I felt like the EX grenades were there just to provide an alternative if you completely ran out of materials to make hematics? I never used a single one. Maybe they're just a silly poop joke.
The mistake was making them take up quite a large amount of space. Why am I gonna bother carrying any of these shitty non-hermatic grenades when I need cargo and PCC space?
They're also definitely a silly poop joke.
Bola gun is the best because it can be used on both enemy types, although even that is annoying for not grabbing an enemy because it clips into something not directly in its path.
Hours of horrendous, meandering, repetitive conclusion to a game I had mostly enjoyed
Weird, I feel the opposite! It's a 10/10 for me. But I can totally understand why it might be a 5/10 for you. It really does seem to come down to personal taste whether you'll like it or not. I have friends who loved it. I also have friends who hated it.
To be clear, I really enjoyed most of the game and loved the pathfinding/traversal gameplay. I also liked a lot of the premise and setting, which was fresh and interesting and weird in all the right ways.
It's just that the ending was dreadful. Maybe the worst ending in any major game I've ever played. It wasn't just badly written, it was agonizingly long and forced me to do busywork while waiting for more repetitive drivel.
This doesn't undermine the game to me, in general, and I'd still recommend it. I just might tell people to turn it off before the end and read a summary or watch a video at 2x speed.
With Ex grenades they were cheap weapons that you could use. The most beneficial was type 2 because it would attract BTs to where it was thrown. Of course all pale to Hermetic Grenades which pretty much did the trick on all.
Still funny you can stagger certain bosses by peeing on them. Lock stun via urinating....okay Kojima.
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
IIRC you get the ablution grenades almost immediately, while the hematic grenades are a little while later. They could've made them a significantly later unlock though.
more death stranding hot takes (spoilers up to chapter 4):
novelty and ghosts:
A big part of the reason the game engaged me at the start so far is that you have no idea what is going on. The first time I fought the cthulu whale was on the way to the first distro center after the first MULE camp. I was so freaked out that I didn't even look at the enemy long enough to realize what was chasing me. The effect where the real world is replaced with goopworld is so cool and disorienting. It was amazing, exhilarating and completely insane. I had no idea what was going on, I didn't even look at the whale. I climbed a mountain I wasn't even sure was real and eventually phased back into the real world hundreds of meters from where I started surrounded by dead fish. A+.
BUUUUT
then you start to figure out what is going on and you realize the cthulu whale gameplay is kinda silly and there's not really a lot going on. It's a unique experience but is it a rewarding experience with depth that can be mastered? not really
The same can be said for BTs. The first timefall after incinerating president mom was riveting but then eventually you realize 'oh it's just a super primitive stealth game'
So if you're the kind of person who wants to know what you're getting into up front the answer is basically 'not much'. If you're the kind of person who enjoys the puzzle of figuring out how a game works without it telling you directly, those first few BT experiences are awesome
Is there a payoff different to accessing his bunker? Because I got access to that for completing the game, but there's apparently an amazing payoff for doing his super long pizza missions.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Hematic grenades are where all the BT-killing power is at. 2-3 stacks of those will get you through pretty much any BT area, as they one-shot basically any BT within the blast cloud and you can snag multiple BTs with one grenade.
I agree that the anti-BT guns seem thoroughly pointless. Why am I going to bother burning up ammunition when I can just huck a single grenade and move on without skipping a beat? Especially with how worthless the anti-BT guns are.
The cuff seems completely pointless to me as well because why would I ever take a chance on how fucky the BT visuals are and not being able to be sure which way they're facing? Much much easier and safer to just lob a grenade from fifty feet away.
EDIT: I also have zero fucking clue what the Type 0/1/2 grenades do, because I didn't see any point whatsoever in experimenting with them when hematic grenades one-shot BTs. Maximum safety means minimal BTs and hematic grenades make all BTs gone, so why bother with anything else?
I never had am issue sneaking up on a bt, I think it's more sound than sight.
The lack of any kind of issue scarcity does make the other grenades pointless. I used them once and a BT moved slightly away. Why would I use that when I don't know where it would go and it won't speed up the process.
The hermatic grenades I also rarely used outside of boss fights because it was difficult to tell where it's actually land. The reticule would be beneath the BT and then the grenades would fly off far into the distance.
It's one of those ideas that needed reining in. If you want me to use the shower you've programmed then I'll do that because I'm covered in tar and blood.
You just aim the grenades directly at BTs. The reticle will tell you when you're pointing straight at the BT and there throw is fairly forgiving. I've only missed a couple throws by shooting straight for the BT rather than the ground.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
"So, uh, Guillermo, should I pay you for your likeness, or..."
Hematic grenades are where all the BT-killing power is at. 2-3 stacks of those will get you through pretty much any BT area, as they one-shot basically any BT within the blast cloud and you can snag multiple BTs with one grenade.
I agree that the anti-BT guns seem thoroughly pointless. Why am I going to bother burning up ammunition when I can just huck a single grenade and move on without skipping a beat? Especially with how worthless the anti-BT guns are.
