let the Konami drama convince him that the game was incomplete, though that's a complete myth.
@@Tamacat388 @Thanatos388 ooh, hard disagree. There seemed to me to be even less variety than Peace Walker; vast majority of Ops boil down to extracting a single target. The maps feel largely empty and the commute to the mission area, especially early on if you want to go with D-Dog and Quiet, is a chore. The core gameplay is immaculately polished (likely refined before the late development drama happened) but it has the same problem I have with "play your own way" design in that it's easy to fall into the optimal play style that it becomes quickly monotonous. And we may never know what exactly went down at Kojipro at the end, though all I can say is that I finished Chapter 1 today and I said for the first time about a Kojima game "Wow that was underwritten"
That being said I *totally* get why that loop gets its hooks into people.
Why would he waste time with it ? Me and my brother both sank over 80 hours into it each to receive the most unrewarding, uneventful and simply illogical ending in the entire series. Which is saying something.
I'd much rather Matthew doesn't waste his time. After all - he was mad enough to supposedly clear Death Stranding twice. That in itself is an incredible feat of self-sacrifice.
Video Gojira should get his shit together. And go back to actually making varied, charming, interesting games that also know how to pace themselves and when to actually end and not waste the player's time with unmemorable grind that dulls the mind. Because these are not games he's making anymore. They are experiments. With only difference being that usually those who are being experimented on get payed for it, unlike here, where we are actually paying money to be experimented on instead. Fucking has-been genius fraud with a bloated ego.
I'll hold out for that bloodborne review Matthew, the sun will die and DSP will be the only living being in earth and my ghost will wait for it.
I think the Bloodborne section in the first Mega Microvideos is the only time he'll discuss it on this channel.
He said on twitter he isn't interested in doing a Bloodborne review
His thoughts on Bloodborne (and all games after it) are pretty much summed up in his "Lost Soul arts of Demons Souls" video. A full review would be cool but it would probably just be hammering on those points a bit more with some positives thrown in. He didn't seem to be as enthralled with Bloodborne as everyone else seemed to.
@@LarryNoir Considering his DS1 commentary, idk if he'd even do anything Souls related again. A lot of... complaining.
His Bloodborne review is his "Lost Soul Arts of Demon's Souls"
It's one of his best videos
"Sam will sway from side to side under the weight of his own load" To be honest, I'm a little envious of Sam.
what a gigachad!
massive loads delivered everywhere
Well you're carrying actual Semen, so your not wrong.
Fifteen seconds in and I am in love with this video.
how bout that walking though?
@@BillytheEntertainer I love the game myself but even I know some other people might not enjoy from its slow paced passive non violent nature so it’s definitely not for everyone.
10 minutes in confirmed me deleting this pile of bullchit. Glad the game was finally cracked but the game is garbage.
@@Brenryz Not even fucking close. This game is NOT even close to "garbage", that's just absolute nonsense. It's understandable if you're not interested in the game but the fact that you think that anyone who likes this game is invalidate in just asinine. It's not a game for everybody and that's fine as not every game has to please every person. If you don't like it and find it boring, that's understandable but don't act like an ass and shit on those who do.
@@Gadget-Walkmen you take yt comments waaay too seriously
I love this game. I am playing the directors cut right now, this play through, I’m grinding out every region. It’s so much work but this play through is very rewarding. I also have spent days collecting resources for roads. This game has this “like” system in which other players can like you for for that task, building roads, upgrading other players structures, delivering lost cargo for players, doing delivery requests for players, etc. If you grind that out and slowly take your time with the story as well, you get praise and it helps out. Building roads is so rewarding cause it levels up your bridge link status. Zip lines help a lot as well. I think you grind roads, side missions, tasks, it really starts to help out. Grinding out takes days, weeks, but it’s rewarding. I accidentally collect others people’s cargo, goods, lost cargo, and resources all the time. I will clean out a whole safe house of its resources to get stuff built. And then you can just fill them up again too. MULE camps are goldmines. I love this game. Once players start to see what you’re doing and what you’re building, everyone starts to help out cause everyone is catching on. Like the mountain trek, that is a mission! It just takes a while, even Higgs tells ya: “aren’t you getting tired of the grind?!” The directors cut is a huge improvement as well. There’s new types of structures, new weapons, new added story lines, and more. I love this game lol
"Getting an S Rank at a delivery" made me laugh so hard
I imagined the mailman running to my house, doing a backflip while he throws the mail inside the mailbox, hitting it perfectly, only to look at his smartphone and be like "Aw crud, got an A Rank again. Guess I need to be more stylish"
I'm getting an S Rank at watching TH-cam on the toilet right now. It's called "gamification".
Amazon couriers literally get rankings according to how well they deliver
just a little tidbit..dunno if people have pointed it out already in the comments, about the nuke...that was done as a fourth wall breaking joke
i dont remember where exactly, i think its on one of the journal files, Higgs says somethin like "maybe it was dumb to write nuke in the package, but i couldn't resist. who the hell reads labels these days?" (essentially referencing players usually not paying much attention to item descriptions...and i guess Sam acting clueless in the face of having the information right in front of him represents those players)
now whether or not it was worth it to put such an immersion breaking event in the main story to serve as the punchline of a joke most people will never get, that's another discussion...
Yep, I thought it was a genius prank on players. Sam has never seen higgs without the mask but players have because of troy baker and yet so many players delivered the nuke to south knot city, hell even I found out by accident while on my way to south knot city
Wished more people realized that.
It may be a joke, but after watching TheRadbrad play through DeathStranding it seems to be more of a statement on how unattentive the average person is. If I remember correctly he walked into the city twice before even looking at the package.
@@cameronmckillop6448 So you think it was a right choice to make that 4th wall joke in game?
