Back in September 2023, a major part of Apple’s launch of the iPhone 15 was centered around bringing AAA gaming to mobile devices. We were promised Resident Evil, Death Stranding, and Assassin’s Creed right there in our hands. We have had Res Evil already, and now we get our hands on legendary game creator Hideo Kojima’s “genre-defying experience” Death Stranding, and we even get the Director’s Cut version.
Priced at $19.99 / £19.99 which seems to be an offer price with potentially 50% off for launch, Death Stranding sees you play Sam Bridges (virtually acted out by The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus) trying to connect the last remaining human outposts.
The game was a graphical masterpiece and a test of even high-end hardware so it is interesting to see how that has translated to the smaller hand-held screen. As you can see from the trailer, it looks beautiful, even if the frame rate is capped at 30fps,
Playing on iOS devices also brings the option of new on-screen touch controls or you can play it with the controller of your choice, including the BackboneOne phone-holding controller.
A single purchase will allow you to sync your saved data via iCloud between your iPhone, iPad, and even Mac so you can play on the Apple device of your choice and continue your adventure wherever you are.
The game comes in at a chunky 50+GB download and this could be a problem in terms of your on-board storage. The iPhone 15 comes with a base amount of 256GB of storage but not all of that is available due to the Operating System. Throw in videos, photos, and a whole bunch of saved TikToks and you can soon start to feel the squeeze.
The game is playable after an initial 13GB has been downloaded but you probably want to download this over your wifi. The App Store page suggests that additional downloads (towards the 50GB presumably) will occur as the game progresses, which might be a pain if you are in the middle of a game on a plane for example.
We may also be getting news of Death Stranding 2 this week at the PlayStation State of Play broadcast with Reedus set to reprise his role once more.
