Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

It’s been a few days since I finished Death Stranding 2: On the Beach and I’ve been dreading writing my review ever since. Not because I didn’t like the game. Quite the opposite, in fact—I ended up loving it, and making sure that I properly convey why I loved it feels like yeoman’s work to some extent. It’s kind of like one man connecting an entire continent to a post-apocalyptic supernatural internet network all by himself. But if Norman Reedus can do that, perhaps I can write a review that delivers too. After all, we’ve got to keep on keeping on.

My wife has been tagging a song on social media posts lately about my one-year-old son (who oddly resembles infant Lou in DS2) that goes something like this: “I love you so much it hurts,” which also oddly resembles my overall feelings about Hideo Kojima’s magnificent sequel. By the end, I loved the game so much that having ever doubted it could achieve greatness hurt me a little bit. The first 50 hours were very good. But the last 10 hours? The last 10 hours are some of the best video gaming that I’ve ever video gamed.

Could Kojima make a 10 to 20-hour game that just gets to the damn point? Sure, he probably could, but that’s not at all his style. The king of slow burns has ignited yet another spark. Death Stranding 2 is the slowest of burns, with lots of “oh crap” moments interspersed, and a final act that is one of the most memorable I’ve experienced in 30 years of playing games. I’ve got lots of notes about the finer details that I’ll touch on next, but the massive takeaway from my review should be this: Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is a masterpiece.

Sam Porter Bridges’ second journey takes him to new lands: to Mexico, as well as halfway across the world to Australia. It seems that connecting the chiral network across the United Cities of America in the first game has had a ripple effect across the world, which is where the sequel picks up and leads to the question of “Should we have connected?” You’ve likely seen or heard that hypothetical tossed around in pre-release marketing, and it’s one of the central themes in DS2. Speaking of, I found myself wondering if I had consumed too much marketing material before playing the game. Strangely, a lot of the game’s big moments, characters, and reveals are already out there—on the network, you could say. It’s hard to say if that is an intentional psyop from a man in Hideo Kojima who enjoys toying with his audience and breaking the fourth wall rather frequently. Or maybe I’m just reading too much into PlayStation’s marketing tactics. Give me a break, okay? I just played a Kojima joint for 60-plus hours. Regardless, do yourself a favor and actively avoid all content related to DS2, this review notwithstanding, particularly the litany of videos that are out there.

If you’re wondering if you can hop on the Death Stranding train after skipping the first game, I wouldn’t advise it, but you certainly can. The sequel does let you watch a recap of the major events from game one that adequately gets you up to speed (or refreshes your memory) before beginning Sam’s next expedition, but you’ll be missing the minutia of the first game, if you care about diving deep into Hideo Kojima experiences.

New parts of the world mean new environments to explore, from the deserts of Mexico to the snow-capped mountains of Australia. I must have slept during that lesson of world geography in school, but snow really is a thing Down Under. Following the Death Stranding event, the world is still a desolate place, no matter which continent you’re on, but there’s tremendous beauty in the desolation, thanks in no small part to Guerrilla Games’ Decima Engine, which they’ve lent out to Kojima Productions yet again for DS2. Stunning vistas, incredible textures, and some of the best performance capture work in the industry are on offer, and this kitty really purrs in quality mode on the PlayStation 5 Pro. A day/night cycle and a more dynamic weather system make the world feel like an entire character on its own. There’s more than just rain and snow to contend with this time around. Now you’re dealing with blizzard conditions, flooding, earthquakes, straight-line winds, and sandstorms. The world is living, it’s breathing, and it takes everything you’ve got to traverse it.

It's a world begging to be explored, and there are still the usual tools at your disposal—climbing anchors, ladders, bridges—with some new ones added as well. Like monorails. Man, I became obsessed with the monorail system in DS2. I spent a not insignificant amount of time lugging materials from nearby outposts to monorail stations, building section by section of rail.

If my hard work is still around when the game launches, there’s no need to thank me (you’re welcome) just smash the Like button, if you don’t mind.

The asymmetric multiplayer is back in full force for DS2 and is one of my favorite aspects of the entire experience. Despite being just media, content creators, and perhaps developers, populating the world during the review period, there was no shortage of player structures littered across Mexico and Australia. Seeing where other porters had been and what trails they had blazed gave me a sense of togetherness in a world of loneliness.

I felt more connected playing Death Stranding 2, the single-player, post-apocalyptic postal/network engineer simulator than a lot of other multiplayer games I’ve played, which is brilliant design all the way around. Seeing another player’s timefall shelter when I desperately needed a break after a long trek in the driving rain, or avoiding Beached Things (BTs), was a beacon of hope in an often-bleak world.

It's totally up to you how you approach a delivery. Be like the United States Postal Service and take your sweet time (several in-game hours) circling around the entire map to end up at your destination if you want. Or channel your inner Amazon Prime and head from A to B as the crow flies, dangers be damned, and deliver that cargo before the break of dawn after just picking up the order at Midnight.

It’s all about your tolerance for risk and conflict. I preferred a passive, stealthy approach whenever possible. I hate scary things, and the BTs (ghosts) scare me, so I avoided those at all costs. If it meant I needed to pack an extra ladder and bundle of climbing anchors, so be it. I was less trepidatious about human enemies, you know, because they’re human, but still tried to sneak by them when I could.

Human enemies add an interesting element to Death Stranding 2 altogether. Their encampments and outposts present opportunities for stealth that is reminiscent of Metal Gear Solid V. Along those lines, combat in DS2 has become a more viable option if you crave action in your Kojima games, thanks to gameplay improvements, new weapons, and new gadgets.

