I haven't been following and playing every new AAA game release because I don't have the money for that nor do I have any of the newer consoles, I don't even have a PS4 or Xbone which I guess are old news now. I cannot imagine buying games new on release.
Anyways I was thinking... of all AAA releases from the past few years I did get to play, only Death Stranding was worth playing. I can't think of any other game that interested me like that one did. Oh and Red Dead Redemption 2... such mixed feelings on that one. I dumped an embarassing amount of time into RDR2 and while most of the time I suppose I had fun with it, I promised myself I'd never replay that god damn story mode ever again. It gets so repetitive I think the only thing that kept me going was Arthur Morgan and Roger Clark's excellent performance. Everything about it though is a pure slog. The Epilogue doesn't end, it keeps going, and y'know what nevermind you get the point.
Death Stranding though was trying something different with its gameplay, it genuinely felt like a breath of fresh air and while I have many opinions™ on its writing, story and worldbuilding (as I'm sure all Kojima fans do too), I can't say they were bad and unredeemable, in fact it was pretty enjoyable most of the time. I wouldn't mind going back to the Iceland-looking America of Death Stranding to build roads, ride bikes, carry cargo, ride ziplines, it was a good time.