The cuff seems completely pointless to me as well because why would I ever take a chance on how fucky the BT visuals are and not being able to be sure which way they're facing? Much much easier and safer to just lob a grenade from fifty feet away.
EDIT: I also have zero fucking clue what the Type 0/1/2 grenades do, because I didn't see any point whatsoever in experimenting with them when hematic grenades one-shot BTs. Maximum safety means minimal BTs and hematic grenades make all BTs gone, so why bother with anything else?
I always use the umbilical cutter, because it's easy to see where they are if you pay attention to the odradek.
I don't know if this is just me being vindictive and the game randomly having great timing, but every time I get caught by a BT you can shake off and walk away from, I stand at the edge of the "tar pool" it creates and pee on those grasping goo ghosts. It clears 'em right up.
I've never tried it on the monster ones, though.
GNU Terry Pratchett
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
Spoilered until images are unborked.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
My mind was blown when I learned the truth about the pizza. Good lord.
My mind was blown when I learned the truth about the pizza. Good lord.
What truth?
This has been confusing me because people act like the end of the wrestling is a big revelation but they just mention the bunker underneath which was unlocked automatically after killing higgs. Is there a different story? Or were you just meant to complete it before the story?
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
My mind was blown when I learned the truth about the pizza. Good lord.
What truth?
This has been confusing me because people act like the end of the wrestling is a big revelation but they just mention the bunker underneath which was unlocked automatically after killing higgs. Is there a different story? Or were you just meant to complete it before the story?
Only read this if you got to chapter 10, you get an email at that point if you did all the pizza quests.
It was Higgs making the requests. He signed the last email.
My mind was blown when I learned the truth about the pizza. Good lord.
What truth?
This has been confusing me because people act like the end of the wrestling is a big revelation but they just mention the bunker underneath which was unlocked automatically after killing higgs. Is there a different story? Or were you just meant to complete it before the story?
Only read this if you got to chapter 10, you get an email at that point if you did all the pizza quests.
It was Higgs making the requests. He signed the last email.
The emails must change if you've already completed the game then, higgs was signing the emails by the third . I might not have received an email yet though as I haven't had once since the request for a parting pizza.
AlphaRomero on
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
My mind was blown when I learned the truth about the pizza. Good lord.
What truth?
This has been confusing me because people act like the end of the wrestling is a big revelation but they just mention the bunker underneath which was unlocked automatically after killing higgs. Is there a different story? Or were you just meant to complete it before the story?
Only read this if you got to chapter 10, you get an email at that point if you did all the pizza quests.
It was Higgs making the requests. He signed the last email.
I not really equipped to argue that it is a subjectively good game, but it delivered an emotional experience for me that I loved. Any game willing to take crazy risks also gets a huge bonus from me. (The original Nier is one of my favorites)
I think one of the reasons reactions are so divided on it is even more than the genre and gameplay conventions, there's an underlying emotional delivery in the game that isn't going to click for a lot of people. Who's going to be deeply touched by, "Oh, you have recreated in a visceral way a feeling of lonliness and disconnection, gradually, grudgingly replaced that with a sense of hard earned, still awkward and ugly, but slightly less lonely sense of connection to a few people." Regardless of its execution, I personally found the journey from loner to someone who values connection to others really impacting.
The story beats, great and small, the mechanics, the emergent community experience, all seem in service of that one specific aspect of character growth.
Re: The Pizza Deliveries...
Is there any mechanical-type reward for finishing the series? I challenged myself to deliver no# 3 in under 10 minutes and was pretty disappointed I didn't get a better pat on the back. I know there's a big narrative reward to finishing them, but this is a Kojima game - is there an awesome tangible reward like optic camo or the infinite headband?
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
Re: The Pizza Deliveries...
Is there any mechanical-type reward for finishing the series? I challenged myself to deliver no# 3 in under 10 minutes and was pretty disappointed I didn't get a better pat on the back. I know there's a big narrative reward to finishing them, but this is a Kojima game - is there an awesome tangible reward like optic camo or the infinite headband?
Not that I know of, but the narrative one is SUPER worth it, and there's a special area involved.
Re: The Pizza Deliveries...
Is there any mechanical-type reward for finishing the series? I challenged myself to deliver no# 3 in under 10 minutes and was pretty disappointed I didn't get a better pat on the back. I know there's a big narrative reward to finishing them, but this is a Kojima game - is there an awesome tangible reward like optic camo or the infinite headband?
Not that I know of, but the narrative one is SUPER worth it, and there's a special area involved.
Boooo. Ty ^.^
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Re: The Pizza Deliveries...
Is there any mechanical-type reward for finishing the series? I challenged myself to deliver no# 3 in under 10 minutes and was pretty disappointed I didn't get a better pat on the back. I know there's a big narrative reward to finishing them, but this is a Kojima game - is there an awesome tangible reward like optic camo or the infinite headband?
Not that I know of, but the narrative one is SUPER worth it, and there's a special area involved.
