Source: Death Stranding on PC is a great port of a frustrating game
Death Stranding is the first of the big PS4 exclusives to make its way to PC, and as a sign of the future, it’s nothing but good news. As a standalone game? Well, it’s Death Stranding… for better or for worse.
Hideo Kojima’s unfiltered epic was a PS4 exclusive when it launched just last November, but 505 Games is now bringing it to PC tomorrow, July 14th, via Steam, Epic and of course Amazon.
You’ll once again be following in the well-trodden footsteps of Sam Porter-Bridges, a post-apocalyptic postman played by Norman Reedus from The Walking Dead. Most of the game is spent transporting packages between different outposts while dodging enemies, building infrastructure, and taking on the all-star cast.
I’ve played through the first two episodes of the game – probably about a quarter of the way through – and as a port there’s little to complain about.
Frame rate is the biggest step up for PC gamers. While Death Stranding was locked at 30fps on PS4 – and even PS4 Pro – you get more freedom on PC. I managed to get a steady 60fps at 1080p on my home desktop – a Ryzen 7 2700X paired with an RX 580 – although of course cranking it up to 4K will drop the framerate accordingly.
There’s no support for real-time ray tracing, but RTX owners will still get some use out of their cards (which feels like the bare minimum since it’s currently the free play when you buy a new RTX card). DLSS 2.0 support should help maintain that frame rate even at higher resolutions, which will likely be crucial if you want to increase the frame rate while also hitting 4K, or if you also want to take advantage of ultrawide monitor support.
This really is the big step up from the PS4 release – and the main reason to choose to play on PC now if you haven’t already. The game itself is largely unchanged, but ships with the photo mode that was only added to the PS4 version earlier this year.
The only content change is a short, fun, and memorable collaboration with Valve on six Half-Life and Portal-style side missions. They’re on the Deliver a Companion Cube tier and reward you with things like Gordon Freeman’s glasses to wear. It’s fun enough, but no reason to play the game again if you’ve already worked through it once.
Of course, this is a PC version, which means mouse and keyboard support. I won’t say the game works better with a keyboard than with a controller, but it plays better than I expected.
The left and right mouse buttons are used to balance Sam’s weight while walking, take over a gamepad’s shoulder buttons, and otherwise it’s pretty standard WASD controls. I missed the precision of an analog stick on a couple of the tougher climbs (and ended up switching to my Xbox pad and haven’t looked back), but if you’re a die-hard mouse and keyboard gamer, there’s really no reason you should can’t play the whole game like that.
The bigger question is whether you even want to play the whole game. After 15 hours of Death Stranding I don’t feel like playing anymore, although I’m confident that not everyone will think so.
This is Kojima at its best: agonizingly long cutscenes; characters with unlikely names (Deadman, Die-Hardman, Mama); questionable gender politics (the first woman you meet is named Fragile); an embarrassing obsession with stuntcasting (from heavy hitters like Mads Mikkelsen to…Geoff Keighley); and childish humor epitomized by piss grenades and the ubiquitous product placement for Monster Energy Drinks.
These get on my nerves with Death Stranding more than the gameplay itself, which I’ve grown to love. It’s definitely a slow burner – this is the closest AAA game to come really close to the old “walking sim” jibe – but there’s an oddly meditative satisfaction in trudging through desolate landscapes to connect the world , even if the narrative fabric surrounding it is over-the-top nonsense.
The closer Death Stranding gets to traditional games – sneaking around the spooky BTs, battling deranged MULE suppliers, the clumsy boss fight that I suspect will be the last I ever play in the game – the worse it gets. None of the sneaking, fighting, or killing has been developed to the same level as simply navigating the landscape, and those parts of the game feel flimsy and underdeveloped.
Where Death Stranding excels is in its steady drip of new mechanics. 15 hours later I’m still collecting new tools and I know there’s more to come – I haven’t even fired a gun yet. This progression advances the game, especially since it opens up the curious asynchronous multiplayer element, where your world is populated by bridges, towers, and other constructions made by distant players.
If Death Stranding was better written I might be able to forgive its excesses, but as it is I think I’m willing to make time for the game.
A lot of people love it though, and for them there’s a pretty straightforward argument that the PC port is now the definitive version of the game. It offers everything you’ll find on PS4, plus a few extras and some concrete tech improvements that should mean even a mid-spec PC can top what’s on offer on PlayStation.
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