It’s the most Metal Gear Solid we’ve gotten from Kojima in years, right down to matching your suit camo to the environment for better camouflage. You don’t have to skulk around, binding enemies with your strand, or stunning them with the new taser handgun thing though. Going full Rambo guns blazing is an option, as well. That’s just not my style, but the shooting and open combat does feel refined this time around yet grounded considering that Sam Porter Bridges is a delivery guy, let’s not forget.

I think every individual playstyle is a legitimate option for the sequel, as evidenced by expanded RPG systems that level up based on how you play. Think Skyrim or the Oblivion Remaster’s way of leveling up your stats as you do stuff. The more cargo you deliver, the more your stamina gets boosted, or your cargo capacity increases. Playing it stealthy unlocks an enhancement to make your footsteps quieter, or conversely, engaging in combat increases weapon proficiency.

There are also APAS Enhancements, which are essentially skills that you can unlock and re-spec at any time to fit your current situation. The catch is that APAS Enhancements are directly linked to how much chiral network coverage you have established, encouraging you to keep on connecting folks.

As you journey through the world, taking on dozens of main delivery orders ranging from life-saving equipment to a piping hot pizza, the story of Death Stranding 2 ever so slowly reveals itself, albeit guardedly so. The story is very good, but up until the final act, I couldn’t help but feel that Kojima was holding back.

I remembered him giving an interview discussing how he wanted the sequel to be less foreboding after the first game, which released in 2019, and told the story of a world reliant on delivery people following a catastrophe that sent everyone indoors and severed global connections. COVID, anyone? I’m paraphrasing, but Kojima said he wanted to make a more hopeful game this time around. A game even more about connections.

To that end, Sam is joined by a cast of characters that support him nearly every step of the way in his efforts to connect Mexico and Australia. They become his family over the course of the game, giving him connections, or strands, that he desperately needs.

If you’ve played a Hideo Kojima game, you’ll know that his character work is one of his core strengths. They’re mysterious, flamboyant, and overtly emotional. Each of his characters have a mystique about them that is trademark Kojima, often possessing supernatural abilities, as is the case in DS2. The character design is exquisite, laced with symbolism and easter eggs that fans will be pouring over for weeks and months to come.

Perhaps that is why Kojima feels the need to call upon stars from both the big and small screens to portray his characters. The man has more stars in his path than the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and he’s proud of it. It would be easy for these Hollywood types to cash a big fat check from Sony and move on with their lives, but I have to say that they’ve all poured their heart into DS2, turning in memorable performances buttressed by incredible writing from Kojima. Troy Baker deserves awards for his performance as Higgs, who is now among the best video game villains of all time. Ditto for Lea Seydoux, who plays Fragile again in DS2. Even the brooding Norman Reedus gets to stretch his acting legs this time out.

It makes sense really, considering that Kojima has always made one hell of a movie within his games. Famous for his lengthy and numerous cutscenes, he loves a good flick, and it shows. As someone who has Metal Gear Solid IV in their top 10 games of all time, the cinematics easily rival that game. Not in terms of length necessarily, but quality. Honestly, I found the length of cutscenes to be rather tame for a Kojima game, though no less impactful to the story. Dare I say that he has finally found the proper balance of game versus cutscene.

There’s a lot going on thematically in Death Stranding 2. A lot of strands to pull at it, if you will. The afterlife is one of the biggest strands, just as it was in the original game. What it means to be alive, what it means to be dead, what happens when we die, and what happens to the connections we have with others when we die—all existential questions that DS2 brushes on.

Then there are the larger societal implications, such as what is humanity’s role in our own extinction, can it be prevented, or, how about this one: should we even try to prevent it. And just when I had convinced myself that COVID made Kojima pull his punches, the final act is him just throwing haymaker after haymaker, and thankfully, none of the marketing thus far has shown that stuff.

Knowing Kojima’s mindset in a post-pandemic world, and while making Death Stranding 2 nonetheless, my fear was that he was pulling punches. Famous for his ability to predict, or perhaps even manifest the future, his somewhat trademark sociopolitical commentary seemed noticeably tame in comparison to his past work. His eerily prescient takes on the proliferation of mainstream misinformation, worldwide proxy wars, shadow governments, and global catastrophes (to name a few) that he wove into the narrative tapestry of his previous games didn’t appear to be there at first. I was so concerned with Kojima’s steaming-hot take about this current world we live in that I nearly missed the forest for the trees. It was because I keep such close tabs on him that I even knew his thoughts on developing a video game in a post-pandemic world anyway—should I have connected?

By the time I was watching the credits, paralyzed by its stunning soundtrack and stewing on the ending, I made the connections to our own world that I think Kojima was hoping I would. He wasn’t pulling punches. He was trying to manifest a different sort of message—a different sort of strand for us to grab onto.

I can’t wait to see the online conversations, the videos, and the articles that dive deep into the tar of what the meaning of Death Stranding 2 is. In the end, I was left in awe, flabbergasted by the totality of the experience. The effortless way that various features create a gameplay system no other game has even tried to replicate. The absurd, supernatural story about the end of the world and humanity’s role in it. The mysterious characters and the incredible performances behind them. The art direction. The haunting original music that I can’t get out of my head. The entire final act. The ending—oh my word, the ending. It’s one of the most memorable video game endings and final boss encounters that I’ve ever experienced. I will never forget it. Put simply, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is a journey that should not be missed.