I'm only in the 3rd chapter but have experienced the physics-related bugs folks have talked about. What really annoys the fuck out of me, though, is the sound effects.
The music is great but god damn the phone ring? The doot noises on turn-in of cargo? The "Thanks for Contributing!" jingle when you recycle? The mind-rending baby noises?! I had to mute my controller speaker because it was bothering my cat. And how does a BB even cry/laugh, anyway? It has no air in its lungs. I assume it's a mental thing rather than an auditory noise since nothing else hears it but how would it know to sound like a baby? If it were going to make psychic noises shouldn't it sound like a distorted adult voice?
Also my fiancee pointed out that the vehicles (at least the trike and the truck, so far) sound like vacuum cleaners and now I can't un-hear it.
PSN,Steam,Live | CptHamiltonian
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited December 2019
The sound bothers me less than the fact that every single aspect of the game is designed to just waste time. Nested menus, cancelling changes being the default over accepting them, a zillion utterly pointless cutscenes for dropping off gear/loading up/recycling/showering/entering or leaving the rest room, construction and upgrades taking 20-30 seconds every time for no good reason, ropes being incredibly slow to use, and on and on and on.
Not to mention the warnings for entering a BT area, which are just my very favorite completely unskippable wastes of time. First the game slams you to a dead stop if you're driving anything, then it does the super-aggravating thing of making you sit through an unskippable slo-mo unfolding of the detector when you get really close. Then you get another fucking slo-mo scene when leaving so the detector can fold up. And the game does it for every single fucking BT zone. On top of BT zones already being a tedious time-suck, they get bookended with these time-suck animations as well.
Any decent game designer would've realized this stuff is incredibly tedious after just 4-5 times, much less after a couple hundred times.
Re: The Pizza Deliveries...
Is there any mechanical-type reward for finishing the series? I challenged myself to deliver no# 3 in under 10 minutes and was pretty disappointed I didn't get a better pat on the back. I know there's a big narrative reward to finishing them, but this is a Kojima game - is there an awesome tangible reward like optic camo or the infinite headband?
Not that I know of, but the narrative one is SUPER worth it, and there's a special area involved.
I was going for the last few trophies but I eventually put the controller down a couple days ago and felt it wasn't worth it. I might come back to it but even with Ziplines it's become too frustrating without a driving story. It's made worse because timed and misc missions are less available than the others which makes the Legend of Legends trophy harder to get, and you need those missions for like 3 trophies.
I might come back to it in the future but the gameplay loop has finally lost me and I think some of those trophies are unfair. It's asking a HUGE time investment for small reward.
I finished the game yesterday. I will keep my brief thoughts spoiler-free:
I think the story was interesting but a little bit too much was back loaded. Or, perhaps the better way to say it is, that Kojima decided to explicitly lay out the entirety of the story right at the end. I had figured out most of the aspects that were laid out before the long-winded explanations began and all those scenes did was confirm everything without a shadow of a doubt. There were still some pieces of the story that felt like unnecessary plot holes or were not appropriately telegraphed/set up, but I'm willing to forgive those in the context of the entire story.
Gameplay-wise I thought the game had a problem of swinging wildly between fun and frustrating. On the fun end was getting tools to explore more efficiently and taking advantage of all of the roads and traversal methods set up not just by me but others too. Seeing how quickly I could zip between locations once I had a lay of the land and access to the chiral network was amazing. Regretfully that fun was punctuated with frequent tedium either in the set up to get to the game or in the game itself.
I can recall one order I picked up early in... Chapter 6, I think, where I had to go pick up some packages that were located near a river. I thought this wouldn't be a big deal so I took off to do it with minimal supplies because I assumed everything would go smoothly. Turns out packages were spread across both sides of the river and this river was deep and wide enough I could not ford it nor use any of the tools on me to get across faster. I ended up having to go WAY downriver to get to the packages on the other side only to realize another issue: heavy timefall in the area with no sign of letting up. I sighed, struggled to where the packages were through the timefall, then realized that throughout all this my stamina had been dropping fast. I fell down a sheer cliff once damaging the cargo and the containers started to decay. I had initially thought that maybe I could make a side trip to a prepper station, but ultimately I got so angry at this 2 hour waste of an order that I just limped my way back to the distribution center. This way by far m the lowest point of my play time, though there were others that never got this bad.
On the preparation side, in order to recover in your private room to get ready, you have to: watch the blood collection, drink 3 cans of Monster, shower, use toilet (standing), and use toilet (sitting). Along with these, you can also check on BB, check your gear, and do other things that can spend time. As you leave the private room you are very likely to watch a scene as Sam reconnects to BB. Most of these are technically skippable, but you are severely restricting yourself if you do not, at the least, drink all of the Monster cans for the stamina boost. Why did they decide you need to drink 3 cans to get the full effect? This type of time waster with no real purpose is all over the game, but this is the one that sticks out most prominently in my mind.
