DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR'S CUT Ratings and Reviews

Such a beautiful, but slow-paced game

This game is unlike any other game I've ever played. For perspective, I enjoy the loneliness of games like Fallout. I even enjoy the slower pace of those games, but this takes slower pace to a new level. Most of that is due to the long cut scenes, which you can skip, but I feel like you're missing out on the artistry of the game if you do that. At one point I'd been sitting still for so long that my wife said, "Are you watching a movie? I thought you were playing a game." The gameplay itself is great! I'm playing with a controller on my iPad and Mac. The graphic details are amazing, and the sound effects and music are spot-on. This I've had some crashing issues on my 11" M1 iPad Pro. My M1 Mac Mini does fine. I've tried propping up my iPad so it has good airflow around the back with no case, and that seems to be better. When the iPad is in the Magic Keyboard, it seems to crash more frequently. More T&E needed to solve that unless they release an update that addresses that.

I don't know if I should thank Tim Cook or thank Hideo Kojima.

Death Stranding is so much fun! Just before I finish the game (the power went out outside, otherwise I would have finished it already), I want to praise this game and my MacBook Pro (2021, 16-inch). This is the first time in two and a half years since I bought it that I have felt that this is a device that can get hot, has a fan, and uses a battery (it offers the same experience as the daily use Intel MacBook Pro without gaming, haha.). The gaming experience it brings is perfect: the mini-LED backlight allows for a large amount of sky and light sources to be presented in HDR in the game; although it is only equipped with the M1 Pro 16GB of unified memory, its graphics processing power can maintain almost 120Hz stably ((it seems to me is.) , at 2560*1440 with "very high" quality), w/ or w/o power connected. This also means that I can play a 3A wherever and whenever I want (on the other hand, game saves can also be continued on iPhone, which is really great). Next, I will continue playing Death Stranding without plugging in, hoping to completely drain my battery until it's below 80% health (currently at 87%) before the AC three-year warranty expires. This MBP has been the most powerful and favorite among all the Macs and PCs I have used so far. I don't know if I should thank Tim Cook or thank Hideo Kojima, but playing Death Stranding on my MBP has been the first happy event of my 2024.

Developer Response ,

Hi Porter! Just wanted to say a huge thank you so much for taking the time to leave us such a fantastic review. We really do appreciate it. Keep on keeping on!

Wow!

This game is a 5 star that’s a 3 for reasons which should easily be fixed. I’m anticipating these being addressed but it’d be nice to have some communication from the devs.

I’m shocked this is on an iPhone. Some people have reviewed this and said it doesn’t look good. That’s untrue. Generally it runs and looks great! Here’s what it needs: 1. Crashing must be addressed. I have to save the game every 2-3 minutes because the game goes through areas where it crashes a lot, then moments where it’s fine. Auto save every few minutes would help. The game needs graphics settings. I prefer lower graphics without metal fx because I don’t like upscaling blur. Please provide us these options similar to how resident evil did. TLDR: looks great plays great, those clowning on it are wrong. -Crashing is an issue, goes through waves of crashing, then none, then crash again putting you way back to a previous save/location. -need auto save -need graphics options, not all like metal fx upscaling. Opinion: If those needs are met this is 5 star. If not, and crashing doesn’t get fixed, it’s a cool demo of a17, and fundamentally unplayable in the long term, all while being disappointing to us who want mobile AAA to take off NOW :) Please devs, fulfill its potential.

Developer Response ,

Hi - Thank you for reporting this. We'd like to try and help you if we can. Please could we ask you to report this directly to our Support team? The team can be reached out to here: support.505games.com

Very well made game

If you would have told me 5 years ago that and iPhone and/or iPad would be able to run AAA games like this, I would have laughed and walked away. Here we are in 2024 with one of the best titles available for exactly those devices. I’m blown away at how smooth my M2 iPad pro 12.9 inch runs this game. I hear many complaints about the clarity of the game on both iPhone and iPad but lets get really people, this game is running on devices with nothing but passive cooling to keep your devices from vaporizing. Sacrifices must be made to achieve this goal and I must say Kojima Productions have done a beautiful job. I really hope this game starts the trend for more AAA releases on IOS and Mac OS.

The one complaint I do have is with the virtual controller, I find it very hard to use so I use a PS4 controller instead, which I prefer anyway. That said, I’m really not sure how you can do the virtual controller better without making it harder to select the correct action you want.

Keep up the great work and I look forward to future titles landing on IOS and Mac OS.

Developer Response ,

Hi Porter! Just wanted to say a huge thank you so much for taking the time to leave us such a fantastic review. We really do appreciate it. Keep on keeping on!

The game is good. Everything mac is the weird part.

