Death Stranding

Zero-Cool

Chapter 10 done, was actually really nice to see and use the communities hard work since chapter 3. Hands down best multiplayer of the year.

_CreeD_

Finished...finally finished.

Not the game, nothing so trivial, I mean the damned road.

I think I'm on chapter 8 of the other activity that kept interrupting, the main story I think it was called.

goon_magee

Zero-Cool wrote: »

Finished chapter 9 and look to be running through chap 10. Looks like it gives you a good opportunity to do whatever standard orders you want but I'm sticking to the main story. The dialogue at the end of chap 9 was equally brilliant and stupid

Mario and Princess Beaches

:pac:

I read the email from the pizza guy, Jesus Christ....

I love all these characters, i just wish i had more time to sit down and play through to the very end.

I love you days gone, but this might actually top it as GOTY.

PS. I played the new Star wars game for 10 minutes today. I instantly felt like i was playing a game (as stupid as that sounds) issuing simple commands on a joypad to make the little character on my screen move forward. It's very hard to explain how good DS feels and I think it might have ruined movement mechanics in games for me.

My feeling on Star Wars precisely. It isn't a bad game but really just emphasised how much I love the mechanics in DS. This is a weird complaint, but the movement in Star Wars feels too video gamey after 61 hours in DS. I'm sure it is a feeling that will subside over time the more distance I put between me and DS, but for now it feels odd playing anything else.

fixXxer

Doing my best to get Chapter three done and now I cant move on until I have my Road finished.

What is life.

Zero-Cool

Chapter 13 done and credits started rolling but i know there's more so i quit until i can dedicate a couple hours tonight to finish it up

Press R2 to Hug

fixXxer

fixXxer wrote: »

Doing my best to get Chapter three done and now I cant move on until I have my Road finished.

What is life.

Just wait until you see the material requirements for the roads up to mountain knot City!

_CreeD_

Deleted User wrote: »

Just wait until you see the material requirements for the roads up to mountain knot City!

Aye, and less people contributing. TBH I finished it out of OCD more than anything. It's incredibly useful in the East, loading up a Bridges truck and running the circuit with Standing and lost orders can max most sites in 2-3 runs, giving some very nice upgrades along the way. On the west

90% of the content is in the southern mountain range where you will fall in love with Zip lines. The road is of very little use

and as you said it's a lot more expensive.

Gamer Bhoy 89

Deleted User wrote: »

Just wait until you see the material requirements for the roads up to mountain knot City!

I'm about 64 hours into it, on Chapter 8, and I'm currently busting my hole driving up and down the map trying to get as much materials as I can. The amount required is staggering!

Zero-Cool

Just finished chapter 14 (and story)

Jeeeeeeezus Chriiiiiiiiiiist this game is a masterpiece.

I can't wrap my head around how so many journalists would have finished chap 14 and thought "meh, not for everyone". There is no game for 'everyone' but that doesn't get thrown around for other games. I finished it at 40 hours. So this 'i don't have time for a 70-100 hour game' is bull****. I didn't rush by any means but i ignored most lost cargo and standing orders. I did a bit of building but really after chapter 3, i just wanted to experience the story because it was so good. I also didn't resonate with the 'the first 10 hours and last few chapters were a boring slog. I didn't find 1 minute of this game either boring or a slog. I'm not saying everyone is gonna or should love the game but i would say to not let the negative reviews put you off trying it.

This is a must experience imo. Walk, hike, drive vehicles, driver packages, build roads, build connections and soak in every minute of every cutscene. I don't know how long that last cutscene was and i don't care. It brought out every emotion and Kojima needs to win all the awards for it.

For the end game spoilers...

that whole final chapter of delivering Lou to the incinerator to walking out in the rain, oh my God. Louise!

Sam was BB all along and cliff was really looking for me, not Lou (i think).

Reading Higgs journals on how he came to be. Finding his hideout and his extra journals, reading them all in Troy's voice.

I have so many things to look up about end game discussion.

https://twitter.com/Sheehy_83/status/1197681926481600512?s=19

Zero-Cool

Saw this on reddit and couldn't be more accurate.

"When you send a bot to make a delivery"

one armed dwarf

I really liked Death Stranding too, but it's a tough ask for a journo to commit at least 40 hours (it took me about 50) to see this through and write a review for embargo. Often enough what happens is reviewers have to take the review code home with them and play in their off time.

Which, if it's a game like Death Stranding which is as marmite as AAA can become I can totally see why outlets like Edge would shelve it.

This game's story really lost me. It's so lumpily paced with a bunch of lore exposition at the end heaped on with such ferocity that it's in one ear and out the other. Too many of the characters feel like lore dump mechanisms, especially Deadman (maybe my least favourite character in a game ever).

