It's been a long and arduous wait, but we're happy to say that the Death Stranding PC release is finally out and about! 2020 has seen a bit of a resurgence of weirdness far as gaming goes, with both Control and Death Stranding coming out this year. We honestly couldn't be happier with the fact that both of these games have now received phenomenally competent PC versions, too. A far cry from the old days of past generations of consoles, when ports came rarely and were often poorly crafted to the point of being unplayable!

You'll find none of that with the Death Stranding PC release. Quite the opposite, Hideo Kojima's latest and greatest is shaping up to be at its absolute best on PC specifically. We've gone in greater detail on its PC-exclusive features a bit earlier on, but the fact that its system requirements aren't outright insane is telling! Death Stranding on PC is prettier than its console versions were, runs better, and supports features that we think you'll enjoy very much!

This article aims to collect all the must-know items in one place and inform you what the PC version of Death Stranding is actually like. Don't forget that you can buy Death Stranding PC right here at 2Game, and with a special launch discount to boot!

• Death Stranding PC - UK - EU - US

What is the Death Stranding PC Metacritic like?

The first order of business is - of course - to see what actual critics think! For a game as strange and out-there as Death Stranding is, we were surprised to see that it's got a lovely 86 over at Metacritic. The Death Stranding PC Metacritic will be equivalent to this score in regard to the game's actual content. For a better look at how it runs and plays on PC, we need to be a bit more granular.

PC Gamer's reviewers were, for example, very happy with the port: "This is a lavish game in every respect, which playing on a high-end PC in 4K really hammers home. This is undoubtedly the best version." Their only real qualms were with the game's traditional Kojima weirdness. Quirks! Can't do without them, right? "I can see why Death Stranding is such a divisive game, but every misgiving I have about it is ultimately snuffed out by the magnificence of hiking across that sweeping, rugged wilderness."

On the other hand, PC Mag UK was a tad more strict with their score: "You're either onboard for this wild ride or you're not," they said, citing its innate weirdness and somewhat confounding menu screens as one of their biggest qualms. "If you’re really into Death Stranding's story, world, and characters, you're likely to forgive its shortcomings. If you want immediate satisfaction, you'd best look elsewhere."

Generally speaking, the port seems to be in great condition, which is according to our admittedly high expectations! It's good to see the engine perform so well on PC. Doubly so, now that we know that Horizon: Zero Dawn is coming to the platform too! For those who aren't in-the-know, both Death Stranding and Zero Dawn run on the same game engine.

Death Stranding PC release benchmark

There haven't been many - or any, for that matter - Death Stranding PC benchmarks yet, but reviewers do seem to agree that the game is extremely well optimized! "Speaking of gaming rigs, my PC has an Intel i7 4790 CPU and a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 GPU. With it, I enjoy frame rates that hover between 77-95fps. The higher PC frame rates make Death Stranding's gameplay feel better than the console version. Whether it's battling BTs or climbing a mountain, everything is decidedly more fluid on PC. The game stays locked at an even 60fps during cinematic cut scenes, however."

We reckon Death Stranding PC release will run relatively well even on the minimum recommended PC spec. Can a GTX 1050 maintain a steady framerate when BTs start piling onto you, though? Bear with us as we wait for community-sourced performance results!

PC performance review

We'll update this section with a hefty analysis of how Death Stranding runs on as wide a variety of PCs as possible, so stay tuned.

Death Stranding PC vs PS4

If you're looking for a handier platform comparison, here's how Death Stranding PC vs PS4 fares:

• fully customizable graphical and gameplay settings
• additional exclusive PC content
• unlocked framerate
• no performance drops (provided that your hardware is up-to-spec)

The console vs PC versions of Death Stranding don't differ too much if you're not one for technicalities. Even the biggest of laymen will, however, see a massive difference in the game's sheer performance. Namely, Death Stranding runs at 30 FPS on both the baseline and PRO versions of PlayStation 4. On PC, you do have the option to play with a 30 FPS lock, but you can also go ham and run the bugger at a crazy 144 FPS, if you have the hardware to support that! If you've got an RTX graphics card, the inclusion of DLSS 2.0 will go a long way towards supporting that goal.

The PC-exclusive content isn't anything game-breaking, which is nice to see. It's just a collection of Steam, Valve, and Half-Life inspired items to customize your in-game avatar with. A neat bonus, for sure, but if you've already finished the game on console, we doubt these goodies will be enough for another playthrough.

Is there a Death Stranding Very Hard Mode?

If you were hoping for the addition of a Death Stranding Very Hard Mode with the game's PC release, we're sorry to disappoint. From everything we've seen so far, the PC build will deploy with the standard 4 difficulty settings:

• Very Easy
• Easy
• Normal
• Hard

For the most part, Death Stranding Very Easy Mode is designed for those who have little-to-no experience playing games. It's built specifically to drive the narrative forward with few gameplay hurdles, so if you're in it only for the story, that might be your desired difficulty setting.

In more general terms, as the difficulty goes up, a whole number of modifiers get applied and/or changed relating to your in-game avatar, the enemies, and the surrounding terrain. Here are some of them:

• Balancing is more difficult
• Enemies deal more damage and are more competent both in and out of combat, as well as having more health
• BTs are more aggressive no matter their current state
• Transported cargo takes more damage from impacts
• Timefall affects you and your cargo more substantially

Presumably, a Death Stranding Very Hard Mode would crank these up to eleven, but we wouldn't hold our breath for it to happen. We'll see if Kojima and his team have any updates or future content releases in mind!

Wrap-up!

We hope you've learned what you were interested in! We'll keep adding to this summary of the Death Stranding PC release as we go along. We'll keep a particularly close eye on the potential errors and related fixes, so keep us in mind if you come across any problems with the release now that it's out of the oven. Grab the game below if you'd like to see what it's all about!

• Death Stranding PC - UK - EU - US

For more New Weird, we suggest you check out our coverage of Remedy's Control. The game's a bit of a champion of this surreal literary genre far as video games go. This alone makes it a must-play if you're in love with Weird. In other news, there's the huge Ubisoft Forward 2020 thingie that happened just this weekend. If you're out of the loop, that's a great read! It's loaded with trailers, summaries, and everything else you'll be interested in.

Not to toot our own horn, but we've got plenty more where that came from! Like, say, summaries of everything we know about Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Hitman 3, and Resident Evil: Village. For those who are farming Borderlands 3 items, there's the latest list of DLC Legendaries to be looking at. Finally, we also recommend you take a gander at our laptop gaming 2020 article if that's the niche you're interested in. See you around!