Yes. You probably will miss out on branching paths if any exist, but you will miss out on those in a regular playthrough anyway.

You also probably should’ve asked this question instead of the one in the title of the thread—they’re two fundamentally different questions.

I know narrative-driven games are dominant nowadays, but not every game is narrative-driven.

Based on my experience so far, I totally agree with you. I’m simultaneously impressed by the ideas and confused by the package they came in.

It’s just that the fluff and errors are glaringly obvious… hard to fathom how the same mind who came up with these captivating ideas wrote, or at best OK’d, the fluff and errors.

I’d say I expected poor and somewhat pretentious writing and got that, but I’m impressed enough by the ideas that I haven’t started skipping cutscenes yet, so I assume, overall, it’s net positive… not by much, but it is.

Warning if you haven’t played the game: there’s a sidestory spoiler in this comment.

Unbelievable, but fucking Death Stranding 😂 The story has some cool concepts and moments—e.g. Mama’s story—but it’s too obtuse, has too much filler, and many senseless moments. Like, the Junk Dealer and his girl living literal meters away from each other and for some reason trying and failing to find each other or establish contact for years, or an entire MULE camp peacefully coexisting next to a Timefall farm… best way I can describe the world and story so far is it’s an inconsistent mess.

Funniest moment though has got to be The Craftsman going “Fuck you, not joining your UCA!” only to go back on that in the literal next sentence with “But maybe if you do X, we can talk!” 😂

Apart from the odd climbing bugs and the silly, barebones combat, the game is nice though. Rebuilding the world and cooperating with other players feels really nice. And barely making it through BT encounters on very hard is exhilarating.

Fucking bikes are awesome to ride too… I love how goofy they’re meant to be.

I don’t see myself coming back after I 100% it though… I’m halfway through and I don’t see any value in replaying the game so far. It’s not exactly a skill-based game, and after roads and ziplines, I’m hardly motivated to go back to walking, but I don’t think it’s meant to be replayable, and I’ll probably get like ~70 or more hours out of it in total and I bought it for $7, so I suppose that’s OK.

Oh, I forgot to mention “I am Fragile… but not that fragile” Kojima sit down, please 😂

It is tricky, I agree.

Another point I think I need to try and comment on:

Ultimately yeah, I’m saying the game isn’t for me. But I often hear the game in discussions of what the industry is missing in terms of game design, and I don’t think I agree that it’s worth that level of praise.

I think when people praise Hi-Fi Rush, they basically mean: “Hurray, a mid-budget, FINISHED action romp from a big publisher with a cool gimmick and no intention to drown me in microtransactions!” which is why you see the PS2/PS3/Xbox 360 catalog comparisons.

I don’t think anyone actually means Hi-Fi Rush is the Jesus Christ of gaming—and if they do, I completely disagree.

We could use similar games though—specifically in the action game genre. We get very few of those nowadays.

He also directed two action GOATs: God Hand and Vanquish.

He did not direct Hi-Fi Rush though—that was John Johanas.

I think it’s up to the game designers to motivate certain playstyles. If there was a reason beyond the personal self imposed challenge to attain S rank in every fight, that would be a motivation, but there isn’t a style rank cutoff for completion.

I’m gonna go ahead and agree with you on this: Hi-Fi Rush was released in 2023—22 years after the first Devil May Cry game and we’re still using some variation of the same goddamn style meter with little to no improvement. This needs to be addressed by action game designers at some point.

And tying ranks to points to unlock moves faster is not a strong motive, IMO, because you typically end up unlocking everything in your first playthrough anyway. What about “style to regain health” or something? Gungrave has a similar mechanic with demolition shots.

On the other hand, I still think part of it is on the player. I think ignoring the style meter while playing an action game is akin to having no desire to Catch’em All™ while playing a Pokémon game. Like, you don’t have to complete the Pokédex, but this is kind of understood to be the ultimate goal and is in itself the reward, or at the very least, it’s probably on your mind while playing through the game.

The game is not as broken as you’re making it sound on higher difficulties—specifically S-Ranking Rhythm Master—and “adept gamers” will be aiming for high ranks on higher difficulties.

Apart from that combat could be broken by spamming companion abilities once you unlocked them all, it didn’t feel like there was any reason to use different combos than 2 or 3 that worked fine.

That right here is sus, TBH. Let me ask you:

1. Did you play on Rhythm Master?
2. Did you try to S-Rank levels?

If you did not, then this is pretty much the good ol’ DMCV dilemma: game is so uninspired if you are not internally motivated—no bun intended—to style on your enemies, but styling comes out a bit more naturally on higher difficulties… except the typical non-action game fan will play a game once on normal difficulty and move on, so the real depth of the combat system is superfluous to almost everyone who played it.

