While Death Stranding by no means reviewed poorly, and managed to get its share of major industry awards, it’s fair to say the game’s reception was much more polarizing than most of Kojima’s previous titles. If you look back to his Metal Gear Solid series, for instance, it’s almost all universal praise for those, with scores to match. Kojima thinks maybe a lot of that comes from the different nature of his new title, and that in the future we may feel different.
In a profile done by The New York Times, Kojima again talks about the game’s reception, specifically the lower scores given by the western press. He says he doesn’t think a lot of American media took to the less action-based gameplay of Death Stranding, making it hard for them to “gulp it down.” Kojima hopes in 3 to 5 years, however, people will have a different take once they have a better grasp on the type of game being made. It’s also worth noting that despite this, when you breakdown American and international reception, there’s little difference between the two.
“In America, they’re used to shooters, so they don’t gulp it down,” Kojima said. “It’s OK; everyone can evaluate what they want. In three to five years, we will see what people will say.”
Kojima has seemed a bit miffed in the past about the kind of scores the game got, as this echoes similar comments he made about the game’s reception before, though to be fair, he’s not totally wrong in that Death Stranding was very different game, and a type that’s never quite been done on this level and scale. Whether its bitter grapes from a creator used to universal praise, or publications being behind the curve, you’ll just have to play it and find out for yourself. For what it’s worth, our review was pretty positive.