Kept you waiting.

Probably the most anticipated, hyped game of the generation. For years we'd been drip fed super fucked up trailers of ghostly figures hunting Norman Reedus with a baby strapped to his chest.

Earlier this year they finally revealed some "gameplay" and it seemed... interesting. As the year went on they showed more of the game. And it was just walking. Norman Reedus walking. To be quite frank, the game looked boring as fuck. As impressions started to trickle in close to launch, there was one theme that kept nagging me: most of this game is just fucking walking around as Norman Reedus.

So, going into this, I already had a bad attitude. So, November 8, I fire up the game, and... fuck.

To set this up, Death Stranding takes place sometime in the future, after a mysterious event wiped out most of humanity. Humans are now spread out across the world in little pockets, mostly living in super futuristic brutalist bunkers that dot the map. In between these bunkers are vast, open spaces with areas infested of inter-dimensional beings known as BTs, which will fuck you up if you so much as breath around them. At the same time, rain now speeds up the passage of time.

Now you play as a guy named Sam Porter Bridges. And your job is to deliver packages. And reconnect these bunkers to each other.

Sam. Porter. Bridges. It's a pun.

Don't roll your eyes too hard.

So your goal is to deliver packages in the rain, across this treacherous landscape. The first few hours you basically feel like the Uber Eats delivery guy, with a huge box strapped to your back. You've gotta keep tapping L2 and R2 to keep Sam from falling over and damaging these packages. Also, any rock you trip over will send him stumbling around. If you lose all your stamina bar crossing a river your fall over and have to go chasing your packages down stream. Not to mention the time-speeding rain quickly makes your packages deteriorate and rust if you can't deliver them quickly. And then there are the BTs. That magic baby you have strapped to your chest can sense them, and you basically have to go all Solid Snake when the kid starts acting up. There are also people called Mules that for some reason are out there to steal your packages, and you basically gotta sneak around them too.

So these first few hours were a slog to get through. You get some ladders and some ropes you can use to get over and around obstacles, but that's it. I gotta be honest, I said "fuck you Kojima" like a dozen times.

The game starts keeps throwing little bits at you as you deliver these packages between bunkers and after a few little revelations it suddenly dawns on me that Hideo fucking Kojima is literally gonna make me walk across the entire United States delivering packages hiding from ghosts. I'm not fucking kidding.

But one time I accidentally pressed the touchpad button when there weren't any structures around to like. And when you do this, Sam yells. He says "Hey, it's me, Sam!" and then you hear someone yell back "...my name's Sam too!"

There is one mechanic that sets the game apart. Across the landscape you'll run into different items placed by other players. It starts out pretty quaint, like a ladder placed by DragonDick69 or whatever, and eventually you start seeing little bridges over streams and post boxes where you can deliver lost cargo and such. It's a little like Dark Souls, where people leave little messages around like "enemy ahead" to warn players. You can slam the touchpad over and over again to give "likes" to these structures. You're Sam Porter Bridges and you're the only human for miles, and these little things are your only "connection" to anyone.

This kept me going, and pays off around chapter 3. At this point, you get some technology that helps you carry more packages, eases the tediousness. Now I have the ability to pave a road. Once I gather all the necessary materials, this little chunk of highway gets rebuild. And suddenly I'm getting thousands of like from parallel Sams because I made their journey a little easier. And that's when it hits me, that we're all in this together.

Suddenly it doesn't matter to me that I don't have any weapons and my only goal is delivering packages. My goal now is to help rebuild fucking America. So I'm putting up bridges, fixing roads, delivering materials to bunkers and cities, all while these phantom structures keep popping up to help ease my journey. The most clandestine moments happen when someone puts a zipline in the right spot or leaves a motorcycle in the perfect place to help you get those packages delivered. It's a game about working together to achieve peace and fucking harmony. I didn't even get a gun until 21 hours into the game, and even then if I killed anyone it would eventually cause what's called a "voidout," which puts a huge crater in the map and destroys all of you and others hard work, making the area near impossible to pass for a time. I'm just like, happy about all of this, I'm having fun. Each new area unlocks new structures, and everybody is adding stuff to their games that helps out some random other player.

There was a point, late in the game when I had to make a very long, very treacherous delivery, that hit me with pure bliss. This is a game about delivering packages from point A to point B, a fetch quest personified, but I am enjoying myself. The enemy isn't some person or monster I have to fight, it's my own determination. As I drug a cart full of packages down a rocky hill, I felt something special. This was a special game. I was running low on battery from trudging over rocks and snow. At the bottom of the hill I set up a little generator to recharge, knowing full well someone out there would find it and give me a little thumbs up, as I had countless times before.

Kojima himself stated he set out to create a new genre, and while I don't think it went quite that far, it is a tremendous accomplishment to make the most boring part of a game, walking, immensely satisfying.

The story though, is typical "big brain" Kojima stuff. It starts of weird and it never stops getting weirder. Even by the end of it all you're left with more questions than answers, but I think that's the point. There are moments of genius sprinkled in with genuine cringe. There are a few short "boss battle" chapters juxtaposed to delivering packages, and they stand out so starkly against the rest of the game that it's jarring and incredible. I won't spoil much, but they gave me huge Metal Gear vibes, and in a way I think it was Kojima's way of reflecting on his past work between his new work.

It's one of those things I wish I'd never read a single ounce of criticism on before I went into it. Ironic, I know, since you read all the way up to this point. But it's a rare moment to have my cynicism melted off of me.

Death Stranding is one of those games that you'll play not realizing it's genius until after the experience has marinated a bit. It is itself a rumination on the concept of a video game, and perhaps the consequences of modern isolationism ushered in by the digital era. If Metal Gear Solid 2 predicted the future almost 20 years ago, I'd hate to see this game's prophecies coming true as well. But at least there's a little hope in Sam Porter Bridges.