u/ReadyJournalist5223

First off I know I am way late to the party but I didn’t have a ps4 for the longest time and I finally got the game on PC. I’m a huge Kojima fan and so far I’ve played all his games besides policenauts and Death Stranding 2.

Going into this was interesting to me because I saw the polarizing reaction when the game came out. A lot of the big news outlets like ign were pretty harsh on the game along with the infamous Dunkey video where he absolutely trashed the game on release. After all these of years of being exposed to the game I still didn’t have much of a grasp on what it actually was until I played it.

So after all this time I picked it up for cheap and I played it. I think I had very positive first impressions, I thought the world looked very great and I was digging the weird post apocalypse sort of vibe. Once I got further in and realized what the gameplay loop was I think I understood why the game was polarizing. You are either on board for this or you think it’s boring af. I for one liked it a lot. At least for the most part. Sure some deliveries were more annoying than others but I did love the idea of basically going for a hike and trying to see how many concurrent deliveries I can do at once. That was the addicting part to me. Now I don’t think this gameplay loop is as addictive as say the tactical espionage of the phantom pain but it’s just different at the end of the day and I like that. A lot of this game did feel like let’s take the phantom pain but basically make a different genre with a similar engine (it probably would be the fix engine if Konami didn’t own that). The menus, progression, items even the way the story plays out reminded a ton of the phantom pain which is good because I love the phantom pain.

The most genius part of this game is easily the online functionality. The fact that the whole game is one giant social media experience is so fuckin cool. Being able to be like “hey I had a ton of trouble navigating this area so I’m going to build a bridge that helps me and everyone else out” is so genius. It’s one of those kojima ideas where I’m shocked no one has done it and it’s gameplay that ties into the story. It’s crazy to me that to this day I see these games with larger than life stories (god of war, the last of us etc.) yet they seem to never marry the story with the gameplay as much as Kojima does. Everything from raising your bond with Lou, building structures and discovering new areas just work in tandem so well.

Now the story is where I’m perhaps a bit more split. Ultimately I would say I like it for the most part, especially the end but I have a few gripes. I do think this is a story that would work a lot better with just a lot less back and forth. I know that’s Kojimas thing but there seemed to be this idea that people needed every little thing explained to them in this world when in reality I think of things were kept more vague it might’ve been more intriguing. I thought about Shadow of the colossus quite a bit while playing this a game with no dialogue that in a way has a similar gameplay loop with zero dialogue. Now I don’t think we need to go that far but just keeping things more brief. With things snatcher and metal gear, games about solving mysteries, i understand the over explanation but for death stranding while it is mysteries, it doesn’t feel like it’s mysteries that are begging to have an answer. Even the answers we end up getting at points don’t seem very satisfying compared to how much we have to trudge through to get there. It kills the pacing at times for me. Another gripe I have with the story is I didn’t care for a lot of the characters. Deadman, die hard man, Amelie, Higgs, cliff and I guess fragile stand out but the others I think needed a bit more oomph to them. Heartman, Lockne and a lot of the people you meet along the way I thought just didn’t really do much for me especially heartman I actually thought he was a bit annoying and just seemed to appear out of nowhere. This unfortunately extends to Sam himself. Sam ain’t no solid snake or naked snake. I don’t get a whole lot from Norman Reedus in this performance. I assume with this game and the phantom pain, Kojima wanted the more old school gaming where you project yourself on these characters as opposed to them just being other characters in the story. It made a bit tough to really root for him especially since he seems to be checked out and not care about anything until he does. At points when he’s fighting Higgs or saving BB im a little like “well don’t you not really care about any of this that much?”

The biggest issue I think this game has is pacing. Pacing is in my opinion the most overlooked aspect of any game and it’s a tough thing to get right. This game is probably a few chapters too long. Now
I don’t know exactly what to cut out but I probably could’ve gone without about 5 less. Toward the end of the game it feels like you keep getting constantly told “ok Sam this is the last mission, once you do this you’ll beat the game” only for it to be dragged out way more. I was so ready for the end by the time it got there. To me this made the gameplay more exhausting as well. At some point in the story I got sick of doing side deliveries I just dropped them entirely to focus on the story. That might just be a me thing and I have a feeling this is one of those games where people have played 100s of hours without even beating it but that’s just not me. The game was a bit too easy at times as well with no real jump in difficulty. Now I did play on normal but if I ever play this again I am definitely cranking the difficulty up because at times it feels brain dead. There are quite a few points where I saw I just have to go all the way across the map and I just dreaded it because I felt like the payoff wasn’t going to be worth it or I’d just be told “ok sam, this is it just one more”

So while I was just quite negative about a few things I did really love the ending. Sam stopping the extinction through love and being saved (idk if I quite understood how that all played out but whatever that’s okay) being saved by deadman and Lou it was all great. This guy who claims he has no connections was saved by his friends and his baby. Reconciling with Cliff, and even saving Lou (now Louise) it was a really happy hopeful ending which did shock me a bit as this seems to be a very bleak depressing game and Kojima doesn’t shy away from bad endings sometimes.

