Both games turn the player loose in the wilderness, forcing them to manage a number of systems related to survival. In spite of being released a decade and a half prior to Death Stranding, Metal Gear Solid 3 and Death Stranding have a surprising amount of similarities. The look of this new universe strikes a wonderful balance between believable speculative designs rooted in existing technology and “because it looks cool” aesthetic sensibility. Death Stranding gave technical and character designer Yoji Shinkawa a chance to flex his creative muscles. If you were a fan of MGS4’s futurism, you’re in for a treat. The similarities don’t stop there, though. Plenty of people adore Kojima’s verbose cinematic approach to narrative, but for others, that can be a dealbreaker. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was infamous for its abundance of cutscenes, and there’s certainly no shortage of those in Death Stranding.

The most obvious thing these two games have in common is an abundance of menus devoted to resource management. Kojima’s particular brand of storytelling is abundant in both games, but Death Stranding’s high-definition cinematic performances are nothing like Peace Walker’s motion-comic cutscenes. While Peace Walker introduced multiplayer co-op, it was a more conventional real-time experience, but Death Stranding’s social strand system is more akin to the more passive cooperative elements in games like Dark Souls or Journey. Death Stranding, meanwhile, is about delivering goods (and sometimes people) across a sprawling environment. Designed as a portable experience, Peace Walker was primarily composed of bite-sized stealth missions in tightly designed areas, often focused on recruiting/abducting personnel and gathering resources to build Big Boss’ army. While Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker introduced many of the systems that The Phantom Pain expanded on, it feels like almost an opposite experience to Death Stranding.

If you were content sending Snake on various side-ops, collecting resources, and upgrade your gear, you’ll probably get some enjoyment from Death Stranding - but don’t expect quite as robust an arsenal or quite as many goofy gadgets like inflatable decoys or sheep-abducting weather balloons. Unfortunately, the complaints leveled at Metal Gear Solid V’s drawn-out story and repetitive mission structure could also be leveled at Death Stranding.

Metal gear solid v review ign