Death Stranding is a game that’s baffled gamers ever since living video game legend and auteur, Hideo Kojima, announced it years ago. Now that reviewers have finally managed to play it, the general consensus seems to be along the lines of “it’s gorgeous but super weird and probably not for you”.
Even if we go by the pretty-damn-good average review score of 83 on Metacritic, Death Stranding been a polarising game with very little middle ground to be found among reviewers as gameplay aspects lauded by a few critics were equally blasted by others.
But perhaps the biggest fuss kicked up over Death Stranding is the fan reaction. No not to the game itself but towards the game’s reviews. Specifically, the negative reviews.
Hideo Kojima has built up something of a living video game god image thanks to nearly three decades of work on Metal Gear, which is one of the greatest video game series ever created. It’s gotten to the point where negative press of anything he’s done is seen as a massive slight.
Yet somehow things managed to sink to a new low following the publication of a number of negative reviews for Death Stranding.
Unhappy trolls and puffy-chested bros went out of their way to go after all the critics who dared to write something bad about their beloved Hideo Kojima, all while not seemingly not realising that critics are merely doing their job and reviews are subjective by nature.
There’s no denying that Hideo Kojima is a video game wunderkind and no one other than him could’ve pulled off Metal Gear, but he isn’t the infallible god many people hold him up to be. Just as he is capable of making a masterpiece, he is capable of making a dud. He is merely human after all and can make mistakes like the rest of us.
Yet the way clueless fans are going out of their way to slam reviewers for their negative opinion of Death Stranding is symptomatic of the cult-like mentality some folks have towards the man.
The biggest irony in this whole saga is that virtually none of the trolls and disgruntled fans have actually played a second of Death Stranding, which immediately renders all their whinging completely moot.
So rather than trolling critics for their negative Death Stranding reviews, how about accepting the fact that Hideo Kojima finally made a game that was something of a dud (relatively speaking) and not everyone will like it?
It’s not the end of the world if he made a somewhat passable game as opposed to another masterpiece, just as how a few negative reviews shouldn’t trigger such an intense reaction.
If your ego is so easily shattered by a 3.5 out of 10 review score, then you probably need to stop prioritising a game in which you carry a baby around with you 24/7 while lobbing piss grenades as the most important thing in your life.