Death Stranding Director’s Cut is the latest AAA blockbuster title for console and PC to arrive on Apple platforms. Rebuilt for Apple Silicon hardware, the game is available on Mac, iPad, and even iPhone as a universal app.
Death Stranding initially launched on PlayStation 4 in 2019. A Director’s Cut version was released for PlayStation 5 in 2021, which brought with it additional content. This is the version released on Apple platforms, so you get the most up-to-date version with all the extra content, including PC-exclusive Half-Life Easter eggs and Cyberpunk 2077 collaboration items.
Death Stranding is a third-person action-adventure game from writer-director Hideo Kojima, who made the genre-defining Metal Gear games. The game follows the story of Sam Porter Bridges, a seemingly normal porter who delivers packages in a post-apocalyptic world. Over the course of his adventures, Sam must battle a rapidly aging rain, mysterious undead beings trapped between worlds, cargo thieves, terrorists, and, most terrifying of all, rugged terrain. And along with the journey there is a child. In a jar. Attached to you by a tube. Pretty much on par with what you’d expect from a Kojima game.
While this isn’t a game review, it’s worth having an idea of what you’re getting into. I have nearly 200 hours of the game, having played it once originally on PS4 and then again on PC. I built all the roads, found all the preppers, and got five stars on them all. I’ve done everything that can reasonably be done in this game and I’m here to tell you that this really isn’t a game for everyone.
Death Stranding features breathtaking scenery, some of the most stunning facial shots and performances ever seen in a game, and a sublime soundtrack by the late Low Roar, who unfortunately passed away not long after the game’s original release. At its best, it’s a truly inspired work. However, it also has some of the most complicated story and writing, perhaps ever, in a video game. And yes, the gameplay, for the most part, is simply about delivering packages through difficult terrain. The game also has a strange inverse difficulty curve, where it’s harder at the start but gets easier as your character gets vehicles and more gear.
All this means is that most people walk away from the game within the first couple of hours and never look back. You’ll be inundated with unnecessary groans from the characters as you spend more time in the cutscenes in the first hour than in the actual game and when you play you feel like you’re thrown into the deep end where your character can’t stand without stumbling through the seemingly pure air every five seconds while walking. It’s almost as if the game is deliberately testing your patience, so that only the truly worthy can make it through the first two hours. If you do this, you’ll probably make it to the end of the 40-hour or so story.
This is all important because, unlike other platforms, Apple doesn’t have a quick and easy refund system in case you don’t like something after trying it briefly. So I highly recommend you watch some gameplay videos first and then decide if you still want to buy it later.
Okay, let’s move on to the specific version in question. I tested the game on the iPhone 15 Pro, which is the minimum device required to play this game with an Apple Silicon chip. Death Stranding on Apple platforms is a universal app, so you can purchase it on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac and have it available on others without requiring separate purchases. Just make sure your iPad or Mac has an M-series chip.
On iPhone you must first download a 1.79 GB file from the App Store. When you launch the game, 12.6 GB will be downloaded and it will inform you that more data will be downloaded later. After reaching a certain point in the game, the remaining data will be downloaded for a total of 49.4 GB of data downloaded through the game. The game will take up around 77GB on your device, so obviously you’ll need a device with at least 128GB of base storage.
Death Stranding DC on iPhone has a fixed setup with no adjustable resolution, frame rate, or graphics settings. The game runs at an output resolution of 720p, which on the iPhone 15 Pro comes in at 1561 x 720. Internally, however, the game runs at a resolution of around 780 x 360, which is then upsampled using MetalFX temporal supersampling. This does not apply to the iPad version, which runs at a higher resolution, and the Mac version has appropriate visual settings similar to those on the PC.
The visual aspects of the game have also been significantly reduced on the iPhone. The settings used for the iPhone by developers are lower than the lowest settings possible on a Mac or PC. Things like textures, anisotropic filtering, grass and foliage density, object density, and LOD are much lower than what we’ve seen in the game on other platforms in the past.
The game retains screen space reflections from other platforms, but this effect has always been low resolution in this game and has never been particularly impressive. Depth of field effect is also present, however, due to the way this effect scales with resolution, it tends to look blurrier at such low resolutions, which can be quite distracting during cinematics.
Speaking of cutscenes, the game has a mix of internal and pre-recorded cutscenes. Pre-recorded footage is cropped vertically, but internal footage benefits from the iPhone’s wider aspect ratio, as does the game itself. This means that at any given time you will see more games than you would on consoles. On the iPad, with its taller displays, you can see a little less on the sides, and pre-recorded movies have black borders at the top and bottom.
Note: The video above is a screen capture (and not a game capture) of the iPhone 15 Pro. Despite efforts to correct it, the uploaded video features lower contrast and frame rate stutters that were not present in actual gameplay. The actual game looks and plays a little better than shown here.
