Death Stranding 2 Review

The Re-Strandening Or Beach’s Revenge

Straight out of the brain of Hideo Kojima comes the sequel to 2015's first ever “Strand” game. In it, we play as Sam Porter Bridges, (Norman Reedus), walking from place to place uniting the country by connecting them to the “chiral network.”

This chiral network is essentially the internet, providing a way for people to spread information to one another. It’s a dystopian world where everyone is separated into bunkers, and to say the first game was prophetic in the way that it was pre-COVID 19 is an understatement. Now in the sequel, we are back in the shoes of Sam, continuing our expansion into other countries such as Mexico and Australia.

Some would say everything that needed to be said was said with Kojima's first story of humanity’s need for connection, but our protagonist Sam is all too quick to quit his quiet life with his Bridge Baby, now regular growing child Lou, and start his journey once again.

It’s here that we’re dropped back into our familiar walking simulator, and for those who aren’t aware, that’s exactly what this game is. Traversing difficult terrain while balancing a mini skyscraper of packages on your back again brings back a mix of wonder, scope and even comedy.

Kojima has a real eye for creating serene views and moments during regular gameplay. So many times I'd be walking over a particularly rough area, cresting a ridge when suddenly the camera would pan out to a bird's eye view. Suddenly a swell of indie rock by Woodkid kicks in, and boom! We have this  breathtaking cinematic moment.

On the other hand, watching Sam carry a comedically large amount of cargo, only to trip over every single tiny rock and collapse in a spray of packages like a buffoonish Mr Magoo is hilarious every single time. 

While these things were all also part of the first game, the moments are expanded, as well as pretty much everything in the game. Before, combat was clunky and the fights were few, but now there’s a bigger focus on combat with a lot of new mechanics in play.

If you know your Death Stranding lore, you are aware that killing someone can result in a voidout: a massive crater-inducing explosion that can wipe out an entire city. But now, there’s the ridiculous explanation that the world has developed rubber bullet technology that's been developed to such a point that you can eventually acquire a rubber bullet bazooka.

Not since Batman Arkham Knight has there been such a ridiculous non-lethal MacGuffin created. Still, combat was always a sticking point for me in the first game and it’s been vastly improved with the rough edges smoothed off -- mostly. The control scheme is still awkward , and missing a quick select still gets punished like a criminal offense. Having to pull up the weapon wheel and click into three menus to get to your weapon is an avoidable chore, but here we are.  It’s a small transgression considering how much combat is de-emphasized, but it's still more of an issue than it was in the first game.

What also has been expanded is the traversal. You could obtain trucks and bikes in the previous game but now it's trucks, the tricycle bike and even a monorail system for those sickos who really want to expand the Chiral network. You also get a ridiculous coffin surfboard to travel faster.

There’s so many bizarre choices made in the game, like meeting a character named Dollman, a character whose soul or Ka is trapped in a doll. He can be thrown into the air to mark enemies on the map. He’s a ludicrous character in his own right, but giving him combat functionality is just out of this world. 

Play It Again, Sam

That shows the real highlight in the series: insane character work, and the second hits the same highs as the first. On our travels to unite Mexico and Australia, we amass a cavalcade of characters onboard our roaming base, the Magellan. We have, of course, Fragile played by Lea Seadoux who is doing her very best with the direction given, Tarman, modeled after George Miller but not voice acted, Rainy, and so many more characters, each with interesting backstories.

After every mission, I would come back and just go person by person discovering new conversations and world building details. Troy Baker is back as our villainous Higgs, and he is absolutely chewing up the scenery every single time he’s on camera. Kojima really has combined an outlandish collection of stars and personalities. Whatever he’s done I’m eating up every single interaction.

I believe in the principle there’s a point in which the wilder and more out of control media is, can increase my overall fun value and when there’s a character that has constant aging rain on her, or a soul inside a wooden doll like what are we even doing? I love all of it. I do wish it was a little more evenly distributed, as the plot really ramps up at the end, with a lot of the first half having very little as far as story. There’s a lot of info dumps happening in the game and people tend to talk at you rather than with you. 

That does go into a lot of my feelings on the game as a whole. I am enraptured with the world of Death Stranding 2 and its very particular type of bullshit. You want to explain to me the difference between a Ha and a Ka and how they pertain to the Beach afterlife? Sure! On board. 

You want to insert a certain beloved franchise character from a previous series in your game? Go right ahead!  You want to create a work-like walking simulator? I have been known to LOVE work-like games as a means to relax, and boy is this game relaxing. Have you curated and improved on the combat to make everything smoother? Sure did!

But in that vein, I’m not so sure it needed to be safer. The particular jank with the combat was because this was a new dev team cutting their teeth, and the game originally didn’t have combat. It was something shoehorned in at the last second. Now it’s an integral part, but some of the charm is gone. Death Stranding 1 was a lovable underdog that tried so hard to be different, but now everything runs so smoothly together that it feels like less of a wacky experiment and more of a ho-hum average B game. 

A Walk To Remember

Despite all of this, I’m still in love with the world of Death Stranding 2. Delivering packages you find in the environment, or via missions is still inherently fun! Finding the most ideal routes, planning your monorail expansions and working towards that 5 star ranking for perfect package delivery hasn’t lost its luster for me.

Maybe I’m Kojima pilled but there’s still so much fun to be found in just the simple act of walking. Hell, half the time the most fun I had were those unscripted organic moments where I was forced to improvise, create my own solution and figure out how to get somewhere while avoiding enemies or massive rivers that had formed during a torrential downpour. The stealth spooky moments are genuinely unsettling and effective, but the voice acting probably needed a touch more direction. Nevertheless, at the end the arduous journey that is Death Stranding 2, I had my loved ones to greet me on the Magellan, and that's all I could ever ask for.

Death Stranding 2 is available now.