Cooperative games are nothing new, but in recent years there's been more and more games taking a different approach to cooperative multiplayer. Asynchronous multiplayer has been in a variety of games, from simple aggregation like Noby Noby Boy, where the length you stretched your Boy was added to the length of Girl, to the Dark Souls series, where you could leave hints and messages in the game and certain actions would buff other players, helping them along without you needing to play together in real time.
I think it’d be good to have a part in the show-notes with references to stuff you look up, such as the specific Sobble evolution image or where you can find the wild ass cat impersonation story (@AITA_reddit on twitter for example).
Otherwise, love the pod, it’s exactly what I wanted out of Austin’s impression of Death Stranding and it’s a good time to hear Cado’s impressions of pod favourites such as Nier: Automata and Outer Wilds.
I mentioned this in another Death Stranding thread, but I get a weird sense of class solidarity with the people I deliver to. I feel so much more in common with them than the weirdos in bright red dresses or aristocratic threads and black masks… Everyone in the main cutscenes come off as a hardcore weirdo invading Sam’s personal space and forcing him on this mission. Everyone in the wastes feels genuine and warm. Even those who start out hating you eventually warm to you in organic ways.
This kind of “asynchronous co-op” is 100% my jam. I love this shit. I was the guy who would go out of his way, in Shadow of Mordor, to do those “revenge” missions for people on my Steam friends list. (Which didn’t happen nearly often enough, since I came to that game a little late.) I really hope these ideas catch on.
I just started chapter 2 where the lost cargo is introduced. There’s a bunch in the field outside the starting city that needed to be returned there. Since it was so close and an easy hike I loaded myself up with every piece I could find. After delivering it the guy says “I’ve got something for you.”, the conveyor belt spins up, and a Bridges baseball cap rolls out. At first I’m like great, thanks, I go out of my way for some company merch. But then I put it on and realized that a hologram man giving me a hat was by far the nicest thing anyone’s done for Sam so far.
I really like how the relationship between Sam and BB isn’t written as a Father/Son dynamic, but more a partnership. The two seem to rely on each other instead of Sam being a protective father figure you’d see in a Last of Us type. He even talks to BB as a friend, not as a baby.
I like how Austin doesn’t kill people in death stranding because he’s a pacifist and not because killing people creates ticking anti-matter time bombs.