Because I think it was.
@@Gadget-Walkmen It's a Kojima game, to me it's a part of the charm of playing the games he makes.
this is such a god-tier review. your brevity is much appreciated in this age of content bloat!
This is definitely one the best and most balanced reviews I've seen for this game. This game probably has as many good aspects as it does bad. While I absolutely can see why some would be turned off by the flaws. I absolutely adore this game for the brilliant aspects of the gameplay and world building.
I think you only just like th oh s review because it agrees with your views and isn't mean
Frog Glen no I like this review because it is. He didn't jerk the game off. But he didn't condemn it either. I don't completely agree with this review, some of matt's problems didn't bother me as much but I can why he might've been annoyed.
@@frogglen6350 or maybe he just liked the review?
well matthew is the one who popularized video game essays, i am not surprised by this one bit
@@frogglen6350 I think that was kinda of a douchbag response. You can disagree and respect a review's points when their valid enough and have good reasoning.
Nothing warms my heart like matthewmatosis reviewing a Kojima game.
I quite like the "multiplayer" aspect of DS. It feels like the end of Nier Automata, where *SPOILERS* you don't know who you're helping because you can't see them, you try to help people because you're a good person. Seeing the likes is just a confirmation that someone has been helped by your contribution. Which I remember liking at the time.
Its a good day when Matthewmatosis uploads!
I heard it said that gameplay can be split into 3 categories: planning, execution and improvisation. I'm going to use a stealth game as an example.
>Planning would be figuring out what is an optimal path through a set of obstacles (guards, security cameras, trip wires, etc) without triggering some kind of fail state. The goal for planning is to always be as close to optimal as possible.
>Execution is going through the commands which allows said plan to worked through and with good timing and intuition of what each action shall result in. This would be actions requiring you to duck behind a wall, to avoid detection at a given moment in time. Execution's goal is to execute what you want as fluidly as you'd like.
>Improvisation is where the plan and execution goes wrong. This would be where a guard spots you and this triggers an alert phase. You have to scramble to safety/hiding, to get back on track. You've be thrusted into an unfamiliar situation where you lack the same level of control, as before. The goal is thinking in a limited time frame or a space where you lack foresight to identify the best options. The goal of improve is to return to the familiar. For stealth games this would be waiting out an alert phase.
I bring this up because I think all games have all three of these elements, all be it in different percentages. People will want different experiences from different games but normally we want ones which cater to each one, at some given time but also switches between them, to avoid stagnation. This is worth considering in game design. Most people can recall an experience in which improvisation was so unwanted, that they'd rather reload a previous checkpoint. There are also instances where the execution is so trivial that its not worth engaging in and it just becomes little more than Quick Time Events. As for filling in the pattern, there are times in which once we deduce the best plan, there is little else to get us to think about it. Its like a game where dodge rolling is the fastest form of land transport, do you end up dashing everywhere, to save time. Its like that.
What I am saying, is that gameplay should have depth in all three of these categories to maintain engagement and thus enjoyment.
Nice point. I usually value gameplay by punishment/reward system, and I believe that DS has a good system in place -- for example you can either bring more equipment with you and have an easier time in traversal, but less packages delivered or vice versa. But it's not punishing enough, it's hard to die as Sam or break a package, it's almost impossible to lose. So much so I believe having a really hard difficulty would fix most gameplay problems. Guess in your system improvisation is what DS lacks, even though it's best moments come from unplanned events.
After umming and aaahing for the past year I finally got this game on sale (I was worried I'd regret paying full price for a game that sounded so divisive).
I'm less than 10 hours into the game, barely scratched the surface but I can honestly say I love the game.
The slow pace, the item management, the simple nature of just getting from point A to B whilst listening to the soundtrack. It just clicks for me and is an experience unlike any other I've had in a game. It's just been a breath of fresh air for me from all the other types of games that I'd normally opt for.
You should just go live in some mountain/hilly area in oregon, pop in ambient music and backpack around. Call it dlc
@@skaterdude7277 duct tape one of my kids to my chest and drink monster energy drinks whilst yearning for that Silent Hills game we never received. Sounds bliss.
The Oxygen Mask conceals your breath from BTs and is crucial for doing late game S rank runs through timefall in the mountains
Time for another play through!
How does it interact with the timefall?
no it isn't. in fact, i only just now learned it worked that way from you. all you need to do to S rank deliveries through the mountains is set up a zipline network that takes you from one porter to the next and will take you up the mountain on one end and down the mountain on the other. BTs can't attack you while you're ziplining.
@@MrHandss do you like the game? I love the game myself but I know it’s not for everyone.
@@Gadget-WalkmenYou can still like a game and criticize it no ?
The fact that games like this can still be made has given me a glimmer of hope. Even if you dont even like the game you have to admit its refreshing to see a game come out that was made with nothing BUT passion instead of the usual company mandated money making machines we get so often.
I agree. Even though you could argue that a narrative medium needs its own way of telling instead of borrowing it from another medium, which is my biggest problem with the game. You can't expect people who are not into games to find any artistical intent in a story that essentially is a less good movie.
Something thats quite difficult to discuss is the relevance of Death Stranding as a piece of art. I've seen countless attempts of people who like the game trying to explain it as something greater that what it shows. For me a game will make me reflect on ideas way more if they introduce them in an interactive manner and without expecting me to understand what it wants me to understand. Ironically I find a game like Death Stranding to be the primary reason why games struggle to be artistically relevant and culturally legitimate.
@@mrcbi460 Narrative mediums borrow from each other all the time. That criticism is misguided as hell.
@@XanderVJ Hmm... Let's reflect on that misguidance.
