Death Stranding

[simon_harris]

Clockwork Cupcake said:

You can weaponise bodily fluids although that is early game stuff and you quickly move past that onto more effective things.

I actually thought it was quite innovative.

Anyway, you clearly don't like the game so I'm not sure it's worth trying to convince you otherwise.

It was certainly innovative, and to be clear it is only elements of the game I don't think are for me. I don't get a lot of time to spend gaming so really prefer something I can just drop in and out of, having to sit through loads of cutscenes is not the experience I am looking when I switch the console on.

[ZedLeg]

simon_harris said:

ZedLeg said:

3hours? they barely got through the opening cut scenes

Indeed, and that was painful enough!

Visually it is awesome and the music was well paired, even the control system was innovative. I think the bit that really did it for me was when I have to make him take a piss. It serves utterly no useful purpose in the gameplay, does nothing to drive the story forward and if is any indication of what the rest of the game was going to be like then I am better off having deleted it.

Anyway I moved onto Horizon zero Dawn and have immediately gelled with that.

I was completely the other way, loved Death Stranding but found Horizon's open world box ticking a bit tedious. Like I said earlier stuff like the body fluid collection is just Kojima weirdness and it does make more sense as you go through the game. Even though the third act boss fights were bad to play.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

ZedLeg said:

Even though the third act boss fights were bad to play.

I played the whole game on the easiest setting and just enjoyed it for what it gave me at that level as I have no interest in protracted boss fights or indeed third-person combat. I just had fun exploring, rebuilding infrastructure, progressing the story, etc.

The final boss fights were actually marginally anticlimactic at the easiest difficulty setting although I felt no desire to up the difficulty.

For me the worst fight was Higgs as you have no weapons and only have use of your strand which up until then I had literally never used.

[simon_harris]

It would be dull if we all liked the same things.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

I do find it quite amusing that grenades made from urine are called #1 grenades, ones from faeces are #2, and then by interpolation the ones from dirty shower water are #0 grenades. Although from memory you may as well shout "boo" at a BT as use a #0

[ZedLeg]

Clockwork Cupcake said:

ZedLeg said:

Even though the third act boss fights were bad to play.

I played the whole game on the easiest setting and just enjoyed it for what it gave me at that level as I have no interest in protracted boss fights or indeed third-person combat. I just had fun exploring, rebuilding infrastructure, progressing the story, etc.

The final boss fights were actually marginally anticlimactic at the easiest difficulty setting although I felt no desire to up the difficulty.

For me the worst fight was Higgs as you have no weapons and only have use of your strand which up until then I had literally never used.

Yeah I'm not a leet gamer or anything and I found the change of pace from exploring and expanding the chiral network to a series of big fights one after the other quite jarring.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

ZedLeg said:

Yeah I'm not a leet gamer or anything and I found the change of pace from exploring and expanding the chiral network to a series of big fights one after the other quite jarring.

Completely agree.

Funnily enough, I found the three missions on Cliff's Beach to be quite fun. But the boss battles at the end left me cold. Especially the one that I mentioned.

Still, on Very Easy then it was just a case of letting fly with rapid fire rocket launcher barrages until empty, then running and picking up one of the many others lying around, then repeating. It was over almost immediately. Less so the Higgs one where I kind of had to button mash and hope for the best.

[ZedLeg]

This is quite interesting

https://kotaku.com/death-stranding-plot-story-expl...

[Clockwork Cupcake]

ZedLeg said:

This is quite interesting

https://kotaku.com/death-stranding-plot-story-expl...

The link I posted less than 24 hours ago that reawakened this thread, you mean?

[Shadow R1]

I played though on easy, enjoyed building the roads and infrastructure the most.

Unique multi player. Where they can add resources to projects but never be in the game as such. I thought that was brilliant.

The fact the game was free, was a bonus. I would still be happy had it been <£10.

[grumbledoak]

Shadow R1 said:

The fact the game was free, was a bonus. I would still be happy had it been <£10.

In hindsight I would have happily paid full price.

But he owes me for Cyberpunk 2077, so I reckon we're even.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

I'm tempted to pick up the Director's Cut of Death Stranding when is next discounted and go for a 2nd playthrough.

