[quote=@NuttsnBolts]
I don't know how you can critique the game like so when there is clearly more mechanics shown than walking. Journey was an amazing game and that was nothing more than a travel through a sandy and snowy landscape, and Death Stranding has more mechanics than that.

What remains of Edith Finch is a walking simulator. You can't compare that to Death Stranding... 
[/quote]


What Remains of Edith Finch is a two hour tightly focused experience. Death Stranding is a 40+ hour experience book-ended by 10 hours of tedious exposition. Mechanics don't make a game good, and if a game is mired in mechanics without making the mechanics work in a fun way then it makes the game worse because of it. Death Stranding is first, foremost, and primarily a walking simulator in the truest sense of the word. It's like American Truck Simulator but with the walking controls of QWOP and meters upon mechanics to keep track of with the interesting bit being the asynchronous co-op that isn't really co-op but kind of is co-op. Just because the game has vehicles doesn't make it suddenly not a walking simulator. 

Walking simulator isn't a derogatory statement as much as some would like to think it is. 

Death Stranding is a game where if you happen to kill an enemy you're told to carry the corpse somewhere - often up somewhere high and out of the way - to properly dispose of it or else it'll explode. Death Stranding is a game where you play Jenga with cargo that you deliver cross country while trying to get people to sign up for the internet. Death Stranding is a game where social media likes are currency, cell phones are handcuffs, and characters speak in tired metaphors for hours on end. If someone finds it fun to deliver pizzas but only after arranging your cargo so the pizza sits horizontally in your cargo sack while then having to plan the optimal route so you don't trip over rocks and watch your cargo spill out on the floor or get rained on by time so you have to repair it then by all means, enjoy it. But I can put the Death Stranding soundtrack in my American Truck Simulator radio and get virtually the same experience without Hideo Kojima thinking he's saying something profound in the same way college stoners taking philosophy do. 

The difference between a game like Journey and a game like Death Stranding is that Journey was a passion project and Death Stranding is a vanity project. Journey didn't have to tell a story because the journey itself was the story and that personal experience contained within. What Remains of Edith Finch was a smartly focused, often clever narrative about life, death, and the legacy both leave on a family. Death Stranding has a character say "I brought you a metaphor" and has characters named Fragile, Heartman, Die Hardman, and Deadman explain their names for twenty minutes even with obvious reasons as to why. Metal Gear Solid was full of lengthy cutscenes of characters talking, especially in 4, but at least they didn't spend twenty minutes saying why Revolver Ocelot was called Revolver fucking Ocelot. 

If Hideo Kojima didn't want to have his game be called a walking simulator then he shouldn't have been so purposely vague about it, but something tells me if he had come out and said "It's a game where you walk or drive and deliver packages and the more people who walk the same route or put up bridges the easier it is to travel to your destination to deliver your package" it would sound a lot less interesting to those who buy into whatever bullshit Hideo Kojima spits out. With dozens of outlets calling the game a walking simulator, be that in a negative review or a positive review, then I feel like there's some merit to calling it that. 

It's a game whose loop is delivering packages in true fetch quest fashion for 40+ hours. If that sounds fun to you, great, enjoy it. I play American Truck Simulator to unwind sometimes and that's a game where you just drive often empty roads for two hours real time. Hideo Kojima is like the Japanese David Cage except people give Kojima's writing a pass in the same way they don't for David Cage. I don't like either, but at least I can laugh at David Cage games.