Death Stranding gameplay reveal

[Candy Arse]

The difference with DLSS on in games is really impressive.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Played the prologue. Plenty of MGS5 vibes in mission structure and how they're broken down and scored upon completion. 60fps cutscenes with some dips occurring in new scenes loading from platter HDD. In game performance is great on my 6700k 5700xt system @ 1440p. Well above 60fps with the typical window around 80-120fps. High refresh gaming never gets old. As per PC hardware thread I just upgraded to a 32" HDR display so I'm looking forward to experiencing the DR's HDR implementation.

Navigating Sam seems engaging so far but it's only been an hour or so. Definitely no press-forward-to-continue here. You're constantly applying gameplay control to stabilise his momentum up, down or sideways. Crossing flowing rivers with strong currents is very well done.

Artistically it's amazing. The colour palette and music is right up my alley. Digging it so far.

[t0mby]

Not a dig but are you using a pad or m/kb? I imagine digital keys would be quite tricky for navigation in a game like this.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Kbam. The control is good. Left and right mouse buttons for balance. Slow run is default forward, ctrl to walk, shift to sprint. I played MGS5 with kbam and it feels familiar.

[Peppermint Lounge]

DS with HDR is a big improvement. The look of the game greatly enhanced with HDR sun glare pushing through the overcast sky. Still enjoying it. The first post-prologue mission is pretty fucking wierd. No spoilers (even though the first post-prologue mission has been covered by reviewers). Immediately following are your first encounteres with BTs. The sound in this game is amazing. Getting awesome bass rumble through my headset. Navigating BTs has a nice survivial horror feel.

A nice unprompted presentation touch while navigating the landscape is the camera will pan right out for a wider FOV and a suitably moody music track will start playing.

[Froggy]

The difference with DLSS on in games is really impressive.

Yeah just gave it a bash with Control, double the frame rate and all the settings on Ultra from my previous play I had the ray tracing and stuff on medium for somethings as the frame rate was dropping into the 30's and 40s for battles at points. I'm now getting ~100fps on ultra on a 2060 which is impressive as.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Did a mission where I had to sneak into a MULE (human enemy) camp to steal back some gear. I set up a watch tower to scope the best path. I snagged the gear and snuck out. I ended up engaging a MULE because there were some natural resources near by. No weapons yet so I snuck up behind and knocked him out. All very MGS and fun to play.

I'm far from the section where Twiztid tapped out but I'm enjoying it so far. The convoluted inventory UI and mission breakdowns are meticulous in a way that's kind of fasciating. Maybe it's just confusing and I'm still trying to decipher it.

[Peppermint Lounge]

I'm playing on Hard and the difficulty has escalated. Juggling the rain which destroys your cargo over time, which you have to cop because you're sneaking at a snail's pace past BTs, managing your stamina the amount of which determines how long you can hold your breath, which you need to do because BTs can hear you breathe, but if you hold it too long you hurt BB, so you catch a breath to avoid hurting BB which means a BT catches up with you, your cargo falls everywhere, you manage to shake off the BT, fuck leaving cargo behind though so you sneak back to get it, all the while watching your dwindled stamina head further south, is pure scrambling survival horror. Palpable relief at getting out of that shithole and making it to my destination.

[t0mby]

You make the game sound really interesting as opposed to people saying it's a DHL courier simulator. I'm actually enjoying your posts about it and may swing towards picking it up for cheap.

[Froggy]

I started his last night on ps4 pro, it's a good looking game on that but yeah there's not really much in terms of world details to push much anyway, most of it so far is running over green moss rocks. I've really enjoyed the atmosphere so far and I'm not too sure what most it is about and have kept that way since it came out to think for myself on it. I do keep waiting to see why it got such a hate it or love it rep, I'm going to assume once I get into more DHL'ing that will become obvious.

[Froggy]

OK played it a bit more and am enjoying it and the atmosphere.. no idea wtf is going on really still but it's been enjoyable so far, good atmosphere, good sci fi, presentation etc.

[Peppermint Lounge]

I'm loving it. I was daunted by the second leg of a long trudge to a far away destination. I left a vehicle behind at a MULE camp in a previous mission so Sam was on foot. We set off with 105-odd kgs on Sam's back and sure enough, thunder followed by rain early into the journey. Bust out the container repair spray (once containers fully degraded rain will damage your cargo). A bit later, BTs. Creep through that shit however now we have blood, shit and piss grenades which can kill or ward off BTs. Hematic grenades draw on Sam's blood so use too many and anemia will follow. This is countered by carrying blood bags which when equipped provide for field transfusions. All of this done on the fly and like everything else in this game, it's convoluted. KBAM control however is good. Aiming grenades is easy with a mouse and the slog through the rocky, BT-infested valley is made a lot easier for it vs earlier encounters. It's slow going though and the rain isn't letting up. I use the last of the container repair spray. Still several hundred metres of harsh terrain between me and my destination. I scale another rock-face and clear the BTs but get an alert that Sam's containers are fully degraded which means the rain starts eating at precious cargo. I clear the peak and can see Port Knot City - Sam's destination. I start him down the hill and thank fucking Christ, the rain stops. A pretty song starts playing. We jog the rest of the way on near fully degraded boots (yep another stat to keep an eye on) taking in the sights and sounds. I successfully check in.

