> His latest game death stranding was panned by most people

Clearly not.

https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/death-strandin...

> rightfully so since it's just a walking simulator.

I haven't played the game, but even I know this is not true.

Is Super Mario Brothers is just a jumping simulator?

Call of Duty is just a point and click adventure.

Tetris is just a matching game.

Walking simulator is a genre like Jump & Runs/Platformers (Super Mario Brothers).

No, it's not. Walking simulator is a meme handed out to games as a joke. Saying Death Stranding is "just a walking simulator" implies more than a genre. You couldn't even call SMB "just a jumping simulator" without attaching additional meaning to it.

Witcher 3 is just a walking simulator.

Yes but that doesn't change the fact that Death Stranding is not a member of that genre despite the fact that it is, in the most literal sense, a walking simulator....am I making any sense at all?

The "walking simulator" meme is just wrong and is a description levied by people who haven't actually played the game beyond the first few hours. Vehicles become available pretty early on and are a core component of the gameplay. Players even have a garage where they can store, manage, repair, charge, colorize and share various vehicles with other players online. A very significant part of the game involves the collective construction of roads in order to maximize travel efficiency using said vehicles. The game is certainly not without its issues, but "walking simulator" is just a thing people on the internet say to annoy fans of the game.

I see you've bought into the "Death Stranding is bad actually" mindset. Hope you take pleasure in that. Meanwhile, in reality, it has high ratings from critics and decent ratings from users. And you can find lots of anecdotes from happy people playing the game. I enjoyed the gameplay quite a bit myself, although the clumsy story telling fell short for me.

Just a reminder that Konami had delegated the director for Castlevania 1 2 and 3 to work at a retail store because they didn't perform comparably well to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Also Kojima released mg 1&2, mgs 1,2,3,4, and peace walker beforehand, is it really reasonable for a games company to fire a director for a game that may not live up to hype yet meets sales goals and gets named game of the year?

> is it really reasonable for a games company to fire a director for a game that may not live up to hype yet meets sales goals and gets named game of the year?

I'm curious; even if someone's last game was a bit of a dud sales-wise, is it really reasonable to vehemently punish someone that has a proven stellar track record that you've depended on for years?

Example: Hironobu Sakaguchi

Sakaguchi is the father of Final Fantasy; but after the movie "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" was a complete flop, his career at Square-Enix (then Squaresoft) was over, and he was relegated to the back office. The last FF he created was FF9, and you can see how things progress from there.

It would be much more logical to have said "ok Sakaguchi, we have learned from this mistake. Let's try and do better on the next one", and continue onwards. But maybe I have the benefit of hindsight shrug

Do you have a source for the story about the Castlevania director? That sounds wild, and I haven't been able to find anything about it.

I agree that Kojima is probably a pain in the ass to work with, but Konami's last few efforts have been far more poorly received than death stranding.

I thought Konami stopped making games that weren't attached to Pachinko machines entirely?