After launching on the PS4 last year, Death Stranding is finally hitting the PC this week. The brainchild of Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima, Death Stranding has you in the role of a courier in a post-apocalyptic world. You’re tasked with making deliveries to those living in underground shelters that pepper it along with avoiding (or taking down) its invisible foes knows as BTs that populate its sprawling environments. The last two Metal Gear Solid games — Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes and Phantom Pain ran fantastic on PC, is Death Stranding more of the same or worse?
Death Stranding PC minimum requirements
- OS: Windows 10
- CPU: Intel Core i5-3470 or AMD Ryzen 3 1200
- RAM: 8 GB
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 with 3GB Video RAM or AMD Radeon RX 560 with 4GB Video RAM
- DirectX 12
- Storage: 80GB
- Sound card: DirectX compatible
Death Stranding PC recommended requirements
30fps target
- OS: Windows 10
- CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 or AMD Ryzen 5 1400
- RAM: 8GB
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti with 4GB Video RAM or Radeon RX 570 with 4GB Video RAM
- DirectX 12
- Storage: 80GB
- Sound card: DirectX compatible
60fps target
- OS: Windows 10
- CPU: Intel Core i7-3770 or AMD Ryzen 5 1600
- RAM: 8GB
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 with 6GB Video RAM or AMD Radeon RX 590
- DirectX 12
- Storage: 80GB
- Sound card: DirectX compatible
Death Stranding PC graphics options
In addition to a wealth options it also includes an indicator for how much GPU memory is being used at any given time as well. Death Stranding supports DLSS 2.0 on PC too. Unlike other PC performance reviews we’ve done in the past, the embargo for Death Stranding PC does not allow us to use our own screenshots and this extends to the games settings and graphics options as well. Due to this, we’ve listed them below.
- Aspect ratio (16:9, 21:9)
- Vsync (on, off)
- Display resolution
- Maximum frame rate (as low as 30fps, as high as 240fps)
- Model detail (low, medium, default, very high)
- Memory for streaming (low, default, high)
- Shadow resolution (low, medium, high)
- Ambient occlusion (on, off)
- Screen space reflections (on, off)
- Nvidia DLSS (off, performance, quality)
- AMD FidelityFX Contrast Adaptive Sharpening and Upsampling (CAS) (on, off)
- Anti-aliasing (off, FXAA, TAA)
- Depth of field (on, off)
- Motion blur (on, off)
Death Stranding PC resolution and frame rate
The minimum and recommended requirements outlined by Kojima Productions indicate decent performance on even mainstream, middling hardware and we’re pleased to report that this is indeed the case.
Our Asus TUF FX505DT laptop consists of an AMD Ryzen 5-3550H processor (2.1GHz Base speed up to 3.7GHz), 16GB DDR4 RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 4GB GPU, at 1920×1080 we were able to achieve a frame rate of 45 to 50fps staying steady even in demanding scenes. This was at the default preset which was a mix of medium and high settings.
Cranking up all the options to their maximum at 1920×1080 and we’d get around 24 to 30fps, playable but far from ideal. In both scenarios however, it controlled and looked consistent.
From walking across the gorgeously sculpted countryside to quietly avoiding BTs aplenty, Death Stranding looks great on PC for most part. It’s aided by solid, responsive controls too. So if you decide to play this with a keyboard and mouse or a controller, they’re both tweaked and tuned to be suited to the task.
Death Stranding PC image quality
Our only major concern was with the anti-aliasing. The differences between FXAA (fast approximate anti-aliasing) and TAA (temporal anti-aliasing) were negligible at best. This seemed to be broken, making objects like power lines and fences appear more jagged than they should be.
Other minor issues like texture pop-in are apparent as well. The image quality overall is softer than the PS4 Pro version of the game with these settings. Perhaps these will be rectified with driver updates from Nvidia or a patch to the game.
I still have the screenshot, it was around ₹1500 pic.twitter.com/sVBjQdlQGX
— RedAllegiance (@RedAllegiance) July 3, 2020
Should you play Death Stranding PC?
Death Stranding’s PC port is competent with a few issues that we hope get fixed soon. However we can’t recommend buying it on the PC just yet. For one, it’s a Rs. 3,999 purchase. Granted publishers have taken to pricing their games higher for PC over the years, but publisher 505’s other efforts like Control sported a price that was half in markets like India. Death Stranding PC was initially priced at $22.99 (around Rs. 1,700) before being updated to $55.99 on the Epic Games Store.
It doesn’t help matters than the PS4 version of the game retails for around Rs. 1,800 to Rs. 1,900 and holds up quite well in comparison. So if you have a PS4 and want to check it out, that’s still the cheapest, most cost-effective way to do it. Given the nature of PC game pricing as a whole, and this being a digital release for the most part we won’t be surprised if this does not reach the same price as the PS4 version in the future.
Unless you’re a dyed-in-wool Kojima fan who can’t budge from the PC we can’t recommend Death Stranding at its current price tag. It’s a fantastic game, but there are better ways to play it right now.
