Be Excellent To Each Other

I love Girlfriend Reviews. Also, that video did more to make me want to play Death Stranding than everything else I’ve read or watched about it put together.

Weirdly I’ve done the exact same things tonight in the same order. That MULE truck was a godsend - plus once I’d incapacitated an entire gang of bad guys I spent a while just loading the thing up until it was filled to the brim with shit. Now I gots bikes too.

That boss battle had zero atmosphere though. The mollusc just waits for you. It’s not exciting, it’s not tense and you can see behind the gaming curtains as you leisurely wander about gathering grenades. If anything it entirely breaks the atmosphere the game otherwise succeeds in creating. Well, when it’s chucking a bazillion floating neon signs in your face that other gamers have left and endlessly telling you someone has used a section of road you made. Oh god the signs...they don’t fucking stop. How do you turn that shit off too? It’s a riff on the Dark Souls signs, yet DS has better atmosphere and the user created signs didn’t get in the way of the atmospheric world building either. They were easily ignorable and you only had to read them if you were bothered. But ever time I pass through a sign in Death Stranding some fucker says, actually I’ve forgot, what is it “Good to go” or something. And every cunt sticks them in the tunnel leading to the bases so you end up passing through 5 of the fuckers going back and forth from the mission selection “Good to go” “Good to go” “Good to go” shut the fuck up for fucks sake. Why doesn’t the game limit what can go where?

And how come the baddies can spot you from miles away, on open ground, where there is barely any cover whatsoever. You get caught and you’re in for a scrap so, thankfully I guess, the combat is a piece of piss as you knock out or shoot just team after team of 4/5 bad guys at a time without any consequence. I was initially a bit put off by them running around but now I think fuck it and just wade into their faces and smash them up until it’s clear and pinch all their stuff as lie on their backs having a cozy nap.

Don't you have to walk too close to one of their little detector pole thingies? I managed to evade an entire camp of them just by making sure I didn't get within range of one of their detectors.

I also stole all the stuff from that MULE camp and took it back to the base in the truck, even taking the time to load up the truck once, then re-entered the camp to get more goodies on my back to load up the truck a second time, with the most hilarious Leaning Tower of Pisa on my back, knowing I only had to return to the truck with it.

My personal feeling is that the combat and boss encounters and 'fighting stuff' in general is actually supposed to be easy on NORMAL mode, this is a game that's about the journey, it's about making you want to feel involved with the grand design of reconnecting people in a shattered world, it's all quite clearly allegorical and not necessarily always well handled or communicated, but Kojima is shooting for the stars with this one, and he's making a pretty good attempt at it, and I admire that.

I just watched that Girlfriend Review, which is really good, but I didn't get any of that negativity from the first ten hours that I've seen referenced so many times.

The game honestly clicked with me straight away, and I completely understood what it was trying to do right from the off.

It's like the old cliche, how can we appreciate happiness if we haven't experienced sadness, where is the luxury in comfort if we have never experienced hardship? It's how you get fucking bored millionaires moaning about their shitty lives.

Death Stranding makes you feel alone, and small, and vulnerable, it makes you struggle, it makes things hard, it pits you against a scary world that you don't understand, but it juxtaposes this with every small victory and improvement in your situation being massively appreciated.

This is basically what I've been getting at in my previous posts to this thread, but the Girlfriend Review makes the point much more eloquently.

I think you’d enjoy Red Dead Redemption 2.

I was watching a documentary recently about reward happiness. Like, how much your brain feels joy when buying something. They say poor people receive much more happiness than those who have everything.

I can attest to that. My time in the USA was my hardest time. I literally had nothing. When I needed new trainers I would have to spend all day trying to find something for $20 or so. That's not easy, but I'd always hunt out a total bargain and end up with $100 sneakers for $20 just by asking for something that may have a mark on that they wouldn't usually sell.

I also learned a lot when I lived out there. IE - just how much I love the UK and how genuinely ungrateful and spoiled I'd been by having the NHS and so on.

