TOTALLY SERIOUS SAM

Life's a beach in DEATH STRANDING

- Matthew Elliott

My car when I park it under a tree for ten minutes.

Part of me thinks Death Stranding is a social experiment cooked up by Hideo Kojima to see what players will endure if the surrounding fluff is interesting enough. Stealth sections. Cutscenes. Wobbling. It's as if he's collected all the gaming elements he knows will hurt us just to see if we keep playing, like rats gnawing electrified cheese in a lab.

This would already be challenging enough. But the framework that surrounds it is relentlessly, defiantly odd. The Metal Gear series gets away with loads because we're media literate enough to understand the concept of dangerous soldier men doing secret special forces things. Yes, some of them are bees and there's a plant lady in pantyhose. But the basic concepts are tangible.