Books are an art form, primarily because of the way it distinguishes itself through form : which means that an idea or a story can have way more impact with this form rather than with another. This form has through years and authors expanded because of the techniques that they developed. These techniques does not apply to cinema, because it has its own techniques. Why is 2001 so important for cinema ? Because of the literary dialogues ? No. Because it used its filmic techniques to show instead of tell. That's why it's so influencial as well. In fact what makes it unique as a film is how it did'nt care for the book all that much.
Now of course video games borrow lots and lots to cinema in order to tell its story, and Death Stranding is the epitomy of that trend with over 11 hours of cutscenes, some of them so long that it becomes ridiculous. Discussing the cinematic quality of these scenes is another subject entirely but the point is that none of it would be even half as good as the best movie out there. That's just how it is, and if you don't agree just remember that applying interactivity in a film has almost always in the past resulted in hollow garbage.
To be inspired by cinema is one thing but to use cinema that much would be like watching a film where the main character reads a novel to you without even moving his eyebrows when he's surprised.
I think this is an important take away. Whether someone likes Death Stranding or not. It can't be denied that's it's a different, fully functional, good looking, single player game. They need to keep them coming. I find it funny that a game with no microtransactions is getting flak for having a giant monster energy add in it. oh? that sign over there says Pepsi? I don't care as long as I'm not constantly reminded or attempted to go to the PlayStation store for some new character item, or piece of clothing.
@@TheGekko135 So let's compare it with another fully functional single player triple AAA game with no microtransactions, DLC, digital edition or bonus preorder that was actually released the same year : Sekiro. It does'nt need cinematics. It has a few but overall the story would'nt be crippled if you took them away whereas as you said, it is the case for Death Stranding. In fact take them away completely and you would never see or interact with any other human in the game, except when you have some girl to carry.
I did'nt mention Monster Energy but now that I think about it it's true that Sekiro does'nt have those. Sacrificing immersion for some good-looking actors that are way too expansive is something not every game does, indeed. So it's different, I agree.
Jokes aside, there is obviously a lot to appreciate in Death Stranding and I would'nt talk about it if I did'nt care about it. .
Several months ago, I started watching a 12hr cut scene/play through of Death Stranding. I dropped about half way. Then your video popped up. So I finished that 12hr video just so I could happily watch yours with context. :)
Thanks for the great work, Matt!
i somehow remember seeing your majoras mask review 8 years ago and to this day i still believe your reviews are top notch and underrated. you have reviewed almost every game that has made a significant impact on myself, and its a joy to see how someone else experienced the game in a more clear and concise review. good work man!
Maybe the REAL Death Stranding were the friends we made along the way.
Wait, that joke actually works for once.
Like the search for One Piece and the wait for Half life 3.
But on a serious note, I love the game myself as I adore the game design, aesthetics, characters, and world but even I know some other people might not enjoy it from its slow paced passive non violent nature so it’s definitely not for everyone.
Trip from Edge Knot to Central Knot was the best time i had in DS and gaming this year. It felt rewarding that i built all those structures not only for myself but for other players, especially since other players supported you, not only that but frequent Large BTs added more to the sense of haste, not only that but a pack of those BT Lions made me feel more threatened than the Big whale BT.
I was also hoping the 5 star relations i made with random NPCs (all of them lmao) i delivered packs to, had more impact at the end, maybe even contributed to finding Sam but the emails were sufficient i guess.
"they don't force lou down your throat, at least metaphorically"
best line, good one dude.
"Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. We all want to pretend this looks good, but I know you see what I see. Just look at it with open eyes."
It feels good to know I'm not alone in this belief. Games shooting for realism have always had this issue, but every generation everyone acts like game graphics are now indistinguishable from photos, to the point where I feel like I'm the only person who sees the overly glossy skin and weirdly-aliased strands of hair.
Depends on the game I would say. MGS V still looks shockingly good to my eyes for example. Yes, it's not indistinguishable from real life photos, but the characters atleast aren't as uncanny as Death Stranding.
Or the teeth
In 20 years these graphics will be that generation's Tekken PS1 FMVs
The only time I had a problem was Sam's crying. Otherwise I dont think its gonna age any worse or better than Kojimas other games which didnt get facial acting rants from Matosis despite how silly Raidens face looks in that game.
Not to mention that even Uncharted 1 still looks good enough that it's not hilarious yet so I dont think Death Stranding is in as much danger as Matosis thinks?
Does it really? Back in 2004, if you posted a screenshot of GTA SA online and tried to pass it as real, everyone would recognize it immediately despite it being one of the “most graphically intensive” games of the generation. Whereas you can post a screenshot from GTA V from 2014 into a 2020 post and you’d likely convince many people it was real. Games like Control even splice in live action footage of their main protagonist and most people didn’t even notice.
I’d argue we’ve reached a point with graphical fidelity that things are realistic enough that unless you know what to look for, most people may not be able to tell if something is a screenshot or real. This is why some people aren’t that impressed with the PS5 and XbX’s graphics as it’s what we already have but better rather than an enormous step forward likely because we’ve reached very close if not there to photorealism. So unless In 20 years we come up some entirely new technology like SAO style VR that completely replicates our senses, I doubt Death Stranding or even most our current games would age too poorly
I know what I am watching tonight
DAYUM
@Oberstein Knows Best I don't have a wife can borrow yours?
@Oberstein Knows Best Lol wtf?
same
Lowkey this is exactly what I said when I first got into work and saw this went live
Kojima's attempts at making players feel smart by implementing small riddles really backfired for me.
I was streaming for my friend on Discord and didn't hear that artist girl say that they throw bodies into the tar lake. My friend was already done with that part and told me to "think again" when I refused to enter the city with the bomb for obvious reasons.
