Review: DEATH STRANDING: DIRECTOR'S CUT Walks The Same Path In Some New Ways
It’s been well over a year since the initial release of Death Stranding. We’ve all had plenty of time to play it and it’s easy to see its many strengths and many weaknesses. However, now we have the Director's Cut version which adds a number of improvements but doesn’t fix the core elements that might dissuade most players from playing it in the first place.
At its core, the game is still exactly the same, with bunches and bunches of fetch quests strung together with cutscenes in the middle. The gameplay is mostly a walking simulator with some sandbox mechanics that force players to be smart about every choice, item you pick up, and place you go. But this Director's Cut version adds a handful of new things like the catapult, ramps, and other very useful tools.
A lot of these things are really great at making each mission easier (once you get them), but it doesn’t actually make them any more enjoyable or entertaining. You are still going from Point A to Point B, but with some shortcuts thanks to the new items. Unfortunately, the Director's Cut doesn’t really address or change anything else otherwise. We do see a couple of stability improvements and bug fixes, the game does run smoother than I ever did before. But all of these quality-of-life improvements feel more like updates that should’ve just been added to the game naturally over the last year instead of thrown together into a Director’s Cut version.
The other major part of this addition is the inclusion of some extra story missions and a race track. While the story missions have a little bit more flavor than your standard fetch quest, they are relatively short and don’t add too much story. The new missions just flesh out more of the story's lore, background, and other characters a bit. The race track is a fun way to use the game’s vehicles, but with no heavy multiplayer aspects or really deep challenges, it feels much more like a novelty instead of true content.
Even though all of the fixes, items, gadgets, and new missions all culminate in a sizable addition, it doesn’t feel like much more than a five-dollar add-on to the base game instead of an entirely different “Cut“ of the game. If you’ve never played Death Stranding, this is the best way to play it and it stands at a really good price for all it offers. However, it doesn’t address a lot of the major complaints from players previously and it doesn’t affect the story or main game so much that it’s worth playing through again as a player who has already finished it.
