Death Stranding laptop and desktop benchmarks

When it comes to absolute hits in terms of graphics, the first thing that comes to mind are titles based on the CryEngine or Frostbite 3 engines. But Death Stranding's Decima engine doesn't need to hide behind the big players in any way. On the contrary: The quality of the landscapes sets new standards and often appears photorealistic due to the far-reaching views, the credible topography, the extremely dense vegetation, the varied textures, and the successful effects (lighting, weather, etc.).

The same applies for the characters, who are very well modeled after their real-life counterparts and impress with a high level of detail. In combination with the fantastic art design, Death Stranding creates an outstanding atmosphere that is unparalleled in 2020.

Because of the many (high-quality) video sequences and the strong story portion, the game is sometimes more reminiscent of a movie, which is naturally a matter of taste for players. Without wanting to reveal anything of the story: Death Stranding loves to constantly raise new questions and confront players with a very mysterious world (characters, dialogues, events, etc.). Here and there, one could almost get the impression that the story writers had consumed certain psychedelic substances.

When it comes to gameplay, we're also a bit divided. In the end, you're a mailman, who carries or transports parcels around. Whether this motivates in the long run is questionable. However, we were mostly disturbed by the sometimes unclear and sometimes completely exaggerated menus and game elements, respectively. Be it the character or the transport system. The latter feels more like work than fun, although this may have been planned/intended considering the alleged message of the game (according to the motto "against all odds", the character fights through all obstacles - physical and mental). If that didn't make any sense to you: Death Stranding is relatively difficult to explain; it's best to try it out yourself.

But back to the technical aspect. The graphics options are neither particularly limited nor particularly extensive. As you can see in the following screenshots, the picture mode, aspect ratio, resolution, vertical synchronization, and maximum frame rate (up to 240 FPS) can be adjusted in the upper area of the clean but scroll-heavy graphics menu. Below that, there are almost 10 detailed settings ranging from model quality to motion blur (including the display of VRAM). Ray tracing isn't supported, but in return, Death Stranding masters the exciting Nvidia DLSS technology, which was deactivated for our tests, though. Death Stranding offers four different presets so that players don't have to tinker with the settings forever to find the perfect mix.

Somewhat unusual is the fact that the second-highest preset is named "Default" instead of "High". The idea behind it: "Default" should correspond to the console version released in November 2019. The adjusted settings are - in contrast to many other games - adopted without restarting the game. However, the presets don't have a great effect on the game's performance or appearance. With a download size of about 64 GB, Death Stranding is definitely not a small game. The first loading process also takes its time.