Since I didn't hear her, I had absolutely no chance of knowing about the lake and no way to figure it out, also the lake is way to small and right beside the city so it doesn't come to mind to throw a nuclear bomb in there. My first thought was to go to the crater of the old bomb attack, everything inside the blast radius of such a bomb is already gone after all. Making Sam sneak by the BTs and placing it in the old shelter to then flee the site while the countdown is ticking would have been adequate, with the lake method being a nice little treat for attentive players. Alternatively the lake could have a nice big round crater as hint. I was super frustrated when I hit that wall and it made me feel dumb when I had to ask my friend what to do.
Same goes with the "Press R bumper to hug" in the final scene. Despite remembering that Die Hardman's bullets just passed through Amelie, I felt so much pressure that I fired anyways, then walking after her, not making it in time, Boom, world ended, connect again? Nice job Kojima, pausing the climax of your movie game with a mission failed screen. Not everybody blasts through the game in 10 hour bursts, writing a psychological profile of Sam, figuring out that hugging her now (also from a gameplay perspective, since you never hug anyone ingame) is the obvious thing to do.
That was just sad, complete mood killer.
And the BB thing. Standing in front of the incinerator, already being traumatized by Kojima's vague shit, I looked down on BB to trigger the soothe animation or whatever to get the "right" ending, nope, this time he decides to put me on rails for this in the worst way possible. Deadman tells Sam that he can take BB out of the container and try to reanimate it with a 30% (?) of survival.
One OBVIOUSLY thinks that Sam would try to save BB at the first chance he gets. Nope he decides to burn it but then gets second thoughts, fucking bullshit.
I think the game should have been scaled down and had more focus on traversal, they tried to do too much. I enjoyed the game quite a bit though, it was an errie unique experience that im glad i had
Indeed. My favorite part of the game was, BY FAR, the gameplay. I enjoy Kojima's hit or miss weirdness, but I couldn't care less about it when actually playing the game, doing side missions, planning routes, etc, because that's where the meat of it was to me.
@@Willie6785 do you like the game? I love the game myself but I know it’s not enjoyed by everyone.
It's so great hearing an actual grown up review this game. Thanks so much.
Thank you Matthew, your spin on just one game and what you conclude from it and everything in between puts gaming journalists to shame. Love your content mate
Matt’s wish for a controller that can properly handle the balance mechanics came true with the PS5 rerelease. Playing this game with a PS5 DualSense controller makes a huge difference. It’s almost like the game was developed with the DuelSense in mind. And what’s great is that the DualSense automatically works with the PC version, which is where I revisited the game. The haptics also help a ton with the feeling of weight and balance as well. I think if you haven’t already given the Director’s Cut played with the DualSense a shot, Matt, you definitely should.
A note on roads, the vast majority of roads I had in my playthrough on the PS4 were auto complete without my input, or ones I had started and then became complete the next time I started playing.
I think I personally completed 5-6 auto pavers total.
A TH-camr providing quality, long form content every chance he can, even if it means a few months at a time, instead of churning out garbage every day.
You are doing God's work, sir.
Knowing that Matthew used footage from MSGV and that one day he might do a review on it,
It fills you with determination!
23:50 listening to this segment reminded me of a game called Foxhole on steam. Its a large multiplayer game wherein two factions fight out a huge war on a single continuous map. Twist is every single bullet, bandage, can of fual, gun, vehicle etc needs to be manufactured from raw materials by players and exist as physical things in the world that need to be shipped to the front. Supply chains, logistics, reinforcements are all player driven and controlled systems rather then existing in abstract. Whole sections of the playerbase devoted to just mining or shipping and resupplying in this online war game.
That sounds kind of cool. Does being part of the logistics chain have any depth?
@@JeremyComans Well, it goes for the realistic view, which means that once you've optimized it, it's about following procedures. When the enemy is using actual strategy and trying to cut off your supply lines, suddenly being part of the supply chain becomes a lot more exciting. But the combat will always be the part that players gravitate to.
@@superwild1 Any idea what playing from Australia is like?
@@JeremyComans Probably ass, sad to say, but it isn't a game that requires a super low ping to play.
Hey Mathew, you know its unlikely you'll read this but I've had an awful day and this video is such a perfect way to turn it around, keep up the good work, really love everything you put out :-)
At first, I wasn't too sure about playing this game because some of the things I've heard about it. But you tackled my concern within 3 mins of the video. Watching footage of the game isn't enough to get a full idea of how it plays and it isn't just a game about "walking" , at least not how it usually works in other games. I stopped watching 3 mins in and now I'm interested in playing through this so thank you for clearing some things up for me. Looking forward to watching this later!
Thank you for including that Kojima quote about video games being more like a museum than a piece of art. In one sentence, the dozen dozen thoughts I've had on that topic coalesced. Kojima is a smart fellah.
Matt roasted him for that quote later on
Revisiting this review in 2022 since I randomly felt like replaying the game and kind of a funny little side element of the discussion about preservation - Death Stranding's servers are still up so I can't comment on how that's going to be handled, but The Tomorrow Children has apparently been brought *back* from the dead by the original developer buying out the IP from Sony.
I disagree with what you said about the ending part where Sam almost burns Lou. He thought Lou was dead and was going to cremate her. It was only when he saw her about tob e burned that he found the hope within himself that she could be saved. Death Stranding is set in a hopeless world, where Sam goes along with the hopelessness and follows other people's plans. Saving Lou is where he finds hope within himself, showing that he can hope, and we are left at the game's ending knowing life id going to get better because not only does Sam have a child to raise, but he has his hope restored to him.
That's a beautiful insight, and makes that ending that more meaningful. Thank you!
