"One particularly torturous late-game story mission required me to carry a hefty weight on my back through a visibility-masking snowstorm and over near-vertical stretches of terrain. It took me 51 minutes to complete. Spending close to an hour schlepping heavy cargo through waist-deep snow, up and down mountains, constantly pushing against fierce winds, in a pair of shoes that wear out over time isn’t an enjoyable video game mission – it’s a lecture your parents used to give you when you complained about having to walk to school."
It takes about 10 hours for the throat-clearing to wrap up and for Death Stranding’s structure and mechanics to fully reveal themselves. And those 10 hours are some of the weakest in the game, thanks to the endless cutscenes and a series of bummer quests that have me lugging packages (and even a corpse!) up steep hills in the rain. I’m never given a great reason for these initial chores; I do them because I’m told I must. It is the epitome of a slog, and it’s easy to imagine that many players won’t ever make it past this stretch of the game.
But even if you do, here’s the thing: The entire game is about lugging packages. That’s what you’ll be doing whenever you’re in control of Sam: bringing a box or boxes from one part of the map to another. Saying it out loud, it sounds like absolute misery.
Game Informer: Intensely boring, little to no depth, only finished because it was my job.
7/10
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