Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

Publisher: Kojima Productions, Sony Interactive Entertainment

Developer: Kojima Productions

Platforms: Playstation 5 (Reviewed)

"Folks, when I finished Death Stranding, I said to myself 'this would've been a 10/10 if Kojima hadn't been so self-indulgent'."

These are the words I opened my conclusion with in my Death Stranding review back in 2019, and the words seem quaint now that the credits have rolled on Death Stranding 2. I'm not going to mince words here: Death Stranding 2 is not only a wholly unnecessary (not to mention largely inferior) sequel, it's a project whose self-indulgence is matched only by that of Neil Druckmann. This isn't a toxic self-congratulatory vanity project, so don't get me wrong there, but Hideo Kojima is pretty clearly reaching Druckmann levels. Either that or he's always been at that level and Death Stranding 2 is what it took to make me realize it. 

But I'm getting off track. What I've said so far must make it look like I hate this sequel, but I really don't. It's just that, for the second time this year, I've found myself profoundly disappointed by something I was seriously looking forward to. There are some improvements that have been made, but they're ultimately not enough to salvage this.

One last note before we get started in earnest: this will not be a spoiler-free review. It won't contain every spoiler known to man, but I don't think I can accurately express my disdain for this story without getting into some specifics. So, be warned.

As the name would seem to imply, Death Stranding 2 is a direct sequel to Death Stranding. That probably sounds obvious, but I don't think Mr. Kojima has ever done a "direct" sequel before. Anyway, 11 months have passed since the events of the first game, and protagonist Sam Porter Bridges (Norman Reedus) is living in an isolated shelter on the US/Mexico border with Lou, the baby he was supposed to incinerate. One day, returning character Fragile (Lea Seydoux) shows up at the shelter with one last job for Sam: cross the border and connect Mexico to the US chiral network he established in the first game. But no "last job" is ever quite that simple, and before too long, a portal to Australia opens up, broadening the scope of Sam's quest. From there, we have one of the weakest stories I've seen this year...and I think I know why. 

The story in Death Stranding was pretty weak, but it was held up by its intriguing world and all the new ideas that came with it. The story felt strong at the time because of all the worldbuilding. With Death Stranding 2, however, the world is already well and truly built, and what remains is just the moment-to-moment snoozefest that took up a lot of the original game. You'll complete an objective, watch a hologram of some nobody throwaway character (played by one of Kojima's many celebrity friends) talking about things nobody cares about, and then sometimes you'll have a well-directed cutscene. But without anything substantial or new to say, these cutscenes just reiterate the exact same talking points over and over again like we're stupid. 

The game pulls you in to tell you "hey, Lou's BB pod is something special and there's this discrepancy with the serial number" about 10 times with slightly different wording each time. Kojima clearly wants this to be a twist-filled narrative, and it shows....but Kojima is a visionary, not a writer. With no new visions to cast and not enough writing skill to pull off a story in an established setting, the whole experience suffers.

Let me give an example of the weak writing. The tagline of this game is "Should We Have Connected?" and it never once addresses that question in any meaningful way. A bunch of people will talk about how American gun culture is making its way to Australia because of what Sam is doing, but it's all offscreen. In other words, to put it the way the kids might: "Source: trust me, bro!" There's also talk about how brute force might be required to continue connecting Australia to the network, but aside from some optional outposts that require a side quest or two to come around, every single person you come across can't wait to join. This is why it's important to know the difference between "showing" and "telling," because Death Stranding 2 is all telling, and it's incredibly weak telling at that.  

But it's not just that the story is weak. It's also so convinced of its own genius that it's infuriating. Here's where my spoiler warning kicks into high gear, as the example I'm about to use is from the final boss fight. So, if you don't want to know what goes down there, skip ahead to the next section.

Ready?

Ok.

After defeating the sometimes mech sometimes not mech version of antagonist Higgs in standard combat, the fate of humanity is decided via a shredding contest.

As in shredding electric guitars.

The ultimate final showdown (the result of which will determine whether or not humanity goes extinct) is an electric guitar playing contest where both Sam and Higgs absolutely give it their all like they're on stage, coming right up to each other (ripped masculine bodies and homoerotic tension included) to play duel solos and everything. 

Yes.

Really.

And after that a giant baby appears out of nowhere to eat Higgs, and also before all of that a dead character just so happens to possess one of the monsters' bodies, and the team uses their traveling gunship as the makeshift head of a monster like a giant mech. 

Also the samurai that has been helping Sam fight against Higgs off and on the whole time was actually Higgs because that was his plan all along, but it was the president of the United States' plan all along, because the president is actually an AI stranded (no pun intended) in the afterlife that wants to guide humanity, but all of that was actually Die-Hardman's plan to show up out of nowhere and thwart the president by way of a song and dance number (YES, REALLY), but it was actually Higgs' plan to have Die-Hardman do all of that, and if you were me then I'd be you, and I'd use your body to get to the top!

Like, Jesus Christ, man!