I know it sounds like I stuck mostly to the negatives here, so let me end this by saying that overall I had a lot of fun playing this game. I need to go back and check my play time, but I will be surprised if I clocked in at less than 40 hours after everything was done. There is a nugget of a great game in there but it is hard to unconditionally recommend this game to everyone because of its problems.
The game is legit terrible for wasting player time, and I don't just mean some poor mission designs.
And I definitely agree with this being the core of a good game, but far from a good game unto itself. I've said it myself and I've seen it from multiple reviewers that the game is more like a massively repeated version of a sidequest you'd play in an actual full game. You could drop these mechanics into a chain of sidequests for MGSV and nobody would've blinked at their inclusion, except there it would've been a sidequest like it properly should be.
I also remember my earlier impressions that the game had better story pacing than other Kojima works, and I'm definitely retracting that. Once you get past the tutorial section plus a little story past that, the story progress screeches to a near-total halt for hours and hours on end. I'm moving through the chapters and towards the West Coast, but there are still huge, massive gaps in the story that are totally unexplained and have no indication of being explained anytime soon. I'm quickly running out of places to connect, though, so that exposition dump is just looming.
I actually think the core of the game itself it worth a full game, just not a 40-hour story experience. If the main game had been less than half the length and had skipped some of the more annoying aspects I think it would have played out better.
Very late game/Chapter 13ish spoilers:
After the events of Edge Knot City wrap up and Sam is told that he has to travel back east, I saw clearly what Kojima was going for. He wanted this to be a victory lap for the player, a way to show, "Hey, look how far you've come and how much infrastructure you've laid down in the process! Remember how long it took you to make it to the tar pits the first time around? You can get back in a fraction of the time!"
And it worked until you have the final Supercell events and end up back in Port Knot City. This should be the end of the victory lap, but instead it is a kick to the groin. There's a decent chance you'll be low on supplies after fighting Cliff again and you're just dumped into the starting area and locked out of equipment fabrication/recycling with only whatever others left behind still present in the world. However, this was ostensibly the tutorial area so based on my experience with this finale most people did what I did and never returned to this area later in the game. I had a few guns still left over from the Cliff battle, but not enough to be able to fight my way to the final BT boss fight. This resulted in be being annoyed I had to trudge my way through forced Boss BT areas to get to the finale and be at the mercy of whatever was thrown my way to deal with a bullet sponge of a boss.
Great conception, terrible execution. The game is good in so many ways seemly despite what it is.
I actually think the core of the game itself it worth a full game, just not a 40-hour story experience. If the main game had been less than half the length and had skipped some of the more annoying aspects I think it would have played out better.
Very late game/Chapter 13ish spoilers:
After the events of Edge Knot City wrap up and Sam is told that he has to travel back east, I saw clearly what Kojima was going for. He wanted this to be a victory lap for the player, a way to show, "Hey, look how far you've come and how much infrastructure you've laid down in the process! Remember how long it took you to make it to the tar pits the first time around? You can get back in a fraction of the time!"
And it worked until you have the final Supercell events and end up back in Port Knot City. This should be the end of the victory lap, but instead it is a kick to the groin. There's a decent chance you'll be low on supplies after fighting Cliff again and you're just dumped into the starting area and locked out of equipment fabrication/recycling with only whatever others left behind still present in the world. However, this was ostensibly the tutorial area so based on my experience with this finale most people did what I did and never returned to this area later in the game. I had a few guns still left over from the Cliff battle, but not enough to be able to fight my way to the final BT boss fight. This resulted in be being annoyed I had to trudge my way through forced Boss BT areas to get to the finale and be at the mercy of whatever was thrown my way to deal with a bullet sponge of a boss.
Great conception, terrible execution. The game is good in so many ways seemly despite what it is.
It definitely felt like he was going for a
Microwave Hallway type experience but I'd have actually preferred a Microwave Hallway. Cliff should have booted out out at Capital Knot City that's covered in a river of tar and patiently waiting BTs standing aside for you, and it's just a slow walk past these creatures and even the giant animal ones just waiting for you and now and again some BTs try to pull you into the tar or something. There was an interesting possibility there, instead of "All your infrastructure has been eroded by timefall, get back to the start of the game with nothing but what others have left behind for you. P.S. if you don't cheese it past the distribution center, a giant animal will spawn as well which will fuck up your cargo for Fragile. The actual boss doesn't damage your Fragile cargo at all but the optional one does and there's no warning, it just happens.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I actually think the core of the game itself it worth a full game, just not a 40-hour story experience. If the main game had been less than half the length and had skipped some of the more annoying aspects I think it would have played out better.
Very late game/Chapter 13ish spoilers:
After the events of Edge Knot City wrap up and Sam is told that he has to travel back east, I saw clearly what Kojima was going for. He wanted this to be a victory lap for the player, a way to show, "Hey, look how far you've come and how much infrastructure you've laid down in the process! Remember how long it took you to make it to the tar pits the first time around? You can get back in a fraction of the time!"
