Death Stranding 2: On The Beach

Kojima's done it again. He made a second Death Stranding.

I played this on my PS5.

I wrote about the first game when I played it a few months ago but, because of the relatively short gap between then and now, I was worried I might be a bit burnt out on what this game had to offer. Instead, this sequel made me feel like I was simply picking up where I left things off. In a lot of ways, this game is more of the same. It starts off without much fanfare, just Sam and Lou on a mountaintop making their way home while forcing you to navigate tricky geometry to find the best path to your destination. Once the story begins in earnest it's back to business as usual, essentially, as Sam is tasked with connecting Mexico to the chiral network. He's once again loading up on cargo to deliver to preppers and facilities spread throughout the wilderness. If you've played the first game, all of this will be immediately familiar.

There are new environmental hazards to complicate things, at least

That's not to say that's a bad thing. The first game was noteworthy, to me, because it did things in this AAA space that almost nothing else really seemed to be aiming for. The core of Death Stranding is delivering packages while managing your balance and the physicality of the packages you're lugging around from place to place, and while there are improvements made here and there to the game, that fundamental aspect of things is still there. This is still a game about getting from A to B.

It's a very iterative sequel in that way. There are roads to rebuild and ziplines to place, you're holding L2 and R2 to keep your balance while you stumble over rocky terrain, and you have to deal with just about every tool, weapon, and facility you use constantly degrading over time. If you didn't like the gameplay of the first one you're, unfortunately, not going to like the way this one plays either. That's not to say there aren't improvements and quality-of-life features added but, generally speaking, playing this game felt a lot like playing the original. 

This is a very good-looking game

Perhaps the most notable changes to the way the game plays are in its combat. You start the game with non-lethal weapons and it takes a while before lethal options even enter the mix, so while combat was largely a thing to be avoided in the first game, here it seems like they want you to engage with it. There are numerous silenced weapons, high-tech gadgets, and stealth mechanics that wouldn't be out of place in a Metal Gear game. Essentially, this game feels like the third "MGSV 2" we've gotten, after the first Death Stranding (and Metal Gear Survive).

It isn't exactly subtle about its inspiration(s)

There's a fair amount of combat in this game when compared to the first, but this is still by-and-large a game where delivering cargo is your main objective. They've done a better job at making the gunplay and stealth engaging, but taking everything into account there are still only a handful of bandit camps and outposts to take on. This isn't a game about combat, but it is a game with combat. The first game attempted to straddle that same line too, but as I've mentioned I simply think they've done a better job at it this time around. The BT combat is largely unchanged, though, and as I wasn't much of a fan of that last time I still don't really like it here. Still, BTs are mostly a non-issue once you know how to deal with them so it isn't that huge a flaw.

To take the metaphor of the rope that connects people and the stick that pushes people away that I cited when I talked about the first game, while that one was pitched as being largely about a rope, this sequel aimed to be a game about both the rope and the stick. Just about every AAA game is about a stick and even if this game was largely similar to the one before it, that was fine for me because as far as I can tell there still isn't really anything else in this space playing with the ideas that Kojima's team has been running with. Sure, there are other games that attempt to evoke similar themes and it's not like Kojima invented this style of game entirely, but seeing this level of polish and, frankly, money put into something that wasn't only about gunning people down has made my journey through both of these games a treat.

There really isn't a whole lot else out there like this

I thought the story, for what it's worth, was also stronger this time. I mentioned it in my piece at the time, but the first game's narrative never truly clicked with me. I thought it was largely serviceable, but felt it got bogged down in wanting to over-explain its world and lore to the point of bringing the narrative to a halt. This game, by virtue of being a sequel, largely assumes you know the lay of the land. You know what BTs are and what DOOMS is, and if you don't there's a handy "corpus" for you to peruse whenever you want a refresher or some additional information on some given term or character. Additionally, partially because Sam is more emotive than he was in the first game, the writing feels at least a bit more organic.

There are also some fun new characters in here too, which helps

 

It's still a Kojima game, though, and with that comes certain baggage. I'm still on the fence about whether or not I think the women in this are written well, for instance, and whether or not certain moments land for you might depend on how much sensational, over-the-top flair you're willing to tolerate. As I warned at the end of my last article, Kojima cannot be stopped, for better or worse.

The game's still goofy

And, speaking of Kojima (and the people who work with Kojima, as this was by no means a one-man job), there sure is a lot of Metal Gear DNA in this game. There are the gameplay changes I mentioned earlier, yes, but boy howdy are there some specific callbacks to sequences and themes from some of those games in here. I'd love to cite one as an example but finding out in the moment that "oh, he's doing that thing again" delighted me whenever it would happen and I'd hate to spoil any of the surprises this game has to offer.

I'm still chipping away at this game and think I might keep playing it for some time to come, but I had to call it somewhere for the purposes of this writeup, so this is my SSS porter profile at the time of publishing this.

With OD and PHYSINT on the way from Kojima Productions, it looks like Death Stranding may be over or, at the very least, taking a break. I'm still looking forward to what this team does next, but I have to admit I'm a bit sad that we won't get to see another "game about a rope" from these people. Even if these games were flawed, they've grown on me the more I've played them because the moment-to-moment gameplay is unlike just about anything else out there. After the novelty of these games, seeing them go back to making another tactical espionage action romp might be a bit disappointing.