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Death Stranding Director’s Cut is the latest installment of the blockbuster AAA console and PC title to hit Apple’s platforms. Rebuilt for Apple Silicon hardware, the game is available as a universal app on Mac, iPad, and even iPhone.
Death Stranding first launched on PlayStation 4 in 2019. A director’s cut version with additional content was released for PlayStation 5 in 2021. This is the version released on Apple’s platforms, so you get the latest version with all the extra content, including PC-exclusive Half-Life Easter eggs and Cyberpunk 2077 collaboration items.
Death Stranding is a third-person action-adventure game from writer and director Hideo Kojima, who also created the genre-defining Metal Gear games. The game depicts the story of Sam Bridges, a seemingly ordinary porter who delivers packages in a post-apocalyptic world. Throughout his adventures, Sam must battle the rapidly raining, mysterious undead, cargo thieves, terrorists, and the deadliest of untamed terrains trapped between worlds. And the baby is also on board. In the bottle. connected by tubes. It’s pretty much on par with what you’d expect from a Kojima game.
This isn’t a game review, but it’s worth understanding what you’re getting yourself into. I have played this game for almost 200 hours, first he played it once on PS4 and then again on PC. I built all the roads, found all the preparers and in everything he got 5 stars. I’ve done everything I can with this game, but I’m here to tell you that this is not a game for everyone.
Death Stranding has stunning scenery, some of the most amazing facial captures and performances in gaming, and a sublime soundtrack by the late Low Roar, who sadly passed away not long after the game’s original release. At its best, it’s a truly inspired piece of work. However, it also has perhaps one of the most well-thought-out stories and scripts of any video game ever. And yes, the majority of the gameplay is actually just delivering packages through tricky terrain. The game also has a weird inverse difficulty curve, which gets harder in the early stages, but gets easier as your character acquires vehicles and more equipment.
All of this means that most people turn away from the game within the first few hours and never look back. His first hour spends more time on cutscenes than actually playing the game, inundating it with pointless ranting by characters, and throwing characters into depths where they can’t stay upright when actually playing. I feel like I’ve lost my mind. As you walk, you stumble into seemingly pure air every five seconds. It’s as if this game is intentionally testing your patience, and only the truly worthy will make it through the first two hours. That way, you’ll be able to finish the 40-hour story.
All of this is important because unlike other platforms, Apple doesn’t have a system where you can easily try it out and get a quick and easy refund if you don’t like it. Therefore, we highly recommend that you watch some gameplay videos first and then decide whether you want to buy it or not.
Now, let’s move on to the specific version at hand. I tested the game on an iPhone 15 Pro. This is the minimum device required to play this game, which is powered by an Apple Silicon chip. Death Stranding on Apple’s platforms is a universal app, so if you purchase it on either your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, it will be available on other devices without a separate purchase. Make sure your iPad or Mac has an M-series chip.
On iPhone, you must first download a 1.79 GB file from the App Store. When you launch the game, you will be notified that 12.6GB will be downloaded and more data will be downloaded later. Once the game reaches a certain point, the remaining data will be downloaded, totaling 49.4GB of downloaded data throughout the game. The game takes up about 77GB on your device, so you’ll obviously need a device with at least 128GB of base storage.
Death Stranding DC on iPhone has a fixed configuration, and resolution, frame rate, and graphics settings cannot be adjusted. The game runs at an output resolution of 720p, which is 1561 x 720 on the iPhone 15 Pro. However, internally, the game runs at approximately 780 x 360 resolution and is then upsampled using MetalFX temporal supersampling. This isn’t the case with the iPad version, which runs at a higher resolution, and the Mac version has decent visual settings like the PC.
The visual aspect of the game was also significantly reduced on the iPhone. The settings that developers use for iPhone are lower than the lowest settings possible on Macs and PCs. Textures, anisotropic filtering, grass and foliage density, object density, LOD, etc. are much lower than games seen in the past on other platforms.
The game retains screen space reflections from other platforms, but in this game this effect was always low resolution and never looked particularly impressive. There is also a depth of field effect, but as this effect changes depending on the resolution, it tends to look extra blurry at such low resolutions, which can be quite distracting during cutscenes.
Speaking of cutscenes, the game has a mix of in-engine cutscenes and pre-recorded cutscenes. Pre-recorded cutscenes are cropped vertically, but like the game itself, in-engine cutscenes also benefit from the iPhone’s wide aspect ratio. This means you can watch more games than you can on your console at any given time. On iPads with portrait displays, you’ll see a little less on the sides, and you’ll see black borders above and below pre-recorded cutscenes.
Note: The video above is a screen capture (not a game capture) from an iPhone 15 Pro. Despite correction efforts, the uploaded video has slight contrast and frame rate judder that was not present in the actual gameplay. The actual game looks and runs a little better than what’s shown here.
