The Decima engine impressed me with its flexibility when I first played Death stranding earlier this year on the Playstation 4 so having the opportunity to check out the game again on PC made me curious to see just how well the engine translated on to the PC scene.
Thankfully, first impressions are positive as Death Stranding on PC seemingly encompasses all the checkboxes that make a PC port worthwhile. Firstly, Death Stranding already looked stellar on both base and Pro Playstation 4 hardware which helped with the title’s 30fps restraints, lending itself better to that cinematic approach AAA console games strive for. On PC, capable machines can expect to play the game unlocked, which makes for a very smooth experience during both In-game cinematics and when outside in the vastness of the open world.
Death Stranding is a slow, methodically-paced affair, a deliberate element of its design that rewards patient players. The move to PC helps alleviate some of the early tedium that may turn off newcomers, as the luxury of a higher fps count imparts Death Stranding with a more fluid and responsive feel, akin to Kojima’s previous work on MGSV, which ran at 60fps even on base Playstation 4 hardware.
In terms of other features, everything from the PlayStation 4 version of the game is present within the PC port with the added benefit of graphics option. However, resolution-wise, I was only able to set the game to either 720p or full HD, despite my external display supporting a 4K signal. HDR, on the other hand, worked perfectly fine, suggesting that a future update will most likely fix the resolution limitations.
Overall, Death Stranding on PC feels like an excellent port of a distinctly Hideo Kojima game, one that will hopefully find a new audience that missed out on the title during its initial release.