I would counter Kojima's opinion of games as museums by saying that the construction of a museum is an art. Architecture, interior design, organization, perspective, atmosphere, funding, staffing, management, upkeep, restoration, writing, narration, cinematography, direction, and many other artistic disciplines work together to create the artistic object that is a museum, including all of its constituent exhibits. And in that way, I would say that yes, games are museums, but that does not stop them from being art.
If you have a fine art museum, and in one corner you have reconstructed dinosaur skeletons, that dino exhibit is a blemish on the construction of the museum from an artistic standpoint, barring some justification to reunify it with the other pieces. It is bad art, because it detracts from the rest of the piece. This is why bad mechanics, bad writing, glitches, and more can damage a video game as an artwork without damaging the hyper-individualized quality of this texture or that sound file or those lines of code.
Art is determined by purpose. If an object has a purpose, it's value as art is determined by its excellence in achieving that purpose. That is why trash is not art, and anyone who claims that it is (in good faith) must appeal to some purpose found in a subversive iteration of a pursued virtue. And even that sort of anti-art relies on the fact that it is indeed contrary to the nature of art, and its obvious low quality is in service to a more important, unifying purpose.
(Don't take that last bit as an excuse for modern art, all of those hacks know how to recite it and it doesn't mean they're being honest when they do.)
Basically Death Stranding is one of those delivery missions where youre playing as Manual Samuel
I fucking love that game.
Top teir reference
25:18 I’m not sure I entirely agree anymore because there were some historical things like how when photography came about artists didn’t have to concern themselves with realism anymore which led to styles like cubism and Dadaism, which sort of gets at the same thing. Another example is the invention of the novel, which could tell much more detailed stories than poetry.
Also, there’s a concept known as medium specificity that’s essentially what you’re getting at here. I stumbled upon it while looking into Soviet Montage Theory, which from my understanding is like an early way of achieving symbolism through photography- an example of the medium specificity of cinema. I think every medium has had some discussion related to what it particularly excels at at some point in its existence.
Just decided to give this game a try a few days ago, I'm enjoying it so far but I haven't had to grind much, hopefully the pacing continues like it is at the start. I'm partway through the second area now. Better to play without online features imo, it keeps the challenge higher and the need for resources and the right gear more significant.
I haven't played Death Stranding, but as I saw other people play, react, and describe their experiences I remember constantly thinking "This sounds weirdly similar to The Tomorrow Children." I felt a little crazy, like there's no way this huge Hideo Kojima game could actually mirror a dead indie game that most people never played, so I'm glad to see that crazy thought vindicated by one of my favorite reviewers, and glad I got to experience the game beyond the title screen.
Kojima is a secret character from Death Stranding named Hack-Fraudman.
I've actually had close to half of my roads built overnight when I woke up. Just to add more confusion lol.
I actually loved that which helped out alot with cargo deliveries!
you must've connected with some awesome people. i remember only about 80% of the road going from lake knot to its distribution center were built for me by other people but aside from like 4 pieces of road after that? i built it all with almost no help. and yes, i waited until i connected the relevant areas before putting materials in. people had contributed, but always just the bare minimum and never updated the stretches on their own.
@@MrHandss Good work! "keep on keeping on!"
I finished them on all on my second playthrough on PC. Before I finished Episode 5
22:49 Speaking of traversal, I think that games such as The Pathless (by Giant Squid Games) and Dishonored (by Arkane studios) offer fun and interesting means of traversal that make the game more fun to play, and adding to that, using those means of traversal leads players to discover corners of the world of the games that reward exploration. On top of that, both games feature achievements/trophies ("trickshot" in The Pathless, "Shadow of Darkness" in Dishonored 1) that encourage player to push the traversal system to its limits and achieve a degree of mastery of it.
Hurray, a new Video from the guy that caused me to fall in Love with high quality youtube content.
Srsly, Mat you are Part of the reason I got rid of my tv and I still rewatch your old reviews from time to time
Whenever Matt gets genuinely upset or angry by something in a game, his feelings are so strong to the point where it feels like *I've* done something wrong
Good video though
Kettei *Shitty advertising*
It feels quite real, and i aooreciate that over the feigned outrage commonly shown.
To me its always been a part of his appeal. When he means it, he means it.
@@QuackerHead-j For me it was the part where he was going on about mocap actors and digital scanning
@@QuackerHead-j I was so disappointed when he complained about the advertising. It's funny, it's inoffensive, and its absolutely no different than the advertising that's been in every one of Kojimas games since 3. Death Stranding just gets it worse because westerners didnt know what Calorie Mate was. Or I guess blatantly advertising Triumph motorcycles and Playboy magazine and Apples iPod is cooler?
A lot of the "aggressive" criticisms towards Death Stranding from this review and others just feels hypocritical to me when it's from people who had no problem with these elements in previous games. Where was Matthew goin nuts about reliance on facial performances when MGS3 has a ton of extreme close ups on eyes and tears?
@@Tamacat388 1. Why are you assuming he has no problem whatsoever with the advertising in previous Kojima games?
2. Did you even listen to the bit about facial expressions? His issue was *specifically* with trying to convey complex emotions with technology that isn't yet capable of delivering it, or at least didn't with this game. The issue isn't close ups of faces. How in the world did you come away from this thinking that's what he was saying?
Nothing wrong with putting the narrative of a game before the mechanics. The developers of Oxenfree shaped the game around the story (there is an incredibly talk about the game on the GDC channel) and the result was fantastic. The problem comes from being stubborn. While the Oxenfree developers put the story first, they were not against changing details and some things here and there to better suit the gameplay. It is almost like a game is a sum of all of its parts, and all of them need to work coherently with the others.