So much time dedicated to telling us that Lou's BB pod isn't what we thought and that there's a conspiracy for god knows how many hours, but all this crap gets shoved in at the last second? And what on earth possessed Kojima to do the guitar thing other than everyone around him being too intimidated to say "no"?

Do you know/remember how the original game ended? With a heartfelt speech on an apocalyptic beachside in which Sam's sister (a human latchkey for an extinction event) tells him that extinction doesn't make all of man's endeavors meaningless. But in Death Stranding 2? A guitar battle filled with whoops and "hell yeah!"s.

And all that I've said so far is just a handful of ridiculous plot twists. I haven't even brought up the "you have a daughter because as a package delivery guy in the employ of the government, you were required to submit a sperm sample" thing yet.

In a different package, I might have praised all of this...or at least some of it, I guess. The guitar thing could easily have been a high point and a "moment of the year" shoe-in if it didn't feel like it was conceived in an inter-rectal brainstorming session. In my review of the original game, I echoed sentiments that Kojima needs a "no" man. I now think he needs a "no" team, because he's ultimately jeopardized an IP that I liked more than your average person back in 2019. And again, it's not like Death Stranding was free of abject weirdness, but it's a matter of degree and execution. 

With all that said about the story, I need to reiterate what I said at the beginning: I didn't hate Death Stranding 2. And I'll explain why here. 

My reason for slogging through this game is different than it was in the first game. In the first game, I'd moan and groan my way through some of the missions and the gameplay in order to get to the next cool concept or narrative turn. In this one, I moaned and groaned through Kojima's terrible dialogue and the story in order to get to the next delivery segment...with one major caveat, but we'll get to that.

I'm going to be going off the assumption that you know about the gameplay loop in this IP. But if you don't fit that criteria, worry not! I go into a lot of detail in my review of the original, and the nuts and bolts are completely unchanged. There's still some stuff to discuss here, but I'll be discussing it on its own. 

The majority of the gameplay in Death Stranding 2 is, by many objective measures, a superior experience compared to its predecessor (and it isn't close). There are some people who actually enjoyed the fiddliness and overbearing nature of the original, and those people will be disappointed, but I'm not one of them. I don't know what exactly the difference is, but something about all the game's systems just come together cleaner for me this time around. Sam feels slightly less prone to tripping over rocks. It feels like there's more resources available to manage cargo weight. Vehicles are available much earlier than they were in the original, and depending on the one you choose for a mission, you can either travel much faster or haul significantly more cargo than in their predecessor's counterparts. Hell, I went with the cargo offroader and was able to install little magnet guns that picked up scattered cargo for me as I drove. These were NICE additions, but it's important to note that none of them made this game easy. They just made it manageable. In reading over my review of Death Stranding to prep for writing this one, I had a realization I'd forgotten about: I played that game on "easy" difficulty. Not so here. Some might take that as a sign that the game overall is easier, but again, I'd call it "more manageable." 

And these little quality of life features have a kind of snowball effect on the rest of the gameplay. Without unnecessary fiddliness to worry about, it became downright cozy to accept a delivery, start mapping out my route, thinking of possible backup plans, and arranging my cargo in the most efficient way. Whereas I spent a lot of time in the original game groaning before several missions, my brain instantly went into strategy mode most of the time here. I'd get a job that made me go to an outpost near the summit of a giant mountain, and I'd start thinking "alright, what's the plan?" instead of dreading how annoying the task might be. As I write this, I'm thinking of several examples, but I'll settle on just the one that fits into that whole "mountain outpost" idea. In that instance, I decided the first leg of the journey would be going all the way around the mountain in order to gain access to the path up that seemed the most gradual. That was going to be a long drive, so I made sure to pack a construction kit for a generator to power my vehicle if needed. I then made sure to pack a second construction kit for a watchtower, as there was an enemy camp in the way of that aforementioned mountain path. With the watchtower, I could gauge where exactly the enemies were located and judge whether or not I could just drive through the territory without being spotted. I also made sure I had plenty of weapons in case powering through the area wasn't an option. The next leg would be about halfway up the mountain path, then one of three other paths depending on which one seemed the most gradual. All of this prep work was done before I even started the journey, and it was oddly satisfying to plan it all out. It could also just be that I have more patience for this kind of thing these days than I did back in 2019...but I seriously doubt it. 

Speaking of weapons, I think it's time to discuss that caveat with gameplay I mentioned. While combat encounters aren't a negative experience when they're out in the world, they're pretty universally terrible in scripted segments where combat isn't an option. 

Let's start with the positives though. While Death Stranding 2 isn't as strong a stealth experience as what you'd find in one of Kojima's Metal Gear Solid games, it's still one of the stronger stealth experiences in recent memory...if for no reason other than a general lack of those. Enemy AI tends to be pretty dumb, but not so dumb that you don't have to work for your stealth kills. Open combat, too, can be fun thanks to liberal use of slow motion to punctuate killing shots.

