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They Want So Badly To Convince You Death Stranding is Trash But They Couldn’t Be More Wrong

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The internet decided Death Stranding was trash before most people even played it.

When the review embargo for Hideo Kojima’s first game since leaving Konami lifted on November 1, 2019, the discourse split almost instantly into two camps. One side treated a single mixed score as proof the game had failed. The other pointed to a stacked aggregate and a director working exactly as he always has. Gaming commentator MBG waded into that fight with a video calling out the “trash” narrative directly, and the numbers behind the argument are worth laying out plainly.

• Reviews landed all over the map: IGN gave Death Stranding a 6.8/10 and Stevivor scored it 3.5/10, while GameSpot handed out a 9/10, EGM gave it a full 5/5 stars, and The Guardian rated it 4/5 — with Metacritic and OpenCritic both settling the overall average at 84.
• MBG’s video specifically called out commenters treating IGN’s 6.8 as the “final word” on the game’s quality, rather than one data point among dozens of outlets.
• The game released worldwide on PlayStation 4 on November 8, 2019, one week after the embargo lifted, arriving as Kojima Productions’ first fully independent release.

A Review Landscape Split Down the Middle

Rarely does a AAA release produce a spread this wide. Stevivor’s 3.5/10 and IGN’s 6.8 sit at one end, while GameSpot’s 9/10, EGM’s perfect 5-star rating, and The Guardian’s 4/5 sit near the other. That kind of gap usually signals a broken or buggy product — except the aggregate score tells a different story entirely, with both Metacritic and OpenCritic landing Death Stranding at 84, a figure that puts it comfortably in “critically acclaimed” territory even with the outliers dragging from below.

That contradiction is exactly what MBG’s video zeroes in on. A handful of low outlier scores generated the loudest online noise, while the broader consensus — built from dozens of publications, not just the two or three getting screenshotted and shared — barely got mentioned in the same breath.

MBG Pushes Back on the "Trash" Narrative

MBG’s core argument is that a portion of the online reaction wasn’t really about the game itself, but about wanting to see it fail. He specifically criticized commenters who latched onto IGN’s 6.8 as though it settled the matter, ignoring the outlets that called the same game a cinematic achievement. In his telling, the people demanding others “admit” Death Stranding is garbage were arguing from a predetermined conclusion, not from the actual review landscape.

Anyone treating a 6.8 as the final word while ignoring a 9, a perfect 5/5, and an 84 average isn’t reviewing the game — they’re reviewing their own bias.

That framing matters because Death Stranding was never going to be a universally beloved genre exercise. It’s a delivery-and-traversal game built around slow, deliberate movement across hostile terrain, which is precisely the kind of design that either clicks with a player or doesn’t. MBG’s point isn’t that every critic owed the game a good score — it’s that a 6.8 from one outlet shouldn’t have been weaponized as proof the 9s and 84 average were somehow wrong.

Kojima's Design Philosophy Versus Instant Gratification

Death Stranding was built by Kojima Productions as Hideo Kojima’s first project after his split from Konami, and the deliberate pace at the center of the game reflects a director who’s spent decades resisting genre conventions rather than chasing them. MBG argued that the traversal-heavy gameplay and themes of reconnection were never designed to satisfy players expecting the instant-gratification loop common in most AAA titles — readers curious how other studios have chased that same slow-burn, systems-driven ambition can find a comparable case study in Gaming Masterpieces.

The commercial numbers backed up MBG’s read of the moment as well. Death Stranding launched as a PlayStation 4 exclusive on November 8, 2019, arriving in a year already stacked with high-profile PS4 releases, a lineup covered in depth in Top 30 NEW PS4 Games of 2020. Strong day-one attention and sustained sales momentum, paired with that 84 aggregate, gave MBG the evidence he needed to argue the game was already a success regardless of who was calling it trash online.

MBG closed his case the same way most of this discourse eventually resolves itself — not in the comment sections, but in the numbers. An 84 average built from outlets across the spectrum doesn’t get erased by one viral 6.8, and Death Stranding’s sales momentum out of its November 8 launch window was already doing more talking than any argument in a YouTube comment thread ever could.