The whole "putting gameplay first" works just fine if your game is entirely devoid of a story and plot elements, but if you want your game to be enjoyed and remembered for both being enjoyable and for having an engaging narrative, then you should put BOTH things first.
The N in Nobi Nobi Boy stands for straNd.
I
I think you would be interested in a relatively obscure game called Miasmata. Its core gameplay consists in traversing rough terrain, but this is not limited just to finding a best path as you walk from point A to point B. Because you do not have a complete map of the gameworld, but only a map of the area you start in, you also need to use triangulation to establish your current position and lay out the route to a destination you want to reach. Once you reach a new area, you can expand your map by using triangulation based on new landmarks you discover. This makes for very engaging (and original) gameplay.
About the facial animation and motion capture, I think that one of the character crying at the end of the game is one of the most believable performance I have ever saw in entertainment media.
Can't emphasize enough how much I agree with the "The Tomorrow Children" point you made. I initially thought DS would be more of a frontier type game, with players tasked to go into the wild as a community, and rebuild the world of the post-apocalyptia, but as details kept rolling in, i got more and more disinterested.
I would like to imagine a parallel world, in which DS is that game, with character customization and minimal story, with heavy focus on community tools, but I'm just a sucker for such mechanics, so eh - guess another game could fill that void for me.
I still really enjoy but yeah I agree
I was CONVINCED throughout my playthrough of the game that the story was building up to a big reveal where it turns out all the other online players were other Sams from parallel universes and there was going to be a big multiverse merging thing and get all meta about how he was a game character...
Dragon's Dogma does that... If you're interested...
Just about to watch your review - I absolutely loved Death Stranding, I put well over a hundred hours in, but I'm still in the second area (chapter 9 maybe???). I have put it down for now but I'm excited for the rest of the story to play out.
I think this game will still look good in 20+ years, just as games like Flashback or Desert Strike etc still look good today. I thought the acting and face scans etc were excellent in this game as well, I think Kojima has ambitions of moving into films and I'm hearing that's what one of his next projects may be.
Aren't those games rotoscoped? That's different from Motion Capture and leans closer to stylization rather that realism.
He's making a horror game next.
36:25
"It seems to set them up in order to demonstrate the rules and implications of its pseudoscience, rather than the psychological tolls those rules might have on people forced to endure them"
And that's, in a nutshell, the problem Kojima has always had when it comes to characterisation and how the characters relate to the themes he wants to convey. Instead of psychological intricacy, you end up with sermons about what the digital age is all about or why top down control of information is bad.
Characters end up being loudspeakers for whatever idea Kojima finds worthy of discussion
Yea. All Matosis criticsms of the writing and narrative aspects of this game bothered me if only because they were completely absent in his MGS videos where it was all way worse imo. I mean The Boss isnt even a character but she gets praised over Fragile and her actual personality quirks and love of squishy worm food?
Just seems a bit hypocritical.
Thanatos388
Bro, his MGS videos are almost 10 years old. If he released them today I doubt they’d be the same.
@@Tamacat388 It's like Kojima exists as a ghost in every games he wrote and would randomly possesses characters to read out whatever he wants.
@@4423reborn Well he did make them and he clearly has something to say.
@@Tamacat388 You nailed. The Boss is just a person who appears everytime Kojima needs someone to explain the themes of the story. Doesnt have any role on the story.
New Matthewmatosis video, LETS GOOOOOO.
The only part that I flat out disagree with is your part about Amelie. She is far from incomprehensible.
To me, it feels like you must have not understood the concept of an EE (Extinction Entity). They appear to reign in the apocalypse. They become godlike and their mere presence begins to tear reality apart, regardless of what they feel about it.
And so Amelie had spent a full life-time attempting to build humanity up to withstand her presence so that she could remain among the people she loved.
But in the end, she felt bad for putting humans (Sam and Cliff) through so many trials that she thought "I might as well just speed up the process at this point, I'm literally just watching my loved ones die a cruel death" and so she roped Higgs into making that happen.
The game ends with Amelie isolating herself on the other side, and closing the connection to the living (closing the chiral network) as is shown when Sam carries Lou outside into the rain and the rainbows suddenly being right-side-up instead of upside down as it is with timefall.
She's incomprehensible because of her jarring dialogue, overacting, and in general poor execution. She just rambles on at Sam. This is actually a huge problem in the game, characters "talk" at each other, but not "with" each other. The lack of actual conversation really brings the game down from what it could have been. And don't confuse artistic choices (such as the ending walking out in the rain with Lou) with the reality of the game world. It's symbolism, not realism. When you're allowed to keep playing in Chapter 15 (two weeks before the ending, but AFTER the events with Amelie) everything is the same as it was before. The chiral network still exists, and was never closed off.
There's no doubting there are many interesting ideas in Death Stranding, but it's not as deep as you think. Most of it is just surface level, which is ironically why it didn't "connect" with many players. In many ways the storytelling is straight downgrade from the Metal Gear series, and most of those sequels were mandated by Konami. They weren't exactly passion projects the way Death Stranding was. So even under worse working conditions, Kojima has done much better with his metaphorical storytelling in the past.
I can't believe that in my 50s, I'm gonna be watching this 46-minute Death Stranding review again because the damn TH-cam algorithm will put it in my queue. I wonder if I'll see this comment or remember writing it.
2020 sucks
I am so glad I discovered your channel !!!
I hope someday you will bring a Hyper Light Drifter review
I can relate to the pain of constipation more than most other pains felt by video game characters, so Norman Reedus' face is very immersive for me Matt.
Is Death Stranding the first constipation-type game? Playing it definitely feels like having constipation.