I also lived on an Irish farm for a month. Fuck me that was an eye opener for a city boy. It was also really tough going.

I'm glad of these experiences. They've made me appreciate what I have so much more.

It actually sounds like I'd enjoy this game.

Yes I'm beginning to think maybe I should give it a go, just for the story.

In Death Stranding news, effortlessly sank another three and a half hours into it this evening, I actually prefer being on foot with the nifty little floating carrier things following me (which I've just unlocked the Level 2 variant of), the vehicles are great for covering long, relatively flat distances, but when it gets treacherous, bionic legs and climbing are the way to go.

I don't know quite know how the 'world sharing' stuff works, but I'm seeing some nice completed roads and plenty of structures around the place, the little weather hidey-holes are a godsend.

Obviously I'm chipping in with materials for structures wherever I can, and I picked up a whole load of lost cargo from a farm and took it back to a weather station, it was a hell of a trek back up the side of a mountain but I genuinely enjoyed the journey.

Splendid game, really glad I decided to give it a go.

Not just that (although it is very good) but the world building and trekking across that gorgeous landscape.

Weirdly, again, I’m matching you on doing stuff and preferences. I like bezzing around on the bike but dragging a pair of shelves is strangely therapeutic especially when you get into the routine of just picking up absolutely everything you come across and filling them up. But fuck me, does it get tense/irritating when BT’s come knocking and you know you’ll get spotted and have your boxes knocked all over the place.

Also I had this crap bit earlier when I was trying to get across a flat ladder across a river and Norman sort of spazzed out with his animation and I got tipped into the wash. I had to detach the shelves and go chasing my boxes as they went bobbing downstream. It was kinda funny though.

My night was rounded off by a bike ride which lead across a ravine: A ravine that was so narrow I swear I could launch my bike across it! Nah, I spunked the bike into the pit and smashed my boxes. I turned it off after that.

2nd boss was crap. I’m beginning to think the bosses might be crap.

Stupid game is kinda addictive. I’ve no idea why but I’ve spent the evening building a motorway from the north to south as much as I could. Then I’ve been collecting all the jobs from the south to the north and checking them off as I go along. I’d basically done eff all of the main game and was just meaninglessly doing jobs for people (mind you, you do get some equipment and stuff).

Then I got my kick-ass truck stuck and as I was working it out the river and a bunch of rocks stupid baddies came and zapped me out. I’d had enough of these fuckers so I whipped out the AR and blasted his fucking face in ... aaaand putting millions of people at risk. Forgot about the exploding people, so I had to Chow Yun Fat my way through a bunch of bad dudes and then wrap up the corpse and find an incinerator.

Then I was back on mission across the county and around the mountain. I haven’t changed my truck in ages and I’m as attached to it as I was the horse from Red Dead 2! Stupid addictive game. The premise seems like a load of crap but it’s as a proper gamer’s game, not like The Last of Us was a game; that was a story with proper characters going through a world, this is a “game” with stats and times and buttons and gaming stuff. Or something. Loving it so far despite my earlier moaning.

Yep it got another four hours straight out of me last night, I progressed the main campaign a few missions but like you got waylaid doing side activities, I can't quite put my finger on it but they feel really rewarding to do, and upgrading structures or extending roads made by other people feels incredibly satisfying.

I've found some very nice stuff in shared lockers but always try to reciprocate by putting any spare stuff I have in there as well.

I'm getting better at the BT encounters now, and fingers crossed seem to be doing a good job of getting through their areas without getting dragged to the bad world.

PRO TIP - If you've got a speed skeleton and are lightly loaded, and the ground is relatively flat, you can actually just peg it straight through the BTs, they're a bit too slow to react. (In my experience at least.)