And it worked until you have the final Supercell events and end up back in Port Knot City. This should be the end of the victory lap, but instead it is a kick to the groin. There's a decent chance you'll be low on supplies after fighting Cliff again and you're just dumped into the starting area and locked out of equipment fabrication/recycling with only whatever others left behind still present in the world. However, this was ostensibly the tutorial area so based on my experience with this finale most people did what I did and never returned to this area later in the game. I had a few guns still left over from the Cliff battle, but not enough to be able to fight my way to the final BT boss fight. This resulted in be being annoyed I had to trudge my way through forced Boss BT areas to get to the finale and be at the mercy of whatever was thrown my way to deal with a bullet sponge of a boss.
Great conception, terrible execution. The game is good in so many ways seemly despite what it is.
It definitely felt like he was going for a
Microwave Hallway type experience but I'd have actually preferred a Microwave Hallway. Cliff should have booted out out at Capital Knot City that's covered in a river of tar and patiently waiting BTs standing aside for you, and it's just a slow walk past these creatures and even the giant animal ones just waiting for you and now and again some BTs try to pull you into the tar or something. There was an interesting possibility there, instead of "All your infrastructure has been eroded by timefall, get back to the start of the game with nothing but what others have left behind for you. P.S. if you don't cheese it past the distribution center, a giant animal will spawn as well which will fuck up your cargo for Fragile. The actual boss doesn't damage your Fragile cargo at all but the optional one does and there's no warning, it just happens.
As much as I liked the game, I was disappointed that before it ends, there's
no real final boss after Higgs, it's just another big ol' BT then end. I like that Cliff was never a bad guy, but still. It felt a bit anticlimactic.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited December 2019
I literally just had to take a break from the ending because it does not know when to fucking end. I feel like the game should've wrapped up something like four chapters ago, and the exposition is hideously unbalanced. I mean, I think I just
dodged the end of the world and I'm still utterly fucking clueless as to why this "Extinction Entity" bullshit matters. Seriously, I don't even know where this EE idea came from or why the fuck it's this big inevitable thing. It's like a really really bad Stephen King novel, with completely pointless, random rules for some cosmic entity that wipes everything out.
What I do know at this point is that when Kojima crawls up his ass with writing, he gets waaaaaay up there. I mean, he put his actual name on this crap and then derided people for being too critical. And it's definitely crap. Major crap. Just because you take a few words and capitalize them and repeat them with emphasis doesn't mean the story has any fucking depth or meaning. For fuck's sake, Kojima, read some books and learn how to actually write a story.
As for the big "twist"
I knew Amelie was Bridget like... from the start. The only thing surprising about the twist is that apparently I was supposed to think it was a twist. There is nothing surprising about this at all, they look exactly the same aside from the age difference. And I also fucking called it that Amelie was physically there a million hours ago, because she disappeared teleport-style and not hologram-style.
At least there's an ending in here somewhere, once I get to it. And the game held my attention for some 30-40 hours, even if it was mostly just figuring out where to place ziplines. At best, this is a 6/10 game with all the issues, with a curve up to like 8/10 if you can enjoy all the walking.
On the preparation side, in order to recover in your private room to get ready, you have to: watch the blood collection, drink 3 cans of Monster, shower, use toilet (standing), and use toilet (sitting). Along with these, you can also check on BB, check your gear, and do other things that can spend time. As you leave the private room you are very likely to watch a scene as Sam reconnects to BB. Most of these are technically skippable, but you are severely restricting yourself if you do not, at the least, drink all of the Monster cans for the stamina boost. Why did they decide you need to drink 3 cans to get the full effect? This type of time waster with no real purpose is all over the game, but this is the one that sticks out most prominently in my mind.
The Monster thing is particularly bizarre and terrible. You have to drink 3 cans to get the maximum boost but half of the 3rd can's boost is wasted since the max is 25% (unless it goes up to 30% at some point). I mean, the relative horror of slamming 3 full cans of Monster aside (and I say this as a person who actually enjoys some flavors of Monster), making me either sit through or skip three commercials for an energy drink every time I rest is just... I don't even know. "If you slam a can of our advertiser's drink every time you rest in-game you get a little boost" is fine. I'd go so far as to call it relatively clever, as product placements go. But making me do it 3 times in a row each time is just mean-spirited.
I have never drank the monster cans in the private room and feel like I still have tons of stamina, same with most of the private room functions
PSN SeGaTai
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
Please drink verification can
For what it's worth, I've chugged those bad boys a grand total of twice. The bonus is negligible in the grand scheme of stuff. You either got enough juice with the default bar, or you need to stretch by playing carefully, and I'm not sure I could appreciate the boost the cans gave me.
There should be a The Sorrow style sequence if you drink too many cans.
Who's the real Monster® now Sam?
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
I agree that some of that stuff was excessive. But also yea, I just stopped doing any of it and it totally didn't matter at all.
Having a little nub of extra stamina never really made a noticeable difference. The couple extra grenades I never used. Why would I use up that space on that many grenades when I can already grab free ones from the shared locker and make an extra weapon if I need it?