In terms of image quality, Death Stranding DC on the iPhone is understandably quite soft, especially in motion as the temporal supersampling solution struggles to work with such a low internal rendering resolution. Upon closer inspection, there are also some disocclusion artifacts from things like the objects Sam is holding on to by the waist as they move.
Performance can also be quite unstable at times. For the most part the game manages to maintain the 30fps mark quite well, but there are notable moments where it stumbles rather spectacularly. This usually happens just as the game is loading something, meaning they tend to happen just before or after something important happens in the game.
All of this seemed like a bigger problem when I started the game, but it stopped being a problem as I continued playing. The game’s soft look isn’t much of an issue on the iPhone 15 Pro’s small display, and despite what the numbers might suggest, the game usually looks fine. Frame rate drops are more noticeable but don’t occur often enough to be a problem.
Death Stranding is not a fast-paced action game, and while there are some moments where you need quick reflexes, the majority of the game involves moving at a deliberate pace, paying attention to your steps, and taking in the scenery. These are the moments where the game really shines and where the iPhone version works perfectly.
My only issue with the graphics is that the game was obviously designed for the big screen and many of the elements and text on the screen can often be painfully small. This does not include the game menus, which are adjustable in size, but rather the text you see in the game and the game map. Many on-screen controller buttons were also hard to see on the iPhone screen, which can be frustrating.
Speaking of controls, Death Stranding DC features an on-screen control layout like the Resident Evil games. It feels like a little more thought went into the layout, but ultimately it’s pointless as it’s a terrible way to play the game, which was never designed for a touchscreen to begin with. The developers have made no effort to modify the controls for touch devices, so you can simply view the entire controller layout on the screen. It goes without saying that you need to avoid this and use a proper physical controller. Both Xbox and PlayStation controllers are supported with correct on-screen legends and icons.
Surprisingly, and unlike the Resident Evil games, Death Stranding DC for iPhone includes keyboard and mouse support. In my experience, the game runs best with the mouse, but your mileage may vary. I see someone using keyboard and mouse with the iPad, but it doesn’t make much sense for the iPhone, even though it’s supported.
What it doesn’t include, however, is HDR, something I really enjoyed having in the two Resident Evil games on the iPhone. The game supports HDR on other platforms, so it’s unclear why it was excluded on Apple platforms. Furthermore, no spatial audio features were found. You get your basic stereo sound, and while it’s high quality, it would have been nice to take advantage of the spatial audio processing on these devices.
Loading times were generally quick on the iPhone, at least in places where there was a noticeable loading screen. However, there are times on the iPhone where the screen stays black longer than it should between transitions, as the game loads items in the background. The iPhone 15 Pro only has 8GB of memory and this could be a bottleneck in this case as the game takes longer to move resources while switching between areas when memory is so limited.
Overall, I was pleased with the iPhone port of Death Stranding Director’s Cut. We’re not quite at the PS4’s level of performance yet, with the iPhone often struggling to maintain 30fps despite running at a lower resolution and quality settings than the venerable 2013 console. Of course, the iPhone can’t afford the luxury of a tailor-made version. title tailor-made for its specific hardware nor for the energy budget that the PS4 had. Considering this, I think it performs quite well here and it’s still impressive to see games of this caliber running on a smartphone.
Compared to the previous two Resident Evil releases on the platform, I found Death Stranding to be a more enjoyable experience on this hardware. The flaws weren’t that noticeable, and the slow nature of the gameplay lends itself quite well to mobile hardware. The game may be an acquired taste, but at $20 for a universal version, it’s an easy recommendation for those who have enjoyed it on other platforms and would rather simply play on the smartphone they have rather than investing in a standalone device like the Steam Deck.
As a side note, after trying out three AAA releases on the iPhone over the past few months, it’s time for some retrospection. I think it’s commendable that Apple is willing to work with developers to bring these titles to its platform. The developers could do a little more to make these games not only playable but actually fun, but these were good first steps.
However, Apple must also do more on the hardware front to allow these developers to give their best. System memory is currently a major bottleneck for these games, affecting how they look and play, and Apple has often been stingy with RAM on its devices. 8 GB of RAM on the iPhone is fine for apps but not for games of this caliber. And 8GB of RAM on base Macs and iPads is simply an affront in 2024. It’s time to move to 16GB or, at least, 12GB as base on these devices.
The addition of support for the Vulkan API will also make it much easier for developers to port their titles to this platform. Additionally, a simple refund process with a timed window like on other platforms will make it easier for users to try expensive games without committing to something they don’t like or going through support to refund it.
Still, it’s been an interesting journey so far, but Apple needs to keep the momentum going, and with Assassin’s Creed Mirage being the only big game on the horizon since last year’s announcement, things aren’t looking too good right now.
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