As divisive a character and designer ever in our industry, Hideo Kojima either delights with whimsical narrative and complicated design, or turns people away because of, well, everything prefaced in this sentence. His latest offering, Death Stranding will be talked and talked and talked about for some time. I've personally been at pre-E3 press events for Sony where hundreds of ardent fans scream in pure ecstasy at his work.

It will be interesting to see how fervent that fan-ism will stretch at this latest release though.

In fact, our own Adam 'Griz' Mathew -- a self-proclaimed fan of Kojima's work -- took on review duties for us, and the weight of overly creative self-indulgence might have broken him. Here's a snippet from his review:

"Honestly, this main loop sounds more taxing than it really is. I played the whole game cranked right up to Hard and hit 95% S ranks using nothing but grit, spit and common-sense climbing decisions. It was a piece of piss. Literally, too -- there's a urinate function that can be used to keep BTs away from you. Bridges has even found a way to weaponise Sam's unique, repatriate piss, poop and shower leavings into grenades. Because Kojima.

s***-flinging shenanigans aside, once you reach the peak of this experience, like all mountain climbs, you have to dismount this bastard. And this is the point where Death Stranding proceeds to go downhill with all the grace of a fat man chasing a cheesewheel. The plot, which up until this point has required you to shoulder a ton of disbelief-suspension, now becomes a descent into tedium. Traversal once again slows to a molasses pace as the narrative awkwardly seesaws between overwrought dialogue and a series of obvious reveals."

Click here for his full and in-depth review, with helpful (and fun) video to back it all up.

This game looks amazing in the videos I've seen, but the review describes the gameplay as seriously lacking. With the Hollywood talent involved and its grand aspirations it seems like this is more of a cinematic experience. MGS certainly wasn't lacking in that department and this appears to have taken that aspect a bit further. In spite of its drawbacks I would still like to play this.

It seems because of this game's credentials it gets away with a higher score on most sites even though most of those reviews admit the game is boring, clunky and repetitive in large parts... Any other game would be getting the score as properly received here...

https://i.imgur.com/mnjRgou.jpg