There's no reason to be going through all that every time. If you are setting out on a very specific mission where you feel like you may need one of those things than it is nice to have the option. But it's not a "standard preparation" sort of thing.
Once I figured out I could pause and skip damn near every cutscene in the game (I mean the small, repetitive ones, not the actual ones), the game got 1000000x better.
XBL: Jhnny Cash PSN: Jhnny_Cash Steam ID: http://steamcommunity.com/id/hypephb 3DS: 0619-4582-9630 Nintendo Network ID: DBrickashaw
You might know me as D'Brickashaw on Steam.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Finally got through the entire end of the game, which is like... 2-3 hours long. And happens after you're done with the actual gameplay. I had a shitload of infrastructure in place and brought a speed skeleton with me, so I honestly didn't find the run back east to be any kind of a big deal; I ziplined much of the way, drove a lot of the rest, and only had to run for about 2/3 of the starting map (and I was in the level 3 speed skeleton, so I was moving like forty miles an hour for that part).
Pretty sure this is the first time I've seen an ending so bloated that it not only dredges up several cutscenes you've already seen, but it actually loops back on tself a couple of times to show you ending scenes that you've already seen during the ending itself. And nothing is quite as wonderful as sitting through two unskippable sets of credits. Goddamn, Kojima, get a fucking editor already.
Anyway, while the ending isn't great, at least this has an ending, however repetitive eye-rollingly convoluted it may be. I'd say the only genuinely great things about the game are the character models and the music; the character models have some top-notch animation work, and the music pretty much speaks for itself. I got some moments of enjoyment out of the game, but I definitely wouldn't recommend it to the vast majority of people. I enjoyed the sort-of-puzzle-solving of the delivery stuff, but most folks are just going to find it a very shallow, repetitive experience.
Death Stranding doesn't compare to anything else, and it doesn't compare well, on paper. It is, literally, a game about getting shit from A to B. Your body - moving it over stones. This stuff - weighing down your body. Getting it across that river, up that hill, down into that valley, with a thousand little complications. On paper, that is a fucking insane concept for a triple-A game. How can we recommend this game to anyone, when we have a well-known, kinda' derogotory phrase for its basic loop - the fetch quest?
And yet I can't stop playing it. And this guy at work bought it and now has the same problem I do - he's really enjoying it, but doesn't feel like he can reccomend it to anyone else because it's just Fetch Quest: The Game. We're definitely enjoying the game a lot, and yet we find that fact so insane we completely lack the confidence to endorse it to others.
I feel like we're enjoying it because Kojima's design is just that bloody good. This is deep walking. This is walking with texture and grit. This is packing and planning with nuance and subtlety and strategy. You pack your bags and take a walk. That's Death Stranding. And yes, it is really, really good. Even just typing that is crazy, to me.
As for the story, well... I'm not at the end yet, but I'm really enjoying Kojima telling Yet Another Batshit Insane Story, and appreciate that it has nothing to do with Metal or Gears. When he completely goes off the rails and fails to tell that story well, I won't be surprised - it's Kojima, and he tells insane stories very poorly, as a rule. I came out of loyalty and affection for the Metal Gears, but I stayed for the hiking.
And I know that phrase seems fucking insane, but I too am surprised to discover it's true.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
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The mistake was making them take up quite a large amount of space. Why am I gonna bother carrying any of these shitty non-hermatic grenades when I need cargo and PCC space?
They're also definitely a silly poop joke.
Bola gun is the best because it can be used on both enemy types, although even that is annoying for not grabbing an enemy because it clips into something not directly in its path.
To be clear, I really enjoyed most of the game and loved the pathfinding/traversal gameplay. I also liked a lot of the premise and setting, which was fresh and interesting and weird in all the right ways.
It's just that the ending was dreadful. Maybe the worst ending in any major game I've ever played. It wasn't just badly written, it was agonizingly long and forced me to do busywork while waiting for more repetitive drivel.
This doesn't undermine the game to me, in general, and I'd still recommend it. I just might tell people to turn it off before the end and read a summary or watch a video at 2x speed.
I do agree that the delivery of that ending was extremely tedious.
Still funny you can stagger certain bosses by peeing on them. Lock stun via urinating....okay Kojima.
novelty and ghosts:
BUUUUT
then you start to figure out what is going on and you realize the cthulu whale gameplay is kinda silly and there's not really a lot going on. It's a unique experience but is it a rewarding experience with depth that can be mastered? not really
The same can be said for BTs. The first timefall after incinerating president mom was riveting but then eventually you realize 'oh it's just a super primitive stealth game'
https://medium.com/@alascii
You just aim the grenades directly at BTs. The reticle will tell you when you're pointing straight at the BT and there throw is fairly forgiving. I've only missed a couple throws by shooting straight for the BT rather than the ground.
"I have a better idea."
I always use the umbilical cutter, because it's easy to see where they are if you pay attention to the odradek.