That's where the positives end, but don't let the brevity of that segment cheapen the praise. A good half or more of the combat in this game is those aforementioned "out in the world" sections (depending on how much side stuff you do), and by extension, a good half or more of the combat in general is good. But when it's bad, it's bad. 

The bosses, for instance, are almost always terrible (save for some of the BT bosses), and that's due in large part to the fact that it's just the same two bosses recycled over and over again. You fight some Italian dude largely implied to be Solid Snake (from Kojima's Metal Gear franchise) a handful of times, you fight a giant mech a couple of times, and that's pretty much it. And the problems with these two bosses are the same. 

For starters, you can't pick up ammo for weapons, so when you run out of ammo for one, you have to discard it...even if you have a second weapon of that exact type in your inventory. And every boss is a complete bullet sponge, so you'll constantly be going into your inventory to drop weapons as you try to survive. I seem to remember the same being true in the original, but it was less of a hassle there given the general lack of combat.

Secondly, there's a problem with the controls. If you have a whole lot of cargo on your back, you'll sometimes need to pull both L2 and R2 and hold them to balance yourself. Kind of like holding onto both straps of a backpack. In combat, you hold L2 to aim and R2 to fire. Can you see where I'm going with this? If you're anything like me, you're trying to engage with combat optimally, and that means aiming and firing one after the other as quickly as possible...but in this case, this often resulted in Sam putting his weapon away and holding his backpack straps. I was seriously getting red in the face with frustration until I realized what the problem was...and I still got pissed off about it pretty easily. There really should've been a different mapping for the aim, perhaps R3 like some FPS games do it. 

Thirdly, Death Stranding 2 gave me negative flashbacks to Lost Planet. That is to say, you'll get knocked down constantly, and once you're down, you're down for a couple seconds (all while you continue to get shot at). Constant, slow knockdown is always infuriating (so much so that I've ultimately decided it's a new cardinal sin I'll be taking a full point off for in the future), and it's even worse in Death Stranding 2 because...

Lastly, even at max speed you move so slowly that if you don't get a running start to get out of the way the second a boss starts to wind up an attack, you're going to get hit. It truly seems to be a foregone conclusion that you're going to get hit and knocked down depending on the exact moment you start moving your left stick. Now, take that and imagine the time it takes to get up from being knocked down. Now imagine how often a boss might launch an attack just as you're getting up, ensuring that you can't start running fast enough. 

For these reasons, bosses in Death Stranding 2 (the critical path ones, at least) are probably the worst I've faced this year. 

As for non-boss combat encounters (by which I mean combat encounters where stealth isn't an option), the same weaknesses apply. The difference is that in these encounters, you're faced with an ungodly amount of enemies that all die in slightly less time than a boss. That makes the ordeal a bit more manageable, as you can cut down on the incoming fire by playing aggressively. It's still a pain, though.

These might have been problems with the original game (like I said, I believe the ammo one was), but my review from 2019 doesn't mention problems like these. 

I reiterate: when it's not one of these scripted encounters or boss fights, both the stealth and open combat are actually really good. I don't blame you if you've already forgotten that.

But moving on to more consistently positive praise, nobody can deny that Kojima games are always technically solid. I, like everyone else, was shocked to realize that the opening credits sequence was rendered in-game and was not, in fact, real-life footage. The framerate never dips despite the frankly ridiculous amount of systems at work. The composed soundtrack isn't quite as good as in the original game, but it's still a cut above most soundtracks. And just like in the original, the other side of the soundtrack (which is just taken from Kojima's spotify playlist) is largely a bunch of pretentious nonsense, but there are some good songs on there. I also never experienced any crashes or audio glitches. 

There was one consistent glitch I ran into, however. Let's say you get knocked down bigtime and ruin like 15 pieces of cargo. The "this thing broke" notifications pop up one at a time with a couple seconds between each other. So if you break 15 pieces of cargo, that's anywhere from 45 seconds to a minute before all the notifications have come up. If you try to access a terminal while these notifications are still queued, you'll just freeze in place until they're all done. It's obviously an incredibly specific bug that requires some specific circumstances to trigger (you have to play pretty poorly, after all), and all it costs you is about a minute of your time...but I always try to log everything I come across. 

All in all, a strikingly good technical package for the size and scope.

Death Stranding was a divisive game back in 2019, but I was totally on board. With Death Stranding 2, it's a different story. While the primary gameplay loop is significantly stronger this time around and some of the combat slaps, the things I would hope to enjoy in a Death Stranding sequel are weak. I didn't dislike this game, and I can't say I don't recommend it if you enjoyed the gameplay loop in the original, but it feels like my opinion of this sequel has only decreased with time. So, there you have it. 

Let us review:

Awful story and writing - 1.0

Druckmann-level pretentiousness - 1.0

Terrible boss fights - 1.0

Constant knock-down - 1.0

The final score for Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is...

6.0/10 - Above Average

Better luck next time, Kojima Productions, better luck next time.