First of all, I wasn't really a big kojima gal? I had played the first and a bit of the fifth MGS until earlier this year, where i finally finished MGS V
i realized it is an extremely precient and political game, and I think i like kojima's brand of crazy.
So then I read about death stranding. I saw the promo footage years ago, and it followed that cutscene where Deadman finds himself on that combat beach, and I assumed it was more action heavy bs that I was growing out of (hormones change your tastes what can i say), so i completely ignored it until i grabbed it on a whim recently
and anyway, WOW! so I fucking love this game. Everything is so weird. Astrology and esoterica are canon, everything is a fucking insane metaphor for something else, the world has been utterly bent the fuck over by cataclysm, and you're just a dude out there with your artificial womb, making deliveries and linking up the remnants of humanity.
I love the vibe of these little communities and holdout preppers coming together, sharing what they have to move forward into a post-cataclysmic future. I love all the stupid shit with Lockne & Malingen, I love the bridge babies, i love that one of the most potent weapons in the game is made by running around until you're so tired you piss blood, and that bloody piss gets turned into a grenade. I love having weaponized body fluids. This shit owns.
I'm not even sure death stranding 2 can live up to this.
also the multiplayer features can be a bit much (I have it set up to log in offline and to not automatically share structures because people will just spam structures in the most annoying fucking places, but they're also awesome.
I love how much cooperation and community effort is the front and foremost thing, to the point it's literally one of the stats the game tracks.
Sorry, I needed to gush about how rad this game is, years after its heyday
edit: Also if anybody is currently playing and wants to form strand contracts, i'm on the Steam PC version. I'd rather see like, specific people's stuff in my game world than like, random people's.
Right now i use strand contracts with inactive friends to sort of make it less likely i get six bridges in a forest when i go online, but i'd actually enjoy building the world map out with some people. Not gonna put my steam id out in public though, pm me for all that
I feel like I have to emphasize that while this game is awesome, i feel like any given screenshot and even certain sequences in the game will misrepresent just exactly what kind of game this is.
It's a logistics game with an action coat of paint and some cosmic horror themes. It is not an action game strictly speaking. There is a lot of walking around, picking up resources, building stuff, delivering stuff, and there is only some amount of shooting things and being a punchman gunboi
The traversing the terrain stuff can feel somewhat actiony, at least before you get the final upgrades. And the story has lots of "scripted" action sections with the BTs. But I agree. But even the guns and action stuff is so well done.