I've never tried it on the monster ones, though.
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
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What truth?
Only read this if you got to chapter 10, you get an email at that point if you did all the pizza quests.
Should spoil tag that.
I think one of the reasons reactions are so divided on it is even more than the genre and gameplay conventions, there's an underlying emotional delivery in the game that isn't going to click for a lot of people. Who's going to be deeply touched by, "Oh, you have recreated in a visceral way a feeling of lonliness and disconnection, gradually, grudgingly replaced that with a sense of hard earned, still awkward and ugly, but slightly less lonely sense of connection to a few people." Regardless of its execution, I personally found the journey from loner to someone who values connection to others really impacting.
The story beats, great and small, the mechanics, the emergent community experience, all seem in service of that one specific aspect of character growth.
Is there any mechanical-type reward for finishing the series? I challenged myself to deliver no# 3 in under 10 minutes and was pretty disappointed I didn't get a better pat on the back. I know there's a big narrative reward to finishing them, but this is a Kojima game - is there an awesome tangible reward like optic camo or the infinite headband?
Not that I know of, but the narrative one is SUPER worth it, and there's a special area involved.
Boooo. Ty ^.^
You do get custom weapons which are really good.
The music is great but god damn the phone ring? The doot noises on turn-in of cargo? The "Thanks for Contributing!" jingle when you recycle? The mind-rending baby noises?! I had to mute my controller speaker because it was bothering my cat. And how does a BB even cry/laugh, anyway? It has no air in its lungs. I assume it's a mental thing rather than an auditory noise since nothing else hears it but how would it know to sound like a baby? If it were going to make psychic noises shouldn't it sound like a distorted adult voice?
Also my fiancee pointed out that the vehicles (at least the trike and the truck, so far) sound like vacuum cleaners and now I can't un-hear it.
Not to mention the warnings for entering a BT area, which are just my very favorite completely unskippable wastes of time. First the game slams you to a dead stop if you're driving anything, then it does the super-aggravating thing of making you sit through an unskippable slo-mo unfolding of the detector when you get really close. Then you get another fucking slo-mo scene when leaving so the detector can fold up. And the game does it for every single fucking BT zone. On top of BT zones already being a tedious time-suck, they get bookended with these time-suck animations as well.
Any decent game designer would've realized this stuff is incredibly tedious after just 4-5 times, much less after a couple hundred times.
I might come back to it in the future but the gameplay loop has finally lost me and I think some of those trophies are unfair. It's asking a HUGE time investment for small reward.
I think the story was interesting but a little bit too much was back loaded. Or, perhaps the better way to say it is, that Kojima decided to explicitly lay out the entirety of the story right at the end. I had figured out most of the aspects that were laid out before the long-winded explanations began and all those scenes did was confirm everything without a shadow of a doubt. There were still some pieces of the story that felt like unnecessary plot holes or were not appropriately telegraphed/set up, but I'm willing to forgive those in the context of the entire story.
Gameplay-wise I thought the game had a problem of swinging wildly between fun and frustrating. On the fun end was getting tools to explore more efficiently and taking advantage of all of the roads and traversal methods set up not just by me but others too. Seeing how quickly I could zip between locations once I had a lay of the land and access to the chiral network was amazing. Regretfully that fun was punctuated with frequent tedium either in the set up to get to the game or in the game itself.
I can recall one order I picked up early in... Chapter 6, I think, where I had to go pick up some packages that were located near a river. I thought this wouldn't be a big deal so I took off to do it with minimal supplies because I assumed everything would go smoothly. Turns out packages were spread across both sides of the river and this river was deep and wide enough I could not ford it nor use any of the tools on me to get across faster. I ended up having to go WAY downriver to get to the packages on the other side only to realize another issue: heavy timefall in the area with no sign of letting up. I sighed, struggled to where the packages were through the timefall, then realized that throughout all this my stamina had been dropping fast. I fell down a sheer cliff once damaging the cargo and the containers started to decay. I had initially thought that maybe I could make a side trip to a prepper station, but ultimately I got so angry at this 2 hour waste of an order that I just limped my way back to the distribution center. This way by far m the lowest point of my play time, though there were others that never got this bad.
On the preparation side, in order to recover in your private room to get ready, you have to: watch the blood collection, drink 3 cans of Monster, shower, use toilet (standing), and use toilet (sitting). Along with these, you can also check on BB, check your gear, and do other things that can spend time. As you leave the private room you are very likely to watch a scene as Sam reconnects to BB. Most of these are technically skippable, but you are severely restricting yourself if you do not, at the least, drink all of the Monster cans for the stamina boost. Why did they decide you need to drink 3 cans to get the full effect? This type of time waster with no real purpose is all over the game, but this is the one that sticks out most prominently in my mind.
I know it sounds like I stuck mostly to the negatives here, so let me end this by saying that overall I had a lot of fun playing this game. I need to go back and check my play time, but I will be surprised if I clocked in at less than 40 hours after everything was done. There is a nugget of a great game in there but it is hard to unconditionally recommend this game to everyone because of its problems.