@@VargVikernes1488 Not even close. The game is not for everyone. Didn’t think for a second this game was gonna be enjoyed by everyone as it’s different in its slow paced terrain traversal approach. I personally love it a lot but it’s understandable that some others are not gonna so much. It most certainly does not “suck” at all. It’s understandable if you find it boring or uninteresting but to me and a lot of people can find it engaging and compelling to find traversal and land exploration calming and a relaxing experience.
@@Gadget-Walkmen I find the nonsensical pretentious drivel of a story much more offensive than the gameplay, actually. Nothing wrong with a delivery sim, if it was married to a good story.
@@VargVikernes1488 NOT even close at the slightest. Strongly disagree with that ridiculous bullshit claim there.
Not a all “drivel” or “Pretentious” at all.
The overall plot makes sense is well craft within the context of the universe even Matthewmaotis pointed this out,
So it’s nowhere near this “nonsensical” at all.
This game can come off as heavy handed at times with its dialogue but it definitely has something compelling to say.
The game has long cutscenes in places and get story sorta slow but it gets to a point in the last few hours where everything is extremely complexing and emotional beautiful in the end of it all.
It really all does make sense at the end and I would say pretty satisfying.
@@Gadget-Walkmen Stop eating soy and go to the gym is the only thing I can say to you. Besides that, there will be no hope for you.
Great critique, left me a lot to think about. I think there's a few key points of contention I have, none of which override the overall points you're making. But I think the difficulty reducing as you unlocked stuff was part of the appeal for me, I think the streamlining helped instill that feeling that I was really making the world a better place by making it less complicated to deliver things to people in need. Mechanically, as a challenging game, it certainly became less engaging as it went, but thematically I felt more and more like I was making the difference that was intended.
Additionally, I think there's a slight missed element on the topic of the real actors. My understanding is that Kojima wanted to specifically bring in artists (actors, musicians) he had a connection with, and allow them to make a tangible mark on the game, because it fit with his overall theme of building connections. In that sense, the real-people inserted into the game made for a reminder to me that the premise cares about the real people we connect with. That doesn't make the acting direction or writing any better, and certainly doesn't fix the issues with mocap, but to me it does justify the strange idea that I am seeing real actors as characters in this game about an alternate future.
"I have no idea what's going on in her (Amelie's) head most of the time or if she even has an understandable thought process in the first place".
From my takeaway of the game: Amelie is depressed, she has nightmares about the Last Stranding just as every other DOOMS sufferer does. She points out she wanted to end it all but also regrets the action and wants everything to keep on keeping on. Which is the exact same conflict between Sam and Higgs, one wants to end it all and the other wants to keep on keeping on (more in action rather than in saying). I found the conflict between Higgs and Sam to be the literal embodiment of the conflicting thoughts within Amelie, with their resolution also being hers.
She basically "raises" both of them with her conflicting ideologies and whichever one wins decides the fate of humanity it seemed.
What a psycho. In the same way The Boss tries to kill Snake at the end of 3 for no other reason than "we're soldiers, am I right?"
also, it's explained that the visions someone with DOOMs sees are actually just her nightmares.
The bit about open world map traversal gameplay reminded me a lot of Minecraft. In that game traveling through a world is treacherous at first too, but it becomes ever easier when you modify the landscape, get more tools, etc.
In a different way, this applies to Dying Light 1 as well; traveling the map felt a bit like an adventure, and part of the progress was that experience and leveling made it ever easier to move through it, to the point where the world felt less alien and familiar.
Factorion and Satisfactorio also got a bit of an element of that.
I'd love if more games take ideas like that, about traveling, isolation and community. Doesnt even need to be multiplayer. Most Open World games might pay lip service to those ideas, but are just too straighforward, feature packed and convenient for that to be a factor. Never really felt like I was truly isolated in something like Days Gone, despite a setting that looks like it shouldve been a primary feature.
Having hidden meanings or puns in names is common in Asian fiction naming sense. Just look up wuxia novels like Condor Heroes or of course the Ace Attorney Series.
It used to be more understood in the West as well the importance of names as seen in the Bible or looking up the etymology of many western names.
The trivialization of deliveries is the most appealing element of the gameplay for me. Look at The Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind. At the start you walk slowly, having to save money up for bus fare. By the end you can Teleport and fly across the map, which ties into the games theme of interpretation. Are you fullfilling the role of reincarnated god king because you are one? Or are you becoming him by fulfilling the same tasks he did, the same achievements and therefore becoming just as powerful? Fulfilling those achievements is part of the prophecy so it might just be youre a random person who was simply put on a path to rise to power, allowing you to accrue enough power to beat the villain by trying to measure up to the tasks set before you by the prophecy. All that power trivializes the majority of the game once you have it. The streamlining of the game in Death Stranding accomplishes the same thing for the same reason, reinforcing the theme, in this case coming together. Difficult tasks vecome trivial as people aid each other.
I can understand your frustration with Fragile being yet another awkward presence yet I think her character makes a lot of sense. Her father had started the company and she felt she had to continue on the work whether she truly felt comfortable with the job or not. As someone who's not particularly fond of customer service yet had to do it anyways, I felt a strong connection to Fragile, how she acts and tries to do her best despite everything seeming to fall apart around her adds to this connection. Every other character at least seemed comfortable with their profession and place in the world but she seemed desperate, though I could simply be reading into things too much and projecting, testament to Lea's acting either way. Story wise it also makes sense that the only characters who weren't awkward were (I think) pre stranding, even if she does work customer service there's still not a whole lot of interaction between people in this world.
The last scene between her and Sam is also kind of heart breaking to me yet strangely fitting for the arc and is somehow much more memorable to me than the del toro hug at the end, perhaps because I related to her more and becuase as you mentioned Sam's asimphosimphobia wasn't portrayed in a realistic way so it felt less impactful for him to get over it. It's a shame that not every character had an end game cutscene wrapping up their arc so I'm glad she at least got one.