I had one really tense encounter in a ruined town where there were fucking loads of BTs and running wasn't an option, I know that getting caught isn't that bad in reality, and you can get back out of the bad world without too much trouble, but I was totally determined not to get caught, was running a bit low on Hematic Grendades, and found myself holding my own breath along with Sam's - I was just so into the situation.

It's a fucking great game, I still hate the Dualshock as a pad (it gives me mild hand cramp after an extended session), and I'm shit with a pad full stop, but I'm glad I've given this game a go. By all accounts I'm about halfway through the main campaign now, and whilst it's early days to make the call, I'd say this is going to end up in my Top Ten Games Ever list - a totally unique, and utterly enchanting, gaming experience.

This might have the best snow. Better than God of War snow perhaps? Better than RDR2 snow, maybe? It’s pretty good snow is what I’m saying.

You're running a bit ahead of me, I did the second boss last night and thought it was OK TBH, not mechanically amazing (although better than the first one), but the scenario itself was intriguing and I'm very interested to see how it dovetails into the main game.

I tend to spend a lot of time in this game 'arranging things', and I don't mean that as a criticism, there's a real satisfaction in making sure Sam is all kitted out properly for his next adventure, and I always like to make sure he's well rested, and has had his shower, his poo, and his wee. (If he's got covered in blood and/or BT gloop for any reason, I make sure he gets a shower ASAP.)

The cutscenes are great, and I'm invested in both the story and its characters.

Getting a load of 'proper' weapons was quite exciting but then Die Hardman reminded me I'm not allowed to kill anyone but I slaughtered two camps of MULEs anyway just for a laugh and then waited for about 30 minutes, nothing bad seemed to happen but I didn't want to take the risk so I went back to my save before I did all the killing.

Then it was time for bed but I'm all ready to set off on a trek around a big mountain this evening, with three deliveries along the way. I've decided to go with Sam and a floating carrier thingy, I actually prefer the game when I'm on foot, although the vehicles are great for covering large distances.

The cutscenes are alright. The dialogue varies from ok to eye rolling. Hideo is not the genius film director that he wants to be or people make him out to be. I swear I could hear my eyeballs rubbing against my flesh as they were rolling around in my sockets when:

Fragile: “I’m fragile. But I’m not that fragile.”

And I like my Daryl to get clean too but, FUCK ME, I don’t want to see the same animation every fucking time and why can’t I skip the sodding thing in a button press!? You know how many times you have to press Options to pause the cut scene and the press Confirm? FOUR FUCKING TIMES for every shower. That’s FOUR separate cutscenes/animations that play every time and each of them has to be individually skipped every fucking time too. And if you want to use the toilet that’s another TWO each, so getting ready to go out means you’re skipping 8 useless animations every single time. It’s a waste of my time as a gamer and that pisses me off.

And got those who haven’t played, if you shower and poo it ... refills your grenades ... because of course it does, so it’s ‘useful’ to do every now and again. You don’t need to do it because your Daryl is dirty. He’s always dirty. He’s a Daryl.

And a Daryl is about as chatty as a Kiefer too. That was a complaint levelled at Snake in MGSV and it equally applies here. And yet sometimes his idle one liners repeat far too many times because he’s only got a couple. At the bit I was on last night he says the same 3 lines about his baby over and over, which annoyed me since that section could last a few hours (it definitely did for me) and they couldn’t be arsed to do a few more lines.

And another thing...if you leave a camp filled with baddies unconscious their stuff stays with them no matter what distance you go. Leave your own kit on the floor and that shit will be gone as soon as you’re out of ear shot. I had this annoyance crop up last night after I decimated an enemy camp... god it was a piece of piss - I stood still and just shot up everyone (interestingly a rubber bullet to the head of a baddie is an instant stun) ... but I was standing near my truck which was already in bad shape and it got some collateral bullets and gave up; showering the floor with all my possessions. And I had a LOT of stuff. After I’d incapacitated everyone I went to fetch a baddie truck but they don’t hold much so I went off to a nearby base to get a new truck (oh and why would you ever need to “buy” a truck when your online friends ‘always’ have one spare for you and often about your spec) but wait! I went more than 200 yards so my entire stock just disappears from the floor but when I got back all the baddies are still there with all their boxes of loot lying next to them! Bloody irritating.