In terms of image quality, Death Stranding DC on the iPhone is unsurprisingly very soft, especially when running as temporal supersampling solutions struggle to work with such low internal rendering resolutions. Upon further inspection, they also find some blocking artifacts, including from an item Sam hangs around his waist as he moves around.
Performance can also be very unstable. Often the game is able to maintain his 30fps limit quite well, but there are notable moments where it stumbles quite spectacularly. This usually happens when the game is loading something. That is, they tend to occur right before or after something important happens in the game.
All of this seemed like a big problem when I first started the game, but as I continued playing it became less of an issue. The soft appearance of games isn’t really an issue on the iPhone 15 Pro’s small display, and despite what the numbers indicate, games usually look just fine. Frame rate drops are more noticeable, but they don’t happen often enough to be a problem.
Death Stranding is not a fast-paced action game. While some moments require quick reflexes, most of the game requires you to move at a deliberate pace, watch your step, and enjoy the scenery. These are the moments where the game truly shines, and where the iPhone version runs just fine.
My only issue with the visuals is that the game is clearly designed for large screens, and many of the on-screen elements and text are often painfully small. This does not include the resizable game menu, but does include the text that appears in-game and the game’s map. Many of the on-screen controller buttons are also difficult to see on the iPhone screen, which can be frustrating.
Speaking of controls, Death Stranding DC features an on-screen control layout similar to the Resident Evil games. There seems to be a little more thought put into this based on the layout, but it’s ultimately pointless as it’s a terrible way to play a game that wasn’t designed for touchscreens in the first place. The developers have made no effort to change the controls for touch devices, so the entire controller layout is simply visible on the screen. Needless to say, you should avoid this and use a proper physical controller. Both Xbox and PlayStation controllers are supported with appropriate on-screen legends and icons.
Surprisingly, unlike the Resident Evil games, Death Stranding DC for iPhone includes keyboard and mouse support. In my experience, games play better with a mouse, but your availability may vary. I see people using a keyboard and mouse on the iPad, but even if it’s supported, it doesn’t make much sense on the iPhone.
However, this does not include HDR. This is a feature I really enjoyed in his two Resident Evil games on the iPhone. The game also supports HDR on other platforms, so it’s unclear why it was excluded on Apple platforms. I also can’t find the spatial audio feature. You get basic stereo sound, and it’s good quality, but it would have been nice to take advantage of the spatial audio processing on these devices.
Loading times on the iPhone were usually faster, at least at points with obvious loading screens. However, on iPhone, the screen may remain black between transitions for longer than necessary because the game is loading in the background. The iPhone 15 Pro only has 8GB of memory, but with such limited memory, this can become a bottleneck as the game takes time to shuffle assets as it moves between different areas. there is.
Overall, I was happy with the iPhone port of Death Stranding Director’s Cut. It hasn’t reached PS4-level performance yet, and the iPhone can struggle to maintain 30 fps despite running at lower resolution and quality settings than his venerable 2013 console. It often happens. Of course, iPhones don’t have the luxury of being made to order. The titles are tailored to the specific hardware and power budget of his PS4. Considering that, I think it’s doing pretty well here, and it’s still impressive to see a game of this caliber run on a smartphone.
I found Death Stranding to be a more enjoyable experience on this hardware compared to the previous two Resident Evil releases on this platform. The flaws aren’t too bad, and the slow-paced nature of the gameplay is well-suited to mobile hardware. This game may be familiar to you, but at $20 for the universal version, it’s great for those who have enjoyed it on other platforms and would rather play it on their smartphone than invest in a standalone device like Steam Deck. , can be easily recommended.
As a side note, I’ve tried three AAA releases on my iPhone over the past few months, so it’s time to reflect. I think it’s admirable that Apple is working with developers to bring these titles to their platform. The developers may have to work a little harder to make these games not just playable but actually enjoyable, but these were a good first step.
However, Apple also needs to do more on the hardware side to help these developers reach their full potential. System memory is currently a major bottleneck for these games, affecting how they look and work, and Apple has often skimped on RAM on their devices. His 8GB RAM on his iPhone is fine for apps, but not suitable for games of this scale. And 8GB RAM in the base Mac and iPad is just an insult in 2024. It’s time to move to 16GB, or at least 12GB, as the base for these devices.
Adding support for the Vulkan API also makes it very easy for developers to bring their titles to this platform. Also, with a time-bound and easy refund process similar to other platforms, users can easily try out expensive games without committing to a game they don’t like or having to go through support for a refund. .
Still, it’s been an interesting journey so far, but Apple needs to keep up the momentum, and with Assassin’s Creed Mirage being the only big game announced last year, things aren’t looking too good at the moment. .
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