Despite ropey boss battles and the story being a bit much in places, it's my game of the PS4 generation.
Tonnes of atmosphere and a refreshing gameplay loop.
Crazy thing is I have torturous ADD with the executive function of a gold fish; to the point my brain literally lights up all weird on brain scans. So despite folks calling this boring and it most likely being considered the worst type of game for someone who spends all day wanting to crawl out of their own skin. It's actually the most engaged I've been in a game in the last decade.
Simply going from A to B, getting lost in the world, traversing things, enjoying the atmosphere, managing inventory, setting off with a plan, facing the struggle, adapting and getting great relief later in the latter half of the game when you make your way through treacherous conditions and finally make it to your destination. It all just works for me, it made all the most basic functions interesting.
I'd always get an itchy trigger finger to play COD when I had spare time in the past, after playing Death Stranding I had an itchy delivery finger. I just wanted to walk and deliver things. Despite some shortcomings, one thing Kojima & KojiPro know how to do is make controlling a character feel satisfying.
This might be an unpopular take but I'd absolutely love -- as a side project to the main narrative games -- a Death Stranding game that's a partial RPG/MMO type thing with a custom porter, far more customisation and a persistent ongoing world where you get to continually upgrade your character and the main aim is just becoming a better porter, setting up your base, character, vehicles etc. Something more indefinite and evolving than the more fixed world of the main game/s where once you've finished the narrative, main missions and bulk of the side stuff, you're just kinda done.
When I have a free evening after a long, hard day I'd often relax by shooting people in the face in COD rather than playing anything too narratively-engaging. It'd be nice to mix it up and relax by just delivering packages or exploring, but doing it as part of an ongoing world with more meaningful progression and levelling that isn't bound to a campaign.