Not that Hi-Fi Rush’s combat is as deep or wide as DMCV, but it’s more or less the same underlying concept here in terms of player experience.

In general, this type of action game requires some kind of intrinsic motivation—we could argue this is a design flaw, and I’d be inclined to agree to an extent; however, you’re approaching this with way too much cynicism for no apparent reason, I think.

It just sounds like this game isn’t for you, TBH, which’s fine, it just doesn’t make it a bad game. Also complaining about how limited the game is only to announce one sentence later you’ve been mashing the same two or three combos throughout the entire game kind of undercuts your criticism.

And let me be clear: your experience with the game is valid; I just think the logic behind your criticisms doesn’t totally hold up.

To add to this: Plus R was released on Steam in May 2015, and Xrd in December later that year.

So 10 years ago ArcSys were so niche, they barely had any presence outside of Arcades and PlayStation.

I’m sure they planned 10 years ahead for that dogshit Avengers game and Kevin Feige been a Testament main since 2013, yes 😂

I’d be extremely surprised if Sony reached out to ArcSys to develop Tokon before Strive’s release.

I’m assuming they probably did right after Strive’s release and Tokon has been in the works for ~4 years. 10 would be crazy foresight from Sony and Marvel…

It’s weird how 4 or 5 years between entries actually feels

Hmm… TBF, Strive went on way longer than anyone would’ve thought when it was announced… I’m pretty sure even ArcSys weren’t ready for how popular it ended up being seeing it’s the first time they broke their 25 character cap in GG… who even knows when it’ll end? They may end up releasing one or two characters after this season ends—Jam, for example, hasn’t made it in yet.

I’ll be watching from afar given the direction this series is going, but it’ll certainly be interesting to see where they take it from here seeing every major GG release broke new grounds one way or another.

I don’t see why this is necessarily a problem?

I didn’t say it was? I said I have no interest in it.

You and Sucker Punch can do anything y’all want—I can only talk about my preferences.

Metal Gear is one of my favorite series of all time, and that’s an Eastern developer’s take on Western culture.

Listen, I’m suffering through the drudgery that is Death Stranding’s story RN, so last thing I need is for anyone to invoke Kojima in this context 😂 Someone please tell this dude “we don’t understand how [insert made up technology] works” is not an excuse for shit writing 😂

Hmm… I think the $80 tag would’ve been easier to swallow if Nintendo didn’t have a long anticonsumerist track record: from taking down emulators, sabotaging legally owned consoles, killing fan tournaments, nonexistent or notoriously bad game sales, an extremely strict exclusivity policy, and no regional pricing to speak of.

Either way, fuck’em, emulators all the way, suckers 🤘 Go play whack-a-mole on Github.

Good games on super deep discount—$2 or less—because their replayability is nonexistent. Like, you can replay them to re-experience the atmosphere, but you have no in-game incentive to do so.

Even the secrets are easy to find, and at most will net you a second playthrough.

Hmm… I still have zero interest in this game series. They can do whatever they want, but I have zero interest in any western developer’s take on Samurai.

It’s like when Scorsese did Silence—it’s nice he got to live his Kurosawa fantasy, but I have no interest in Eastern culture depicted through a Western lense, even if the source material is Eastern.

I wish they just go back to making Sly. I’d be all over an all new Sly game with fancy gadgets and shit.

Yo, Deltron, let’s gooo! I love this album! I appreciate Cannibal Ox, El-P, and I specially love Non Phixion, but no one’s done sci-fi hip-hop like Del.

I played like an hour and a half, and I don’t hate it so far… too many cutscenes though.

I know I’m gonna fucking hate this game, but I’ve also been in my gaming comfort zone for too long and I need to shake that off, so I picked up Death Stranding.

My main concerns are:

1. Too much time navigating menus.
2. Navigating terrain will feel boring AF.
3. Too much time skipping cutscenes, or worse: unskippable cutscenes.
4. Boring combat.

I’m gonna give the story a shot, but I’m fairly certain the totality will amount to pretentious Kojima bullshit, and I’m not gonna waste time hate watching it only to yell about it in my review.

What I’m looking forward to: Conan 😂 And I know it’s a short cameo.

I feel like I’m going on a needlessly bizarre excursion given my knowledge about my gaming preferences and the gameplay in Death Stranding, but fuck it, maybe a drastic change will do me good.

What’s this dude talking about?! Everyone knows no one hates React like people who code in React 😂 No one is gonna get pissed off watching this.