In a strange turn of events apple is the user experience problem here. Most of the problems with the game are due to the mac and not the game itself. You'll have to activate apples "game center" registration. Otherwise the icon just displays in the lower app tray. Nothing happens. You'll have to force quit and then activate game center for it to work. Also, be advised that it's not intuitive playing this on a home TV. I use the xbox controller and it works fine but it's clunky getting the console experience on a tv with your laptop. Sometimes the game has the white app top bar other times the screen just goes black and I have to touch the mac mouse pad to "wake" it up. This might be due to my energy saving/screen settings. Basically I sit with the laptop half open and the screen blacked out connected to an hdmi to my 4k tv ready to stirr the laptop when the screen goes black. I want games on mac to work but I'm coming from consoles not PC's. It's a little more fuss than I'd like right now but the game seems to be worth all that. I'm sure apple could make the game vibe right it they tried.

Developer Response ,

Hi - We would really like to try and help you. Please can you report the issues you're having directly with our Support team so they can do some digging? They can be reached out to here: support.505games.com Thank you! Keep on keeping on.

Needs a Apple Arcade Game Store Treatment

This game truly shows what Apple Silicon is capable of! It's a technical marvel to see it run on everything including an iPhone. But where Apple has let us down is presenting it on the weekest digital market place avaiable, which employs no supportive features for gaming what so ever. It's time to break Apple Arcade off as a stand alone app, give it it's own store and make it a true gaming platfrom akin to Valve's Steam game store with features gamers need to manage our games and connect with other players. I bought this game simply to show that there is bourgeoning interest in gaming on the Mac, but until Apple is able to create a gaming platform and store seperate of the abismal Mac Store I'd rather continue buying my games on Steam. I'm sincerely hoping that these relationships with AAA developers is also driving a new game platform in the background and that we'll see something this year at WWDC. That will be when Apple has truely turned a corner. Great work on this game! The future is bright!

Developer Response ,

Thank you so much for taking the time to leave us such a fantastic review. We really do appreciate it. Keep on keeping on!

Graphics + Keyboard Controls

Overall, the game feels amazing and l’m really glad they brought keyboard and mouse support but there are two things l’m hoping they can bring to make my review higher, 1. Keyboard and Mouse Ui issues - l’m so happy a triple a game has come to the iPad and with the add on with keyboard and mouse support. I wish all the Ui in the game can show all the controls when the keyboard is connected because l’m having a hard time trying to figure out what controls are what 2. Graphics - I’m playing on the M2 version on the iPad and some scenes in the game from just standing out in the mountain and other parts of the game just makes everything looks so low resolution. I also hope we can get a option for a graphics menu to hopefully see that we can make the resolution a little better but l feel like the resolution is sitting at 720p at some scenes in the game Overall, the game feels amazing and l love the work they done and l’m hoping the bring more of their games to the App Store

Developer Response ,

Thank you so much for taking the time to leave us a review. We really do appreciate it. Noted on your concerns.

What a time to be alive to have games like this on your phone

I would like to say the graphics are top-notch fantastic. If you will still surprise you can do this on the phone these days the controls are great it’s only been two hours and I’m really enjoying it. This is the soul reason I returned my iPhone 15 Pro and went for the iPhone 15 Pro Max, which is the first max I’ve ever owned, my very first iPhone was a 6S then from the six I went to the A+ from the iPhone 8 Plus. I went to the iPhone 11 to 12 to the 12th to the 13th to 15 and then a 15 pro and the 15 Pro max just for this reason it takes a little battery but nothing too bad if you sit there and play for eight hours probably gonna change everything but a couple hours here and there it’s perfect great job and can’t be depressed at 20 bucks which president evil four should have been as well, but that’s for another review

Unplayable, and “support” is useless

This game has massive potential, but is unplayable due to ridiculous number of app crashes. I have to do most missions 2 or 3 times because my progress is constantly getting lost. Even attempting to save can cause app to crash.
I contacted the support team and they spent a week suggesting I was running an iOS beta (I’m not) and asking if my app is up to date (it is).
Then they suggest signing out of iCloud on my phone. This is a major hassle and they can’t even say if it will fix the problem. They suggest this drastic step to clear the game cache. So I keep asking them for the file path to this cache file, but they respond by telling me to reach out to Apple because iCloud storage is out of their hands. This response lacks all credulity. Apple doesn’t put files places, this app does. Apple has no idea where this game’s support files are stored, the developers should.
Unfortunately, this game is simply not ready for prime time yet. In addition, the support team is poorly trained and not helpful. Save your money and skip this game until it is actually playable.

Unstable port of a great game

Death stranding on the iPhone 15 pro max Crashes with surprising reliability. It did so on launch day, and it does so now. This might be the kind of thing I could put down for a while and say the devs will fix the problem and I’ll come back to it. But there’s another problem that’s even worse. The games save system will often freeze up and not complete a save. This leaves the player pursuing lots of progress without realizing that none of it will be remembered. You will need to go back to the last successful file and try to do missions all over again. it’s so sad they couldn’t get this to work properly. I don’t know who to blame, but I will say that the version on PlayStation 5 works flawlessly. The publisher of this port on iphone, 505 games, has tried to claim that it’s a problem with iCloud save files or servers being too busy. Nonsense, I don’t think that’s how saves work in this game. it seems I wasted my money, but I’m even more worried that this is just another nail in the coffin of mobile gaming.