I liked the Nicholas Refn character though and his whole introduction

goon_magee

I couldn't blame anyone for disliking the game, but personally I found the story and the pacing a lot better than Kojima's previous work.

I felt like I was getting back to the game a lot quicker with DS. Granted the last few hours are an absolute marathon of cutscenes and narrative that I couldn't blame someone for not enjoying, but I was so invested in the story that I enjoyed every minute.

I also think the story here is more cohesive than Kojima's previous efforts. To this day I'm still not sure I have my head wrapped around the entirety of the Metal Gear narrative. Whereas with DS the context provided in the last few hours left me with a very clear understanding of what had been going on and the differing motives, and found that in the end everything slotted together quite neatly. It's probably the first Kojima game where I haven't felt compelled to dive straight into a wiki straight away to fill in any gaps that I missed as I pretty much had the complete picture by the end.

one armed dwarf

one armed dwarf wrote: »

Which, if it's a game like Death Stranding which is as marmite as AAA can become I can totally see why outlets like Edge would shelve it.

I think Edge were making a very pointed protest at the embargo conditions, likely to dissuade other publishers from including the same condition in the embargo contract. I'd assume they finish most games before reviewing but they don't want to be contractually obliged to.

Gyan84

fixXxer wrote: »

Doing my best to get Chapter three done and now I cant move on until I have my Road finished.

What is life.

Deleted User wrote: »

Just wait until you see the material requirements for the roads up to mountain knot City!

I spent a good bit building my road from the port you first enter at the start of chapter 3 down to the distribution center and then from the distribution center down to the southern city.

Felt great zipping around on the bike doing deliverys no bother until I continued the story and had to

climb one way up the mountain and then back the other way because the person didn't want to connect :rolleyes:

Zero-Cool wrote: »

Saw this on reddit and couldn't be more accurate.

Do you ever unlock anything to make them better ? I don't know if they wear the cargo containers as shoes or what but I can't send my anywhere without them breaking half the shipment to the point where I might just give up on them.

Also chapter 2

The bit with Fragile running out in the rain was good but for some reason I found the line "I'm Fragile... but I'm not 'that' fragile" hilarious. It seems like it belongs in some sort of patronizing motivation ad.

Potential-Monke

So I finally got this. Last night. I'm about 4 hours in, and I'm typing this as I sit under an overhang avoiding the Timefall. I've been here 20 real world minutes and no sign of it letting up... did I miss something, or is my only choice to wait it out? I tried walking in it and kept getting reminder messages about it not being a good idea. Pretty sure the cargo is all 20% ****ed now.

Also, what's the story with the markers pinging me to the bad guys?

The story has me hooked, or should I say the idea has me hooked. I really do want to know what happens, what it's all about, but if there's a load of sitting waiting for rain to finish, I won't be able to do it. Tempted to drop it to easy just to blast through the story, but by all accounts even that will take ages.

I'm also not liking the Like system, it reminds me of like whoring on Facebook (or even here on boards).

One question though. About the date of birth thing at the start.

if you were one of the "chosen" starsigns, can you see the BTs instead of just sensing them? Amni also missing something regarding traversing the terrain, aside from being a bit slower, holding L2/R2 constantly and haven't fallen over yet, despite some fancy shuffling around rocks.

I reckon I'll know by Monday if this is for me, and so far it doesn't look like it will be.

gimli2112

lol I wouldn't hide from rain for 20 minutes in real life

Zero-Cool

Potential, some of your q's answered below.

Timefall. I've been here 20 real world minutes and no sign of it letting up... did I miss something, or is my only choice to wait it out? - some areas will have permanent rain so waiting it out will do nothing. Once i learned this, i stopped waiting and just ran in the rain, never had any cargo destroyed and it's easy to fabricate new equipment if it gets too damaged.

Also, what's the story with the markers pinging me to the bad guys? - They love cargo so they set up poles to ping when cargo enters their area. You'll eventually get an ability to negate their ping.

I'm also not liking the Like system, it reminds me of like whoring on Facebook (or even here on boards). - I'm answering this just to be helpful, you don't have to give me a like :pac:

One question though. About the date of birth thing at the start. (spoiler) if you were one of the "chosen" starsigns, can you see the BTs instead of just sensing them? - no idea what the different star signs do, you can only see them when you ping the area they are in and that's only if you are still and bb is healthy. You are just supposed to ping, see their shadows and then plan your movement around them. Eventually you'll be well armed to take them on.

Amni also missing something regarding traversing the terrain, aside from being a bit slower, holding L2/R2 constantly and haven't fallen over yet, despite some fancy shuffling around rocks. - nope, holding both triggers is safe as anything, just slow. Sometimes you just want to leg it, again, you'll eventually get upgrades that make traversal much easier.

Potential-Monke

Just got up, and the timer said 30 minutes, 28 asleep... I've turned it off. **** you Kojima.

