Hideo Kojima and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:PlayStation go together like hobbits and breakfasts. That is to say, they're meant to be together, but they're also happy to serve up a PC port or afternoon tea if the time is right. Kojima's long-time collaboration with Sony means it always feels odd to see his name next to an Xbox logo, like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Master Chief appearing on your PS5 or glimpsing your teꦐacher in the big Tesco♔ doing her weekly shop.
I was a Nintendo kid up until I got an Xbox 360. This meant I grew up on a strict diet of Pokemon, Zelda, and Mario Kart, before supplementing my growing teenage appetite with multiplayer shooters (namely Ha♈lo 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2) and annual installments of FIFA. In a different life, I would have grown up with Final Fantasy and Spyro, and the Ben in that universe has Sephiroth tattooed on his knee rather than Ganon.
All this is a long-winded way of explaining that my lack of PlayStation growing up meant I completely missed Kojima's games until I was an adult. Until two weeks ago, in fact, when I picked up 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Death Stranding on a whim. I've never hidden in a cardboard box, never had my memory card read for filth, and never turned my console off for a week to wait for a boss to die of old age. In fact, the closest I'd got to playing a Kojima game was yeeting Bꦉowser off Shadow Moses Island in Super Smash B൩ros. Brawl.
I was als✃o given a second-hand PS4 with P.T. installed, but I wussed out ꧃before even launching it..
I'd heard the stories. I respected the clever mechanics. I recognised the eschewed expectations and commitment to trying new things. But hearing about game mechanics doesn’t come close to actually experiencing them. Over the past fortnight, I dove headfirst into 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hideo Kojima’s post-apocalyptic vision ༒of America, and I’ve come away bruised, dirty, and amazed.
The Friction Of Death Stranding
I didn't expect Death Stranding to have so much friction, both literally and metaphorically. This is a game built on such a strong mechanical foundation that it's knocking on the door of my top ten favourite games and I haven’t even finished yet. And the mechanic that has enamoured me to this game so quickly? A most simple action, something that we take for granted iꦚn nearly every other video game: walking.
Walking is easy. You push the left thumbstick forwards. Push it right to go right. Left to go left. Let go to stop. This much is true in nearly every video game I've ever played. And it's the same in Death Stranding. But try walking along an incline. Try wading through a fast🐟-flowing mountain river. Your body becomes unbalanced. You have to strain against the current. Now try doing all of this with a Buckaroo-style backpack laden with portable bridges, antique watches, and, for some reason, 400 pieces of metal you found lying in a briefcase in a ghost♈-ridden ravine.
Now even the slightest incline poses a grave threat to you a🦄nd your precious cargo. The weather, too, is dangerous. The rain decays and rusts your freight. I can't tell if the wind actually blows you over or if it's just so atmospheric that I'm scared it will. Your fingers are constantly poised over the shoulder buttons, ready to grab your pack by the straps at the first sign of precarity.
Your r💃oute must be meticulously planned, methodically picking your way around boulders and across gorges to get to your destination. And that's before you encoun🎐ter the ghosts who will pull you into their murky blackness and feed you to a Chthonic whale. I've never been so exhilarated, so engaged, when traversing an open world.
An Immersive World
🍬For a long time I held Breath of the Wild as the gold-standard of open world game design, and in many ways I still do. The emergent storytelling in that game has never been matched. The size, the scope, the freedom: commendable. In many ways, Death Stranding is the opposite of this, the anti-Zelda.
Its open-world segments have clear limits, whether they are laser walls or in🎶surmountable mountain ranges. The game very clearly directs you to your next port of call at each juncture. You're free𝔉 to ignore that, of course, but a hologram bloke will always tell you where to go in order to progress the story. Where Zelda showcases the joy of exploration, Death Stranding lets the journey itself take centre stage.
Every footstep is a calculat🐎ed manoeuvre. Every natural landmark is both a waypoint and an obstacle to overcome. Death Stranding makes walking a chore. A beautiful, mechanical chore. Hideo Kojima respe꧒cts that his players will understand his intentions. Every intentional, frictious mechanic is a masterstroke of traversal.
Traversal in Breath of the Wild is largely very easy. You’re encouraged to run, glide, and shield-surf through Hyrule with ease. Link has all the kit he needs to get to exactly where he needs to go and, unlike the weapons, none of it degrades. The only friction comes in the form of the stamina wheel, which can easily be countered by consuming unlimited quantities of fruit. The same goes forജ hot or cold loca𒁏tions, where Link can change into one of the 17 outfits he somehow carries about his person in order to stave off the effects of the weather.
The Anti-Zelda Arises
De𝔉ath Stranding is the opposite to all of this. As the anti-Zelda, its movement is naturally hard-going. This befits its nature as a post-apocalyptic landscape. The physical environments of Death Stranding are rocky expanses pocked b﷽y the telltale signs of death. Compare it to the lush greenery of Hyrule Field and you can see why each game took each approach.
But Hideo Kojima didn’t have to go so hard on the friction of getting from A to B. It’s hard enough travelling across open ground when you’re laden with gear. When you try to ascend to the power station, picking your way through a forest filled with ghosts, teetering tower of packages swaying on your back, you slow to a snail’s crawl. You crouch to lower your centre of gravity. You hold your breath to avoid being detected. You half expect the IRL sharp intake of breath when Sam Porter Bridges slips on a root to a𒐪lert the BTs to your presence.
I’ve never felt so immersed in the act of walking. The only reasonable comparison I can make is to a week last summer, when my brother and I walked t🌊he length of Hadrian’s🌜 Wall. Days three and four of the hike were a constant ascent and descent of hills as we followed the wall’s length on our odd pilgrimage. As we reached each summit, the 🎉wind picked up and we crouched down to keep our footing. As we walked down the next steep cliff, pebbles scattered beneath our feet and we had to be careful not to slip. If only we hadn’t sent our enormous backpacks ahead to our next campsite (through the brilliantly-named company Hadrian’s Haul) and this would have been the full Death Stranding experience.
Walking can be hard. The first time you make any journey in Death Stranding, you realise that to be the case. And through these tactile mechanics, the constant rumbles and shoulder-button balance tweaks, Kojima helps you to feel tha൲t intimate relationship between Sam Porter Bridges and the earth he treks across. Few other games take as much care when it comes to traversal, and therefore few other games com𝔍e close to Death Stranding’s immersion.
I have a message for you, Hideo Kojima, as you definitely read this article: I get it. I get you. And I'll follow that up with a question: what should I play next? Please don't say Death Stranding 2: On The Beach because, as muc🤪h as I'd love to, I still don't own a PlayStation.
All Of These Dea⛄th Stranding Adaptations Are Missing The Pওoint
Like The Last of Us Part 2, gameplay plays a🀅n integral part in telling the story of 🍸Death Stranding.
