Death Stranding reviews have arrived, and as you might expect, opinions are pretty split. We rate the game among PlayStation 4's best, awarding the Kojima Productions title a hallowed 10/10, but it's clear not everyone agrees. While scores err on the side of positive, the console exclusive is drawing varied verdicts from every corner of the Internet. Let's dive into what other outlets think of this unique game.
Push Square - 10/10
Following years of mysterious anticipation, Death Stranding delivers on all fronts. An accomplished, fascinating set of gameplay mechanics allow you to make deliveries the way you want to, while social features let the game live on once you've put the controller down. It may become slightly tiresome as you hit the halfway mark, but the phenomenal narrative is on hand to pick things back up again and its outstanding visuals are the cherry on top. Death Stranding doesn’t raise the bar for any particular genre, it creates an entirely new one.
GameSpot - 9/10
Death Stranding is a hard game to absorb. There are many intertwining threads to its plot, and silly names, corny moments, and heavy exposition belie an otherwise very simple message. That comes through much more clearly in the game's more mundane moments, when you find a desperately-needed ladder left behind by another player or receive a letter from an NPC thanking you for your efforts. It's positive without ignoring pain; in fact, it argues in both its story and its gameplay that adversity itself is what makes things worth doing and life worth living. It's a game that requires patience, compassion, and love, and it's also one we really need right now.
Destructoid - 8/10
Death Stranding is not the overly-strange inaccessible walled garden the marketing has made it out to be. It's weird, don't get me wrong! But anyone with a surface-level understanding of surrealism in art should be able to acclimate to what is essentially a playable Hollywood production.
Game Informer - 7/10
Try as it might, Death Stranding’s story doesn’t shore up its faults. It’s the normal Kojima mix of twists-and-turns, tropes, and overbearing themes, but at least I like that it explores real-world topics like the theory of multiple dimensions and key events in the history of the planet’s biodiversity. Like Sam himself, I often wasn’t sure why I kept going in Death Stranding. Maybe there was a little bit of pride in another task checked off the list, another job done. Unfortunately, this added up to little reward in the end.
GamesRadar+ - 3.5/5
Kojima’s mysterious would be epic has its moments but can’t carry the weight of expectation.
IGN - 6.8/10
There is a fascinating, fleshed-out world of supernatural science fiction to enjoy across its sprawling and spectacular map, so it’s a real shame that it’s all been saddled on a gameplay backbone that struggles to adequately support its weight over the full course of the journey. It’s fitting that Kojima Productions’ latest is so preoccupied with social media inspired praise, because in some ways I did ‘Like’ Death Stranding. I just didn’t ever love it.
VG247 - 3/5
If you do manage to hold out, you will be rewarded with flashes of brilliance, it’s just that those flashes are buried as deep as the core story is buried in the endless dialogue.
Eurogamer - Recommended
As the credits roll on Death Stranding, heavy with unearned pathos, the impression you're left with is of a self-congratulatory monument to the ego of a creator who is high on his own supply. Has Kojima always been this full of it? Maybe. But then you return to the game proper, select a humble delivery order, lace up your boots and plan another reckoning with those unforgettable, haunted moors. And you realise that this game has got under your skin in a way few do.
Are you looking forward to forming your own opinion on Death Stranding when it arrives on 8th November? Let us know in the comments below.
Comments 54
I’d take a divisive game with interesting ideas over an 8/10 across the board, nothing new game like Days Gone.
Life would be boring if we all had the same opinions.
Good, a game that's made for everyone is not a game I'm interested in playing. Nice to see a big budget game that actually tries something different rather than mimic whatever is currently trending.
Just remember ign said imagine party babies is better than this.
The fact that opinions are all over the place has only served to make me more curious about playing. Can't wait.
10/10 from Pushsquare and Thesixthaxis is all I need to know.
Overall, you have to perhaps consider it a disappointment, as you’re hoping for universal acclaim. For a game like Zelda BOTW the majority of reviewers and gamers adored it and that’s what makes it a classic. Yes, I know some people hated it, but guess what - you are a minority.
Having said that it being a bit divisive is interesting in itself... and the reviews do enough to tell me it’s far from a total write off.
So to me, it’s worth a £50 punt and I’ll make up my own mind.
I'm intrigued by it so I want to try it for myself. Still undecided whether to buy the regular or steelbook edition.
@Dange why though? The other, lower scoring reviewers seem to make valid points too.