Zero-Cool

Potential-Monke wrote: »

Just got up, and the timer said 30 minutes, 28 asleep... I've turned it off. **** you Kojima.

In case you don't see my reply to your post that's gone to the previous page, no need to shelter from the rain, never had any cargo destroyed because of it

Potential-Monke

Christ they don't make much very clear. So it's just the container that gets damaged, and as long as you don't fall the contents will be ok?

If I turn it on again I'll run through it. Cheers for the advice!

Zero-Cool

Potential-Monke wrote: »

Christ they don't make much very clear. So it's just the container that gets damaged, and as long as you don't fall the contents will be ok?

If I turn it on again I'll run through it. Cheers for the advice!

I'm not fully sure on it myself. I got messages sometimes 'cargo container handfed 100% but when i handed it in, there was never a fuss, maybe not an S grade but i was never bothered with that. Those timefall shelters are handy that they repair cargo when you're under one but yeah, feck waiting there imo.

Yeah, some unclear mechanics but like at the end of chapter 2, the message sounds like you better finish everything up but in chapter 3, you get to travel back whenever you want. People spent 10's of hours on chap 2 because of it, could definitely see why people could get burnt out.

ERG89

https://twitter.com/miziziziz/status/1197048003372179456?s=19

_CreeD_

Container and content damage are 2 different things. The repair spray you can equip, or auto output from a Timefall shelter, repairs containers and not content. The target for a delivery only judges you on content quality, so if the container is at 1%, and the content is 100% you get a perfect score there. But it is a relatively minor stat anyway in that most premium deliveries only want 50% content. Where it becomes a real issue is some equipment boxes won't repair with any spray (like PCCs). So Timefall can impact critical deliveries to some extent but usually is more of an issue for personal equipment and vehicles (esp. when you start just stealing MULE trucks that you can't repair). 70 or so hours in and on chapter 10, so more time spent on side stuff than story compared to most (and Zero above who is way ahead on story), NEVER waste time at shelters, as was mentioned some timefall is transient most is hardcoded into zones. Only use it for a free repair spray, and always carry at least 2 spray containers yourself. Esp. when you head West.

Edit:
Adding if you are repeatedly hitting real issues with Timefall look at the other systems to combat it:
- Unavoidable mostly early on it is negligible as long as you don't waste time you won't lose anything critical.
- Avoid zones you find yourself, and watch for signs from others. If you aren't seeing signs put up some yourself and work on the social backend (build more reusable things yourself, when you hit Bridge level 10 look through your links to other players and add them as contracts,more likely to appear from then).
- Getting a vehicle that covers cargo

level up the Distro south of Lake Knot AND get the Motor design from the Junk dealer

- Always have container repair spray.
- If not doing a specific 'Delivery for Sam' and just working up your likes and essentially XP, on a known route that you can avoid conflict on, unequip everything bar anything that helps with cargo delivery. You won't need ARs/Bolo rifles if you are just travelling on the Road you helped build between points.
- Help build logical structures. The road is a bigggy, without story spoliers whlie it always helps I personally would advise only focussing on it on the East side to the first Distro on the West. But for those sides, critical to the foundational game, it is a godsend and worth every cent of resource. You can zip battery free through Time fall and so many obstacles that would otherwise keep you in it.
- yeah, a spoiler but not for the canon, just a story mission that if you truly hate timefall makes it easier

Hit 4 star on the weather station (south-west of the southern distro) . It will give you dynamic weather reports and a backpack cosmetic that lessens timefall impact. Also the Collecter nearby (below the Easterly MULE camp) can give you a cover for direct backpack items, defending against timefall impact, but he is hard to level). I didn't bother and it's been fine.

Re-reading and I think TL;DR would be play into the concept of the game. Connect. Build things that make sense possibly to others aswell as yourself. Give as many thanks as you can to things that genuinely make sense (it auto gives on use but your ability to manually give increases with your bridge level, right now on average I can give about 400 or so likes per interaction). Besides being a decent response this makes it more likely that person will add you, and in turn you are more likely to see each other's structures in your worlds, also in my own experience when deconstructing to save Chiral bandwidth I won't touch anything with likes. This is nice at the start but is an absolutely essential layer when Chiral bandwidth becomes an issue (other chars structures in your instance take 0 local bandwidth, and if you chose wisely on your way they will have half your ideal infrastructure built for you when you add a region to a zone, or in fairness you help build it for them).
The idea of connectivity is not just for narrative, it is the core of the game.

