Death Stranding Director’s Cut review – Tarkovsky-vision update for Hideo Kojima epic

PlayStation 5; Kojima Productions/Sony
The superstar developer's latest is still a post-apocalyptic folly - but is now available in photorealistic splendour with quirky haptic feedback features

It was always inevitable, considering game designer Hideo Kojima's cinephile tendencies, that Death Stranding would get a director's cut. What's surprising about this revised PlayStation 5 version of the game is that it doesn't involve hours of extra cinematic sequences that were cut from the original. Thank goodness. Instead, it's a thoughtful, thorough and visually arresting enhancement of the game, with interesting and sometimes amusing new features.

It still remains the mystical, artful and gloriously pretentious delivery sim it always was: you play apocalyptic postman, Sam, attempting to revive an America torn apart by a supernatural explosion that annihilated the barrier between life and the afterlife. Working for a sort of idealistic version of DHL, he must deliver packages to cities across the country, hooking the residents up to a quasi-spiritual version of the internet as he goes. But haunting him at every step are the BTs - horrible semi-invisible monsters that represent the trapped souls of the dead. The only way Sam can see these things coming is via the foetus he carries everywhere with him in a glass incubator, which requires constant care and pacification. Amid all the dialogue about hope, belief and mortality, Death Stranding is really a game about how difficult it is to get out and about when you have a baby.