Ultimately at the end of the day I do think this game is a very flawed experience but I will always champion something like this where a creator is unleashed and is able to put together his ideas. I think perhaps there maybe needed to be a bit more of a filter on certain aspects but with Kojima I’d rather him just get his ideas out there. I loved this game in a strange way and I wouldn’t take back any time I sunk into it and I plan on going back to do some of the extra deliveries in the end. Once I do that though I don’t think I’ll be replaying the game anytime soon and I’d rather just move on to Death Stranding 2. Even with all my negativity I will take 10 death strandings before any other of the modern lifeless franchises that are spit out each year. So in conclusion… thank you death stranding for giving me a little hope

I feel someone has had to have made this joke already

I’m going to try and spoil this movie as little as possible but short review: it’s a pretty great movie and super well directed with some amazing creative choices. Big flaw I had is too many jump scares that felt a bit cheap

However the reason I am here is one thing I couldn’t get out of my brain this whole movie, it’s basically a silent hill movie. This is the spoilery part of the post.

It was so similar to silent hill at points that I thought it must be an inspiration but in all my research I couldn’t find anything confirmed by the writer/director citing stuff like Stephen king and The shining which I guess makes sense since silent hill is also inspired by those. But we have a character who has done a morally questionable act much akin to James and him having to cope with that and make sense of it while dealing with a monster that is a manifestation of that guilt, he also has no regard for his life due to this act much like James, there’s a different character who claims he killed his wife out of mercy since she was sick (also like James), the main character gets taunted by manifestations of a childhood rabbit tv character echoing the themes of silent hill and a rabbit character much like silent hill 3’s Robbie the Rabbit, there’s even a video game like puzzle where the main character uses a clock to press a button to go down into the basement and at the end when he leaves the hotel it’s burning down with imagery very similar to Angela’s burning rooms in silent hill 2

I’m not crazy right? Like all of this seems way too coincidental. If the actual Return to Silent Hill movie disappointed you than I highly recommend you check this out because this is the closest and best thing you will probably get (although I know I just spoiled a lot of it)

The game is ufo 50 and is a spiritual successor to Action 52. The lore of ufo 50 is it’s a fictional company that released 50 games in the 80s on a console that never existed. James can get sucked to an alternate dimension where ufo 50 existed. He can say some shit at the beginning like “let’s see if the games suck ass in this dimension as well”. It’s a classic type of episode where he runs through a ton of games only to find out most of them are great so he wants to stay and play these forever. The finale of the episode can be him wanting to stay in the dimension before getting sucked back to his own where games suck ass

I thought about this when thinking of the heath ledger theory about him being a war vet and this version of the joker seems like he may have a similar thing going on.

I thought it was super interesting he had a German accent and of course this taking place in what seems like a world war 2 era calls into question what this guy was up to before something snapped in him. I think it’s possible he may have been a German solider who was disgraced when the big man himself committed suicide.

I’m more interested to see what others have to say

Meg (Family Guy) - In Seahorse Seashell Party, Meg finally has the guts to stand up to her family for their mistreatment of her, only to realize they cannot function without the "lightning rod". She apologises to her family for standing up, accepts her role as the punching bag for the family, and they all hug in the end.

Hughie (The Boys) - In Season Four Finale, Annie gets angry at him for being assaulted by a shapeshifter impersonating her; even the episode treats it like it was Hughie's fault. But then he apologizes, forgives her anger and blame, then Annie forgives him back and jokingly tells him to get tested for STDs, and Hughie is delighted for that, and the show portrays this as a noble thing to do, emphasizing him as the heart of the team. What's worse is Hughie was the victim of another assault case before, and he lost his dad recently. Yes, Annie's mind wasn't all right as she was freed from being kidnapped for many days by that same shapeshifter, but still...

To borrow Billy Butcher's quote: "Where's your f###ing rage!? Your self-respect??"

I absolutely hate these AI ads on YouTube, either the ones of this bearded man in bunny pyjamas or the ones of fake influences advertising some new game they just discovered. Extremely annoying and most of the time does not represent the game being advertised at all

I tried to do one game per series but that gets pretty difficult after a while