Potential-Monke

_CreeD_ wrote: »

Re-reading and I think TL;DR would be play into the concept of the game. Connect. Build things that make sense possibly to others aswell as yourself. Give as many thanks as you can to things that genuinely make sense (it auto gives on use but your ability to manually give increases with your bridge level, right now on average I can give about 400 or so likes per interaction). Besides being a decent response this makes it more likely that person will add you, and in turn you are more likely to see each other's structures in your worlds, also in my own experience when deconstructing to save Chiral bandwidth I won't touch anything with likes. This is nice at the start but is an absolutely essential layer when Chiral bandwidth becomes an issue (other chars structures in your instance take 0 local bandwidth, and if you chose wisely on your way they will have half your ideal infrastructure built for you when you add a region to a zone, or in fairness you help build it for them).
The idea of connectivity is not just for narrative, it is the core of the game.

I think this is why this game will ultimately not be for me. I'm working now until 8pm, so will only get a couple of hours in tonight before work again tomorrow, but as someone who is a self proclaimed hermit and is pretty anti-social, the game is leaning towards something I don't necessarily agree with or follow.

I'll leg it through the rain later, see what happens! Most likely can see myself trading it in against something else on Monday while it's still worth money. The loop of walk/like-whore is not very appealing to me. I can see why other would like this game though.

sticker

OK, from being a long time Hideo Fan from way back to PS1 Metal Gear Solid (through all the Gear series) and recently playing Metal Gear 5 for the second time right to the end, I'm disappointed on a major scale with this.

I honestly feel after giving this a serious go - about 8 hours in, I'm throwing my hat at it. I cannot see any defence for the repetitive gameplay argument. The tedious and dull journeys, simplified enemies and constant cut scenes skipping..

It's not the lack of gunplay, but the adsence of anything substantial.

I feel half the players are just being fan boys to an extent - A cutting idea I admit, but my honest feeling - That if the Anthem studio released this, it would be panned globally.

I know I'm rocking the boat and each to their own but I'm at a loss how the mechanics in general are engaging players.

I see some seriously good quality game building, but it’s not for me at all. I hear the end game is solid, but thats no excuse to keep a player engaged for 40 hours who has no interest in the core delivery.

I totally get the Luke warm reviews.

This sums it up very well...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSwMBAu_OOo

Zero-Cool

Well just remember, you don't have to contribute a tab, plenty of other people will make roads, generators, etc for you to enjoy. It was rare i ever needed to put down a ladder or anchor because there was always something around i could use, especially after connecting an area to a network.

Anyway, i sold this today to CEX, actually felt dirty, i miss it already.

Edit: PSA, I'm no Kojima fanboy. Only half the MGS's were any good.

Gyan84

Anybody have any tips on how to get ceramics in bulk ? I'm developing an addiction to building roads but the ones in the mountain area need an insane amount although each section of road built is pretty long tbh.

The section in chapter 6 where

you're without BB has been annoying but on the bright side I've stocked up on chiral crystals thanks to walking straight into BTs a good few times. I think I'm near the end of this part though because I just need to do one more delivery for the mountaineer.

The BT combat is definitely the low point for me so far. I usually don't have enough weapons on me so I just end up running around until the game decides to give me more weapons via the other players' ghosts.

Also it's a bit odd how Sam can carry seemingly thousands of chiral crystals but the hubs will only store a few hundred.

Gyan84

Gyan84 wrote: »

Anybody have any tips on how to get ceramics in bulk ? I'm developing an addiction to building roads but the ones in the mountain area need an insane amount although each section of road built is pretty long tbh.

The section in chapter 6 where

you're without BB has been annoying but on the bright side I've stocked up on chiral crystals thanks to walking straight into BTs a good few times. I think I'm near the end of this part though because I just need to do one more delivery for the mountaineer.

The BT combat is definitely the low point for me so far. I usually don't have enough weapons on me so I just end up running around until the game decides to give me more weapons via the other players' ghosts.

Also it's a bit odd how Sam can carry seemingly thousands of chiral crystals but the hubs will only store a few hundred.

Mule and Demens camps are usually good spots for lots of ceramics. I found a lot of metals and ceramics just lying around up in the mountains too. It can be a pain retrieving them though if you are already carrying a lot.

I started chapter 9 yesterday evening and finished the game at 5.15am this morning. I'm worn out! Overall an excellent game, but parts of the ending dragged on too much. Can't say anything more without spoilers. Mads Mikkelson was brilliant whenever he popped up and Troy Baker was also very good as Higgs. Norman Reedus was outclassed whenever he was sharing a scene.
I can't wait to see what else Kojima can cook up now that he's not tied to Metal Gear. Death Stranding is a unique experience and I hope Sony don't push for a sequel.

_CreeD_

Finished it this morning also. Absolutely loved it from beginning to end (if that wasn't obvious from previous posts). It's rare a game can actually make me feel anything and I won't lie

Chapter 14, with BB's theme playing (stunning version of it), had me on the edge of tears. I kept trying to use the 'soothe bb' function and took breaks on the trip thinking 'maybe it'll work this time'

. The visuals, audio, story and gameplay all came together to make something that shouldn't work so well do so brilliantly imho.