It's not a game that's interested me of I'm honest. I'm not a huge fan of Kojima's anyway outside of Z.O.E.
He's big fan of unnecessarily bloated storytelling that seems largely full of tropes wrapping clunky looking gameplay.
@Dange
Yes, my two most trusted sites for reviews as well.
@kyleforrester87 Because I value certain sites over others. For my own reasons. And I've seen and read enough to know this is probably a game suited to my tastes not necessarily IGN's etc.
Death Stranding must be the only game I’ve seen be considered a disappointment or divisive sitting with a metacritic average of 84. It’s got 59 positive reviews, 11 mixed, and only 1 negative currently. That doesn’t sound very divisive to me, rather it’s more closer to overwhelmingly positive.
There’s another game that just came out that’s been showered with praise, The Outer Worlds. Hardly anyone would describe that game as divisive, yet what is its Metacritic average? 84 as well, same as Death Stranding.
It seems like Death Stranding is being held to an unrealistically high standard if an 84 is now considered divisive.
It's hours & hours of fetch quests across a very pretty landscape.
That's it.
@DeepSpace5D To be fair, when you've got Norman Reedus gushing over Kojima at every opportunity and him and the rest of the cast telling us how mind blowing the game is and how something like this has never been done before, you can expect people to have built up pretty high expectations.
I have no feelings either way on Death Stranding. I'll pick it up at some point sure, and i'm sure i'll enjoy it.
But lets just remember, IGN were the ones that gave Alien Isolation a 5/10. Which stretches their credibility somewhat
@Rob_230 Good point on Alien Isolation. That's a clear 11/10.
Pretty sure if Death Stranding was an Switch Exclusive, IGN would have given this 10/10 and Game of the Year, I never take anything they say seriously
@SirRealDeal Yeah and it sounds incredibly compelling. You can't just go from point A to Point B, you have to think of where your going and stepping.
@kyleforrester87 Understandably a Kojima game will be set to high standards based off his previous work like the Metal Gear Solid series. Death Stranding seems to be less about the action of those games, and more about traversal and story.
I just feel like the divisive talk is pretty overblown when 60 out of 70 reviews are positive for the game. An average of 84 is very good for any game, and there will always be outlier reviews that bring a score down for pretty much any title.
But the ratio of positive to negative reviews is leaning way too far towards the positive side for me to consider this game divisive, lest we start calling almost every game divisive.
But I will say it was a bit annoying hearing people gush over the game like you said during development. I wonder if Reedus even had the gaming experience to make claims like that.
@nessisonett
Play the games you like not the numbers you like.
Most memorable game I’ve played wouldn’t have scored well in a review (if they had even made it to a review)
Following the crowd is not always the best option.
@DeepSpace5D
The cast has blown this game so high in my expectation I expect a 11/10 the best game I will ever play.
I quite literally expect something I have never played before because e that is way the cast have been hyping for months now .
Anyway time will tell for the rest of us, and it’s obviously a good/great game either way.
@Mince Still, divisive shows that the game isn’t trying to please everyone, a sentiment I can get behind.
@Mince They definitely shot themselves in the foot, hyping the game up too much. I’ve always been of the opinion that it’s better to undersell and overdeliver.
@nessisonett I think decisive just means pushsquare gave 10/10 and was expecting everyone too, meanwhile ign comes out with only 6.8/10 overall this game is up there with the latest greats like outer worlds
@DeepSpace5D agreed although it must be hard to find the line between overhyping and getting the needed attention for day one sales.
I think In this case they might pamper to Hideo’s ego? I might be wrong
@nessisonett yes and no for me. 8 across the board usually means good ol comfort food. Look at Outer Worlds for example. Obsidian knew there was a market for a no frills, no bs, self aware and fun scifi rpg. That game is pure comfort food and its a wonderful experience.
@kyleforrester87 honestly I didn't expect it to be universally praised. From the get go it looked different but that's what I love about Kojima. His games are different. Theyl always be talked about for one reason or another and that's far more interesting than the next ubisoft sandbox.
@AdamNovice
Yes. And don't forget to pull up your back straps. It's revolutionary, evidently.
The consistent critical praise and high scores of the Metal Gear series is really the only reason an average of 84 can be considered disappointing. It’s sorta like the last two single player Final Fantasy games being in the 80s, while most of the titles that preceded them are in the 90s.
Scores are the only thing I’m looking at. I already bit the bullet and took a risk in preordering it (RDR II and FFVIIIR are the only other recent games I’ve done it for), and am looking forward to experiencing it myself next week. The ‘one week later’ comments are going to be interesting.