[ZedLeg]

Clockwork Cupcake said:

I'm tempted to pick up the Director's Cut of Death Stranding when is next discounted and go for a 2nd playthrough.

https://store.playstation.com/en-gb/concept/234585/

[PhilboSE]

Are there any differences in gameplay between the original and Directors Cut?

[grumbledoak]

PhilboSE said:

Are there any differences in gameplay between the original and Directors Cut?

Not really. A bit more combat, and some more story to discover at the end, but it is the same game.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

PhilboSE said:

Are there any differences in gameplay between the original and Directors Cut?

There are various improvements, some minor and some that seem useful

eg

• floating carriers can now follow you on ziplines (this is a big improvement in my opinion)
• you will actually see delivery bots making deliveries (ie. they appear in-world rather than just in cutscenes)
• you can have a "buddy bot" follow you to carry cargo. You can even use it as a walker vehicle
• extended customisations
• you can replay boss battles and Cliff missions
• there's a "ruined factory" to explore
• there's a new vehicle (the roadster) and a race track you can drive it on if you want. Seems a bit superfluous and immersion-breaking to me.
• there is a shooting range. Again, a bit meh
• the highways now extend up into the mountains
• new structures, such as the Chiral Bridge, and the Cargo Catapult (!)
• new weapons and combat moves, like a flying kick. Very ninja.
• some graphics improvements (eg. the PC version can push to PS5 graphics rather than PS4 graphics) including increased draw distance
• ability to turn off the "you're in danger" slowmo mini-cutscene things that get so annoying after a while
• Monster Energy drink replaced by a more generic Bridges brand
• probably some other stuff

That's the best I can work out so far.

So, basically, just some fun extras that could easily have gone into a DLC

Edited by Clockwork Cupcake on Thursday 2nd March 11:36

[PhilboSE]

That looks like a long list of stuff that was in the original design but was cut in order to hit a release date. Some of it makes sense; for example the delivery bots always seemed a bit of an oddity as you could never see them but they mostly delivered their cargo with 90% damage. I tried them a few times then didn't bother again. I also never used the floating platforms, because as soon as you get a vehicle it renders them almost pointless - and I didn't like the concept on the drain on crystals.

Extending the roads into the mountains is a mistake IMO; one of the strongest areas was resorting to yomping over difficult terrain and then building your own zipline network. Having roads up there would negate from that experience. Doing some of the early deliveries on foot to some of the isolated preppers gave a real sense of achievement.

None of the combat enhancements sounds like a useful addition to one of the weaker parts of the game.

Two easy wins for me would have been the option to cut the mount/dismount vehicular animations, and being allowed to collect crystals by driving over them (in fact the latter would obviate the need for the former, to a significant degree).

It's quite the curate's egg, this game.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

I've got a friend who is a total gamer and I was just telling her that I would buy the Director's Cut when it was in a sale and she told me to go to the Director's Cut page on the Epic Store and scroll down and look for the Upgrade price.

And there it is! It's £8.99 to upgrade!

[FourWheelDrift]

Clockwork Cupcake said:

I've got a friend who is a total gamer and I was just telling her that I would buy the Director's Cut when it was in a sale and she told me to go to the Director's Cut page on the Epic Store and scroll down and look for the Upgrade price.

And there it is! It's £8.99 to upgrade!

And you get both games in your library, you can still play the original.

And see my post below originally in the DS thread

FourWheelDrift said:

FYI, I got the free Death Stranding and upgraded to the directors cut version and after completing the incinerator mission on the way back I got a crash

Internal system error occured.
An Access Violation (C0000005h) has occurred in thread 'Main' at instruction location 00007FF7ADAF7D25h
Base: 0x00007FF7AC200000

Crashed again on loading at the incinerator at the same moment.

If you get this at any time I solved this by turning DLSS off and put TAA on, still have 114+fps at 1440p so DLSS isn't needed. No more crashing.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

FourWheelDrift said:

And see my post below originally in the DS thread

Ah sorry. I had not put 2+2 together with regards to there being an upgrade. I evidently needed it spelled out to me in words of one syllable by my friend today.