Some story follows as does a very good boss fight. That was my session last night and every minute was riveting.

Would still recommend people not passing around the Kojima pipe look into the game carefully before buying. It's often a slow moving game. At the very least you need to be able to enjoy stealth games, which many do not.

[t0mby]

I am the stealth master!

[Peppermint Lounge]

Am now able to facricate power skeletons which enable Sam to run, fight and climb a rope with 230kgs on his back. Quicker movement with balance much easier to maintain over rough terrain. Stack em high.

[Twiztid Elf]

I'm loving it. I was daunted by the second leg of a long trudge to a far away destination. I left a vehicle behind at a MULE camp in a previous mission so Sam was on foot. We set off with 105-odd kgs on Sam's back and sure enough, thunder followed by rain early into the journey. Bust out the container repair spray (once containers fully degraded rain will damage your cargo). A bit later, BTs. Creep through that shit however now we have blood, shit and piss grenades which can kill or ward off BTs. Hematic grenades draw on Sam's blood so use too many and anemia will follow. This is countered by carrying blood bags which when equipped provide for field transfusions. All of this done on the fly and like everything else in this game, it's convoluted. KBAM control however is good. Aiming grenades is easy with a mouse and the slog through the rocky, BT-infested valley is made a lot easier for it vs earlier encounters. It's slow going though and the rain isn't letting up. I use the last of the container repair spray. Still several hundred metres of harsh terrain between me and my destination. I scale another rock-face and clear the BTs but get an alert that Sam's containers are fully degraded which means the rain starts eating at precious cargo. I clear the peak and can see Port Knot City - Sam's destination. I start him down the hill and thank fucking Christ, the rain stops. A pretty song starts playing. We jog the rest of the way on near fully degraded boots (yep another stat to keep an eye on) taking in the sights and sounds. I successfully check in.

Yeah, I know the section you're talking about there. I did enjoy that sequence. The game certainly has its moments.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Still loving it. It's a deep game. It's far from a walking simulator. Fighting and stealthing MULEs is really well done. KBAM control is excellent bar vehicles which are always awkward with WASD - as I type that I wonder if the game supports simultaneous pad and kbam. I'll connect the wireless XBox One controller for tonight's session. I was told I'm 'halfway there' a while ago. Current porter title is Transporter. I'm happy with gameplay and story direction but am waiting for the bomb Twiztid flagged to drop. Visually it's amazing. We're used to variations of lush countrysides, tropical islands and urban settings. We've all seen Death Stranding's minimal rocky, moss/grass covered landscapes. Some areas are just red sand, blackened rocks and ash. I've not played a triple A produced game that looks like this.

[Froggy]

Yeah I'm addicted. Have been up til 2am the last 3 nights, I've just lost track of time doing deliveries. I wrote it off without giving it much thought when they first became available, the zip lines. Big mistake. So I came across a boss fight with Mama and went online and looked it up and guide told me to use a zip line near the rocky valley towards the cosplayer. So I ran over there and luckily had an online one there made by some boys (happy I did the cosplay delivery opening that area up) and boom, changed the game again. So I'm also trying to build roads and hoping the other useless players will contribute some stuff to the auto road builders, so far they are putting SFA in. I took a truck with mama and loaded it up with a bunch of metals and started building sections on the way out west and I kept waiting for someone to finish them, I left one with only 5 metals needed but no.

What I've down now though is in the mountains I make ideally 4 PCC 2.0's and take them with me, then if I'm going somewhere not on the network once I get them on I whack a zip line at their door, then on the way back keep adding zip line stations and now i've started to build a pretty good network of ziplines around the place, I do feel like I'm unbalancing the game a bit as I can fly from the Doctor to the woman up past the Mountain man by zip lines lol. Record fast deliveries and no BT's. I think I'm about 1 or 2 stations from hooking up the entire half of the map.

