Death Stranding has been a success for Kojima Productions, but not when it comes to review scores. Hideo Kojima has said that he believes the low Death Stranding review scores are because Americans are “used to shooters.”
VGC reports on an interview Hideo Kojima did with The New York Times Magazine. In it, Kojima-san discusses a variety of subjects, one of which is the overall lower review scores that the game got in the United States.
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“In America, they’re used to shooters, so they don’t gulp it down,” Kojima said. “It’s OK; everyone can evaluate what they want.”
A quick glance at the current critic reviews on Metacritic shows plenty of reviews which praise the game, but several Western outlets have been rather unkind. VGC itself gave the game a 60 out of 100, while both Giant Bomb and Game Rant both gave it a 40. IGN, meanwhile, scored it at 68. (GameRevolution, for our part, really liked Death Stranding in our review.)
While low Death Stranding review scores might be seen as a disappointment to this legendary developer, Hideo Kojima remains optimistic about the future. He noted that the stealth action elements of the Metal Gear Solid games also took a while to catch on.
“In three to five years, we will see what people will say.”