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This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
And I definitely agree with this being the core of a good game, but far from a good game unto itself. I've said it myself and I've seen it from multiple reviewers that the game is more like a massively repeated version of a sidequest you'd play in an actual full game. You could drop these mechanics into a chain of sidequests for MGSV and nobody would've blinked at their inclusion, except there it would've been a sidequest like it properly should be.
I also remember my earlier impressions that the game had better story pacing than other Kojima works, and I'm definitely retracting that. Once you get past the tutorial section plus a little story past that, the story progress screeches to a near-total halt for hours and hours on end. I'm moving through the chapters and towards the West Coast, but there are still huge, massive gaps in the story that are totally unexplained and have no indication of being explained anytime soon. I'm quickly running out of places to connect, though, so that exposition dump is just looming.
Very late game/Chapter 13ish spoilers:
And it worked until you have the final Supercell events and end up back in Port Knot City. This should be the end of the victory lap, but instead it is a kick to the groin. There's a decent chance you'll be low on supplies after fighting Cliff again and you're just dumped into the starting area and locked out of equipment fabrication/recycling with only whatever others left behind still present in the world. However, this was ostensibly the tutorial area so based on my experience with this finale most people did what I did and never returned to this area later in the game. I had a few guns still left over from the Cliff battle, but not enough to be able to fight my way to the final BT boss fight. This resulted in be being annoyed I had to trudge my way through forced Boss BT areas to get to the finale and be at the mercy of whatever was thrown my way to deal with a bullet sponge of a boss.
Great conception, terrible execution. The game is good in so many ways seemly despite what it is.
3DS FC: 2234-7230-2712
Battle.net: Kriese#1709
It definitely felt like he was going for a
As much as I liked the game, I was disappointed that before it ends, there's
As for the big "twist"
The Monster thing is particularly bizarre and terrible. You have to drink 3 cans to get the maximum boost but half of the 3rd can's boost is wasted since the max is 25% (unless it goes up to 30% at some point). I mean, the relative horror of slamming 3 full cans of Monster aside (and I say this as a person who actually enjoys some flavors of Monster), making me either sit through or skip three commercials for an energy drink every time I rest is just... I don't even know. "If you slam a can of our advertiser's drink every time you rest in-game you get a little boost" is fine. I'd go so far as to call it relatively clever, as product placements go. But making me do it 3 times in a row each time is just mean-spirited.
For what it's worth, I've chugged those bad boys a grand total of twice. The bonus is negligible in the grand scheme of stuff. You either got enough juice with the default bar, or you need to stretch by playing carefully, and I'm not sure I could appreciate the boost the cans gave me.
Who's the real Monster® now Sam?
Having a little nub of extra stamina never really made a noticeable difference. The couple extra grenades I never used. Why would I use up that space on that many grenades when I can already grab free ones from the shared locker and make an extra weapon if I need it?
There's no reason to be going through all that every time. If you are setting out on a very specific mission where you feel like you may need one of those things than it is nice to have the option. But it's not a "standard preparation" sort of thing.
You might know me as D'Brickashaw on Steam.
Pretty sure this is the first time I've seen an ending so bloated that it not only dredges up several cutscenes you've already seen, but it actually loops back on tself a couple of times to show you ending scenes that you've already seen during the ending itself. And nothing is quite as wonderful as sitting through two unskippable sets of credits. Goddamn, Kojima, get a fucking editor already.
Anyway, while the ending isn't great, at least this has an ending, however repetitive eye-rollingly convoluted it may be. I'd say the only genuinely great things about the game are the character models and the music; the character models have some top-notch animation work, and the music pretty much speaks for itself. I got some moments of enjoyment out of the game, but I definitely wouldn't recommend it to the vast majority of people. I enjoyed the sort-of-puzzle-solving of the delivery stuff, but most folks are just going to find it a very shallow, repetitive experience.
And yet I can't stop playing it. And this guy at work bought it and now has the same problem I do - he's really enjoying it, but doesn't feel like he can reccomend it to anyone else because it's just Fetch Quest: The Game. We're definitely enjoying the game a lot, and yet we find that fact so insane we completely lack the confidence to endorse it to others.
I feel like we're enjoying it because Kojima's design is just that bloody good. This is deep walking. This is walking with texture and grit. This is packing and planning with nuance and subtlety and strategy. You pack your bags and take a walk. That's Death Stranding. And yes, it is really, really good. Even just typing that is crazy, to me.
As for the story, well... I'm not at the end yet, but I'm really enjoying Kojima telling Yet Another Batshit Insane Story, and appreciate that it has nothing to do with Metal or Gears. When he completely goes off the rails and fails to tell that story well, I won't be surprised - it's Kojima, and he tells insane stories very poorly, as a rule. I came out of loyalty and affection for the Metal Gears, but I stayed for the hiking.
And I know that phrase seems fucking insane, but I too am surprised to discover it's true.