I love reading Sat ranting about games.

The controls suck! And the menu is awful! And I hate the characters! And the world is bad! And the combat is too easy!

9/10 - great game

I think I’m closing in on the end of this.

I was enjoying the world a lot but the story has waded knee deep into Kojima-nonsense. It was going well until sodding Heartman turned up. His dialogue is just endless exposition, “theory” and bollocks that wouldn’t have been out of place in MGS.

Plus I was getting a bit fed up of making deliveries but was really enjoying the traversal over the mountains.

Only problem is, that I only had to ditch my vehicle once in the mountain section. The vehicles are almost too OP as you can bounce them over the roughest terrains without much fuss. Sure, they can explode but you’d have to be pretty rough with them to make them do that. You know your limits after you do it once... . I think I’d have preferred vehicles being stripped away somehow for this section just to hammer home how difficult it is to navigate the mountains (lord knows, Kojima can come up with bullshit excuses for most of his gameplay innovations). He didn’t so you can bounce a van around the rocky ranges with impunity. Well, deliveries were getting a bit long in the tooth anyway.

After that comes the last third of the game and the “twists” in the story and, yes, they’re handled in typical Kojima fashion: Some bloke talking utter nonsense at you for fucking ages. The quality of the game takes a real dive as you do a few crappy and unchallenging boss fights and have a lot of rubbish spouted by the cast. Kojima cannot do dialogue. And the interesting premise at the start of the games takes a kick in the shins too. Mind you, you do get to do a few deliveries and build some more road if you fancy it. Which I did; it’s the best bit of the game!

There can’t be many more chapters left and I’m keen to get it over and done with so I can get back to building that fucking motorway I’d started. I want to bulldoze through the middle of the map with beautiful tarmac so I don’t have to navigate that nightmare rocky section. I’m kidding really, I won’t play it again when it’s finished.

Yes I'd agree with this, not only can they navigate terrain that it would clearly be completely impossible for them to do, they also look fucking ridiculous whilst they're at it as well.

I'm still in the snowy mountain section which has been quite gruelling in some regards but I've enjoyed it, even though it's often very slow going. I've tended to avoid the vehicles for sections where they clearly don't belong, preferring instead to do it properly, mountain man style.

The zip lines are fucking awesome though, I do like those.

I've been fine with the story so far, even though it is clearly hokum in many regards.

Overall it's been a great videogame experience, I wouldn't even rule out playing it through again now I know how everything works.

These credits have been rolling for the last 30 minutes and this woman won’t stop fucking blathering on about some shit. I swear to god, if Miyazaki had done these cutscenes it would have been fucking awesome and we’d all walk away thinking “What the fuck was that all about?” and then watch hours upon hours of YouTube videos dealing with the lore.

Instead, Hideo makes us literally sit and listen to him do a massive exposition dump in the most unfathomably boring fashion he could think of.

Oh it’s over. Thank fuck.

Tell a lie, she’s still yakking.

Fucks sake, someone loves the sound of his own words. 90% of everything here doesn’t need to be said.

If you've played MGSIV I'm confused how any of this is surprising to you.

It’s not surprising (I’ve played all the MGS’ for some reason) it’s just fucking annoying. The weird thing was, until this final third, his bullshit has been reasonably well curtailed. But now at the end it’s just come flooding out. I’ve paused it and gone to have a bath to calm down.

Now I'm really looking forward to the stuff that forced Satsuma to take a bath.

If nothing else, this a videogame that inspires emotions.

THIS GAME MADE ME NEED A BATH TO CALM DOWN.

Ain't nobody saying that about a Call Of Duty franchise entry.

It’s finally ended. If anyone is thinking of finishing this, just be aware that you’ve got to watch a sodding movie after the last boss fight.