[Froggy]

I'm loving it. I was daunted by the second leg of a long trudge to a far away destination. I left a vehicle behind at a MULE camp in a previous mission so Sam was on foot. We set off with 105-odd kgs on Sam's back and sure enough, thunder followed by rain early into the journey. Bust out the container repair spray (once containers fully degraded rain will damage your cargo). A bit later, BTs. Creep through that shit however now we have blood, shit and piss grenades which can kill or ward off BTs. Hematic grenades draw on Sam's blood so use too many and anemia will follow. This is countered by carrying blood bags which when equipped provide for field transfusions. All of this done on the fly and like everything else in this game, it's convoluted. KBAM control however is good. Aiming grenades is easy with a mouse and the slog through the rocky, BT-infested valley is made a lot easier for it vs earlier encounters. It's slow going though and the rain isn't letting up. I use the last of the container repair spray. Still several hundred metres of harsh terrain between me and my destination. I scale another rock-face and clear the BTs but get an alert that Sam's containers are fully degraded which means the rain starts eating at precious cargo. I clear the peak and can see Port Knot City - Sam's destination. I start him down the hill and thank fucking Christ, the rain stops. A pretty song starts playing. We jog the rest of the way on near fully degraded boots (yep another stat to keep an eye on) taking in the sights and sounds. I successfully check in.

Some story follows as does a very good boss fight. That was my session last night and every minute was riveting.

Would still recommend people not passing around the Kojima pipe look into the game carefully before buying. It's often a slow moving game. At the very least you need to be able to enjoy stealth games, which many do not.

I reckon I missed this entire BT issue on this mission, got on my bike and just burnt down to Port Knot City and I was like wow that was easy lol. I have been taking some difficult routes though which I didn't realise that when I ran them, they change into paths the more you run it the more the rocks etc clear hence I can bike back through places the first time I climbed and walked through that would have been impossible.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Are you on PS4 or are you rocking dlss 2.0 on your RTX card, Froggy?

I’m so happy with this game. I was set for the boring-gameplay-but-beautiful-scenery-with-Kojima-quirks experience. And yes there’s a lot of scorched landscape trudging (which pays off with the reward of reaching your destination) but it more than stands up as an action game. Finished a mission last night that required I extract a minimum amount of gear from a MULE camp. You have the option to get a maximum amount if you choose to. I collected it all. MULE camps have a perimeter of scanners that pinpoint cargo. MULES are all about obtaining cargo by any means including fighting Sam for it. I removed all cargo from Sam, loaded some random gear into a truck, parked it, the scanners pinged the truck, MULES run over to investigate. In this instance MULES are carrying the gear I need so I pick them off as they arrive. Non lethal. You don’t want to kill people in this game. If you do you need to dispose of the bodies by taking them to a far off incinerator or dump them in a lake of tar. If you don’t the body will go ‘necro’ and cause a destructive ‘voidout’ leaving a giant crater. Or something, it hasn't happened to me yet. Anyway MULEs get wise to my tactics and start to hang back. I decide to go store what I’ve grabbed so far. I need two more containers. I swap my power skeleton for a speed skeleton, equip a bobo gun (shoots a weighted cable that entangles your target) and rush them. Snatch the last two and speed-run back to base.

[Froggy]

I'm running it on the PS4 Pro. I'm assuming I'm getting fake 4k and 30fps. It does look great walking around up and down hills, the game does a great job of conveying that feeling of just being alone in the middle of nowhere on a hard trek to deliver something. How they added in the music helps. I say getting nearer the end I'm a bit over the take this deliver it here things because I've got zip lines everywhere so it's literally zip here, grab this, zip here deliver it. I also copped a pizza delivery one last night that I could only do on foot which shit me no end, had to spend 20mins just running along the road I built.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Yeah I've got zipline fever now. A great way to bounce between preppers for a quick 5 star rating.

[Rorschach]

I was pretty dismissive of this game when it first launched - it looked unappealling and boring, taking the worst aspects of modern openworld games - the fetch quest - and stretching it to a full game. I think my time with Snowrunner changed my mind about how the journey is more interesting than the destination. The story is super weird too which is strangely appealing. I wasn't impressed by the price of the PC port but it sure makes the most of the better hardware. Only just made it to Chapter 4 but the vistas are pretty incredible. Defintely looking forward to the experience ahead.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Yeah I played through an awesome action sequence last night. There are some typically out there Kojima ideas but in DS the story is very well told and conveyed vs some of MGS' more out there moments. The quality cast helps here as does the soundtrack and direction/editing. Norman Reedus is tip top but he's remained pretty one-sided so far with limited dialogue. Guillermo Del Toro is a stand-out for me. There are some decent length cutscenes but nothing like the crazy long codec chats and cutscenes in MGS (MGS pre 5 that is). Overall the spacing between gameplay and dialogue/cutscenes is better than previous Kojima games. 70-odd hours and I'm still going strong. With all the cargo runs, destination ratings and gear to level up you could drop a couple of hundred hours into this easily.

[Twiztid Elf]

So you're clearly past my soft rage quit. Did you pick it?

[Peppermint Lounge]

Believe it or not I don’t think I’ve arrived there yet. Die Hardman told me I was nearing the final destination so I’ve been off tooling around in the world these past dozen or so hours.