@SirRealDeal I'd rather have this then another run and gun, looter shooter sandbox games.
The first couple of sentences of the Eurogamer summary is pretty much what I thought it (the game) would be... a few hours of reasonable gameplay, broken up by days of cutscenes spouting pretentious horsesh*t.
A couple of things.
1) An 84 on Metacritic isn't bad. Especially when it has a 3/10 from some site I can't even get to load on my computer, which probably dropped the average a couple of points on its own. A lot of my favorite games have scored in that same range on metacritic, and a lot of Nintendo's celebrated exclusives this year fall in that range as well. Again, it's not a bad score.
2) While the game still looks sort of boring to me, I have to respect the sheer guts it takes to release a AAA postal delivery game when pretty much everything else with that amount of money put into it is either an Action-Adventure, Open-World, or RPG title. Especially one that is THIS weird and out there. People keep saying the AAA space is safe and boring. Well, here you go. I guarantee you that people have never played a game like this before. It's a radically different spin on the open world genre.
@Paranoimia
Can't remember which review this is from but it says enough for me:
"These trips should feel arduous — and they do. It may not be fun, per se, but it’s in keeping with the themes of the game. Death Stranding takes the prototypical video game fetch quest and stretches it out to epic proportions."
That sounds like a bad joke a butt load of people will fall for.
I don't know, the majority of the reviews are positive. Personally, I wouldn't call it divisive. There's always some magazine or website that downvote a game. And most of the time, it's without any good reason.
But anyway, I think Death Stranding did pretty well, despite the negativity around it on social media from the average gamers who love themselves some Battle Royale in every game.
I guess opinions differ... I'm gonna play it day one.
@Th3solution would it? Every game would be a game you like. Every meal would be yummy. Every movie would be great. Shows you like on t.v. would all get renewed. So hmmm, life doesn't sound all that boring if we all had the same opinions.
@nessisonett
I'll take both, thank you. I'm thoroughly enjoying Day's Gone.
@3MonthBeef even looking at it the way still doesn’t make sense.
@DeepSpace5D
Very, VERY good points haha
Strikingly different approach in the comments too . People and their meta review scores, Jesus...
🤦♂️
Games like this demonstrate the ridicule of meta critics philosophy.
@kyleforrester87 look at the two sites he picked. Fanboys choice. Sites that aren’t affiliated with one format are clearly a better place to get reviews. Especially for exclusives. Some people only want to see 10s they don’t want their bubble burst.
@Stocksy Welllll, I won't throw the word fanboy about, and I don't generally trust any of the major websites anymore or less than the other, but to just look at the 10's and outright ignore the lower scores even though some of them are making legitimate complaints seems odd.
@DeepSpace5D it’s only divisive because people are upset not everyone has given it a 10.
@kyleforrester87 I think if you only use two sites that are both Sony only websites it’s ok to use that word but I know what you mean. I love Sony I just can’t stand those that are only interested in praising them. That will lead to a worse experience for us all.
“ Kojima’s mysterious would be epic has its moments but can’t carry the weight of expectation.”
With grammar like that do they expect anyone to take what gamesradar say seriously? I wouldn’t...
If you are on the fence I would highly recommend skill ups review on YouTube. It is free from any spoilers and he tells it like it is.
I'll stick with my Sega Saturn so.
Let's not forget the two hours of interactive ending cut scenes!
@Gumbopudding Sounds like an episode of Black Mirror or The Twilight Zone. Utopia always has a dark and horrific side eventually. 😜
People getting angry over reviews of a game they themselves have not played...
@PhantomXIII this is true. No one is immune to it. Best not to get caught up in review scores, just follow your intuition.
@BarefootBowser it just needed a hyphen
I've been gaming since the 80's and I have read a lot of reviews since and now on YouTube watch a lot of them. Maybe because I'm what's called middle age these days I can't recall ever buying a game solely based on a review. Mostly reviews are just like a friends opinion there helpful but mostly I've made my mind up on a game quite a while before its even out on whether I'm buying or not.
As for death stranding I was buying this practically from the time I saw the first gameplay footage and I want to see more games that are risky for the big aaa publishers rather than a 50 quid deja vu experience!
@thefirst
Hey I dont know why you got so many down votes while your just stating facts
I ve been completely IGNoring IGN for years now thankfully.
I will grab it on day 1. Will be interesting to see what Kojima cooked this time around.
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