"I'm Fragile. But i'm not that Fragile." 😂🤣😅 come on bruh.
It's such a joy to see you upload, Matthew.
I thought the long-term use of the oxygen mask was that it covered your breathing when dealing with BTs.
@J Munna Dude there is so much little crap like that in this game. The game does tell you somewhere, but so much of it falls to the cracks on the first playthrough.
Glad to see Rain World is still getting signal boosts here. That game still deserves more public attention.
My favourite game, my first playthrough was such a huge moment for me
I think Matthew said it's his favorite game, alongside W101
I enjoy your videos, but one thing I disagree with is the the notion that "you're left with nothing" once highways/ziplines get established. There are some games where efficiency is its own reward.
It's like complaining there's "nothing to do" once you get strong enough in RPGs to one-hit-kill enemies from the earlier areas, or if you build a self-sustaining farm in Minecraft and no longer need to scavenge. Achieving efficiency to reduce formerly long-winded gameplay elements isn't a design flaw in those games, so why is it considered so here?
You're still forced to not use the Chiral Network for new story beats, so having absolute speedy mastery over areas that were previously barren *is* the goal and achieving it does not diminish the gameplay. Most games have fast travel systems; Death Stranding makes you build your own and doing so doesn't hurt its goal as a game.
One thing people don't acknowledge much is that Death Stranding is part city-building simulator in a sense. By the second half, making systems that connect different cities run like a well-oiled machine is just as important a part of gameplay as traversing terrain is. Just because it starts primarily as a walking, terrain-traversal simulator doesn't mean its subtle genre shift to larger-scale structure planning is a betrayal of itself.
Do you like the game?
I love the game myself as I adore the game design, aesthetics, characters, and world but even I know some other people might not enjoy it from its slow paced passive non violent nature so it’s definitely not for everyone.
I agree. Not only that, ziplines have the limitation of carrying only cargo that's on Sam and nothing else, so big hauls can't be done through them, especially on timed missions. I even took the time to set up floating carriers for some missions and walked to my goal as I felt it was the best way to tackle them, so I'd disagree that ziplines trivialize the game as much as the video makes it sound like they do.
They are fantastic for traversal, and make several missions much easier to complete, but they definitely don't become the ONLY way to complete them. Your point about the new areas is also spot-on. Traversing through the snowy mountains the first time through was tough, and being able to connect to the network and set up ziplines for ease of access AFTER "conquering the mountain" on foot was very satisfying to me.
Agree with you 100%. I find this review overly critical of the game, and completely missing the point and heart of Death Stranding.
First things first: before you connect a region to the chiral network, nothing is built. It's pure raw terrain. That means the game loop of on foot exploration is always renewed.
Second thing: It is actually fun to build roads and structures, and creating a working Zip Line network is no joke. I had a lot of fun figuring out ways to procure and transport materials for road construction, and actually spent HOURS setting up Zip Lines. Those hours were actually hours of exploration, including climbing to the highest places because they are good spots for Zip Lines, bringing ladders and anchors and other exploration materials, and generally having an awful lot of fun conquering the moutain.
Third thing: Your Chiral Bandwith is limited, making the number of structures you can build limited. Increasing that CB is actually huge incentive for increasing your Connection Level with all the people you deliver things for, making every mission count. You cannot just come to the mountain and build Zip Lines everywhere. You won't be able to. So building a Zip Line network also means building up your CB level, you cannot build a network right out of the gate, 'trivializing' everything. Zip Lines are actually end game content.
Last thing: The game does take into consideration you might have a Zip Line network. The missions are actually more varied than you may think. Some of them require you to keep your package chilled. Some of them have so much package you have to use a truck, or floaters. Some of them require you to carry your package by hand, making zip lines impossible to use. Some of them have nothing to do with zip lines, requiring you to retrieve packages from Mule Camps, from rivers, from BT infested areas, from perilous mountain slopes...
And yeah, it does feel quite good having conquered the land at the end, particularly in this game, which makes you feel the reality of land and distances and weight like no other game before it!
This is so cathartic for me. It's so rare a critic says all the things I wanted to say while *also* teaching me things about the game I know I'll be able to viscerally appreciate if I come back!
Thanks for your consistently great work!
I'm glad you addressed some finer details in the traversal mechanics, and you're right on the imbalances, but I'm more sympathetic to some views expressed by Noah Caldwell-Gervais. He didn't say this exactly in his video, but I think the quasi-"social" shared-infrastructure mechanics in a sense ARE the core gameplay, it's counter-intuitive because it's almost entirely optional, but I think the themes and motifs were meant to invite the player to engage with said mechanics in a subtext of 'altruism without promise for reward', including the reward of immediate contact and direct interaction. I think the uncertainty in knowing whether or not our actions benefit others compliments the extremely narrowed spectrum of "communication" available to the players, I only once found myself minorly inconvenienced by another players actions, there was no room for the kinds of toxicity I've come to expect in online spaces. On the other hand it was eerily lonely and isolating, and so I felt myself appreciating what little bits of benevolent interaction I could, despite how indirect, mediated, and uncertain they were.
I think a similar duality is meant to be experienced regarding playing as "Sam Porter Bridges" the mythic Johnny Appleseed esque hero and an anonymous nobody contributing to systems that will retain little if any memory of them. Similarly while the game makes satirical points on "likes" and acknowledges their superficiality, but it retains some sincerity as well; sometimes the best we can hope for is a small simple gesture of positivity like a thumbs up, it's not immune from becoming a bad thing, but sometimes it's a decent enough comfort in a world starved of interaction.
Agreed
Nothing makes me feel more excited on youtube than when you upload a review for a game I've played