It ain’t worth it.
Mind you, you get this nonsense:

Clifford: “I was called Cliff because I was an immovable object.” AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Or something like that. “I wasn’t the only cliff because I wasn’t the only fall at the end.” Or something, god what was it? Seriously though, was he having a fucking laugh with this dialogue? It’s so bad. He must be.

I had to knock this down to VERY EASY last night to get through a boss fight. This is more down to how incredibly incompetent I am with a pad when it comes to any kind of shooty action than the encounter being fundamentally unfair, but in a game that has very little shooting (because, after all, you can't kill anyone), it did stick out a bit.

I think I'm closing in on the final stages of the game now, I'll do a more complete write-up when it's all done.

It's not without its flaws, and ultimately it must be judged as a videogame rather than some sort of transcendent work of art, but for my money it's a bloody good videogame.

Wait, you can't kill anyone? But there's a screenshot with all the guns and there are loads!

You can, but the dead bodies become massive explosive bombs under some (all?) circumstances that need to be disposed of in a certain way so you're encouraged not to. Also, there are non-lethal weapons available like a bolo gun.

Hang about, the fight with the big BT with the gold heart? I killed it first try without much difficulty. As far as I could see, you didn’t need to be accurate especially since your groupings with the AR spread at anything more than 5 feet in front of your character and you get massive splash damage with your grenades and the rockets.

The only time I died during the entire game (on normal) was when the gold men in the floor grabbed me out of a vehicle and you literally can’t shake them off in time and it’s an instant game over. Oh and I drove a nuclear bomb into a city once to see what would happen. It went exactly as you’d expect.

No the encounter with Clifford where you've just come out of the sewers.

I had three goes at it and got to the last wave every time before running out of 'everything' at which point it was just annoying me so I dropped the difficulty and then did it on the fourth go on VERY EASY.

It's like, I knew what I wanted to do, I just couldn't make it happen, oh for K+M in sections like that.

The autoaim either doesn't seem to work at all, or not very well, it's not like the 'snap' autoaiming that Rockstar use, that's for sure.

It's impossible to overstate how phenomenally cack-handed I am when it comes to shooting type stuff with a pad in a third or first person game, and just using a pad for anything other than arcade or driving games in general.

Anyway I finally got out of the mountains last night and got to the final city, so I might be able to finish the game this evening.

The mountain/Heartman section was the weakest portion of the game for my money, and I believe will have cost the game a point when it comes to the final score.

I don’t know where you were going wrong but the shooting sections were so easy as to be barely an inconvenience. And I’m old as fuck! Mind you, I always carried around a bunch of weapons (4 blood packs; 4 grenades and 4 non-lethal ARs. The van holds the other gear) but this was always enough and there’s always onsite procurement of rifles.

Thank god it didn’t have the Rockstar snap to target either. You might as well not bother to play the thing if there’s zero skill. That garbage ruined RDR2.

You haven't seen me try to free aim using a gamepad. It's not pretty.

DOOM 2016 on NIGHTMARE skill level using a K+M, I can do that.

The shooting sections in Death Stranding on NORMAL using a pad, not necessarily so much.

So when this game tells you words to the effect of 'This is the final stage of your journey' it's totally lying.

Admittedly some of the stuff I wasn't expecting has been good, like a very tense path through heavily infested BT territory.

However I endured one TERRIBLE boss fight that literally went on for nearly 30 minutes, but there was also a boss fight that was fun and cool and transitioned into a fantastic third phase that I wasn't expecting at all.

I now have what I am assured is DEFINITELY THE LAST THING YOU NEED TO DO HONEST, but it was getting too late to do it last night, so it'll have to wait for this evening.

It’s probably the last thing. Get tooled up (seriously, take weapons), grab a bike and enjoy the return journey. But make sure you’ve got time before bedtime to watch the never ending ending movie.

This is a really good review of the game, by someone who I think 'gets it'.

https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/death- ... 0-6417358/

I'm going to feel a little bit lost for what to do next once I've finished it.

And another three hours last night and I'm still not finished! This time I really do think I'm close to the end though.

I got up to what looks like quite an end-of-game style boss fight, died after about 15 minutes, and it's just GAME OVER with no repatriation. Since it was already gone half ten and I'm mindful of the THE MOVIE at the end of the game that Satsuma has mentioned, I figured I'd leave having another go at it until tonight.

Some of the exposition dumps are a bit much, but overall the story and characters have kept me on the right side of being interested and invested in them.

Also there was one 'delivery' where I literally just had to travel a LOOOOOOONG distance from one place to another, the 'cargo' was me, in essence. I really, really enjoyed that, gave me a genuine sense of journeying and adventure.

I finished this last night, I thought it was toweringly magnificent, turns out there's a whole load of extra stuff to do after what I thought was the closing chapter, and the final stages of the game really pull it back from what was starting to get a bit grindy and Heartmany up in the mountains.

I didn't mind the way it did the credits at all, and the way the story concluded was both unexpected and satisfying.

It's not a perfect videogame by any stretch of the imagination, and it definitely has pacing and mechanical issues, but the overall experience was breathtakingly impressive.

My PS4 Pro has basically done God Of War and Death Stranding*, but it was worth it just for those two games.

My score is 910/1000 for Death Stranding. If you've got a PS4, play this game.

* And Everyone's Golf as well.

How the fuck can you say that with a straight face. You probably pissing yourself typing that shit.

Nope I'm being entirely honest, I thought the closing stages of the game (including 'that' final delivery) were handled incredibly well.

Yes it's a bit po-faced and earnest sometimes, and there's quite a lot of mumbo jumbo waffle in there, but as I said earlier in this thread, I genuinely admire what they were going for with this game and for my money they pretty much nailed it, albeit imperfectly.

Truly one of the finest gaming experiences of this generation.

Hilarious.

Every other right minded individual will find that Kojima’s approach to storytelling hasn’t improved since MGS. The graphics are prettier but it’s the same old problem of no one talking like actual human beings and over-explaining absolutely everything like robots.

“Like Mario & Princess Beach.”

“We Run” “Run?” “Psychomantis?”

For sure there's a lot of stuff you can poke holes in, but I loved the game from start to finish, despite its missteps. (Well, apart from the Heartmany mountain section which got a bit tedious.)

It's the kind of videogame that reminds me why I love videogames so much, I've never played any of the MGS games so I have nothing to compare it with in that regard, so I'm judging the game on its own merits and how it made me feel - and I think it's a fucking fantastic game.

I've been completely lacking any motivation to play videogames (except Hearthstone, natch), since finishing this.

Fortunately Netflix and Amazon Prime can pick up the slack, but other games just seem a bit, 'lightweight' by comparison.

I think I either need to find something else meaty to really get my teeth into, or go full on in the opposite direction and find the next DOOM 2016, which would be DOOM ETERNAL but it isn't out yet.

Maybe I should give RDR2 a try, and start polishing my horse and brushing my guns or whatever the fuck it is you have to do, whilst enjoying the fruits of Rockstar's borderline slave labour.

Whatever happens I'm not watching any fucking election coverage, I'm off work tomorrow so I'm going to get moderately drunk and either play videogames or watch Netflix (DAYBREAK), and then wake up in the morning to, hopefully, a hung parliament.

After playing a long AAA game I like to knock a load of shorter lightweight things off my backlog/wishlist until I fancy diving back into something big again; I find that gives a good balance.

Yes I just played Pinball Arcade all night on the big telly, I do love that game.

Holy crap, did Kojima steal most of his ideas from the first scene in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story!?

Best graphics of the year according to Eurogamer.

Direct timestamped link to the relevant section.

https://youtu.be/y_nYcbQv2xA?t=2003