Hideo Kojima is a creator with whom many gamers have had a somewhat complex relationship, one that I, too, share. His works created and defined its own genre, and continued to be the master of that domain for many years to come. His finest works would come out of the Metal Gear Solid series. It’s spin on stealth, his ideas about society, his ability to make it connect to a person on an individual level, and his inspirations from many action movies just shine through. That, and the ability to crack a joke now and then. My personal favorites of that series would easily be MGS 1, 3, and Peacewalker. I’ll never forget his final moments with his mentor at the end of MGS 3, it was a defining moment for me and how I thought about him as a creator and the narrative potential of videogames. Clearly, in some sense, it was the same for him, seeing that he carried that concept on the 5th and controversially ridden installment of the Metal Gear Solid series. With that last title under his belt, he went on to fully depart from Konami, which led to its own set of events, including being denied to receive an award for his own work. From creating his own franchise of games that would sell so well across the globe, to making every fan dig through every detail he leaves in his trailers, to making headlines across gaming media over a few events. This man, having his name attached to anything, had heavy implications. And that is why when you see a title start with “A Hideo Kojima Game,” it really means something. Sure, it sounds a bit pretentious, but at the same time, the prestige towards such a label was for all intents and purposes, earned.

 

 

When he said he wanted to make his own game, PlayStation went ahead and wrote him a blank check. And he definitely went ham with such a powerful wind behind his sails. Death Stranding would feature some insanely popular names in the film industry, give us an entirely new world, and new concepts he would incorporate into his craft. He also did something that many creatives would do, and strive to set himself apart from his previous works. You see this similarly happen to people in the film industry. Christopher Nolan would swing from high fiction to superheroes to historical biographies. And Daniel Radcliffe would take on much more mature films after his long journey as Harry Potter. Some commit to dedicating themselves to new endeavors to avoid getting pigeon-holed into doing one thing. While others aren’t as bothered by it and eventually go back to what they’re more comfortable with.

My encounter with the first Death Stranding game left me with a bit of a split opinion. I could understand the appeal of the system, the goal of the developer, and the quality of the production. But I also felt like it was indulging itself in its own lore a little too much, as if I was speedrunning the latest updates of Kojima’s philosophy class. I had a hard time keeping up with not only the characters and ideas he was putting forward, but also coming to terms with what he was trying to execute as a game director. It felt like it was so determined to be different from his older works, to the point of detriment. It was a Hideo Kojima game, but maybe one that felt like it was in transition.

 

 

But if you knew anything about this man and the way he worked, he got more daring and more comfortable with new ideas the second time around. I more fondly remember Zone of the Enders 2 because of how refined it made combat and movement. Peacewalker only got to stretch its legs as much as it did because of the lessons it carried with it from Metal Gear Portable Ops. Metal Gear Solid 2 maximized what could be done in a PlayStation 2 game. And well, I think the cycle continues with Death Stranding 2: On The Beach.

Perhaps because he doesn’t feel like he has to prove the new concept. Maybe he no longer feels the need to set himself apart from his past. Or it could simply be that since I’m running into fewer surprises now, and I can focus more on enjoying the game. But I do feel like this second installment is better paced, less abstract, and better defined in what it’s trying to achieve with you. But either way, this introduction has gone long enough. Let’s get ready for the new journey, walk into the tar, and go knee deep into the details and review a Hideo Kojima game.

 

 

 

Production

 

I try to recall what I saw in the first game and honestly couldn’t say that the game looked that different from before. So I decided to do a bit more research into it and checked out videos to compare the two. The footage I saw of the previous game was apparently played from a PlayStation 5 Pro. And even with that, you can see the generational jump between Death Stranding 1 and 2 upon a closer look. The first game looks closer to something like Metal Gear Solid 5. Models are detailed, landscapes feel natural, and even the faces are well-detailed. And to be honest, it already looks quite good. Death Stranding 2 improves on this with two major components: lighting and particles. Global illumination lit up most of the scenes in the former title, while the second one has a lot more sun to give you. Back then, shadows were more or less reserved for main characters and larger objects, and now even smaller foliage and loose items become better melded with the world as they interact with the light better. On top of that, dust getting kicked up by running, jumping, or tires rolling over the ground looks closer to what it might be in real life. But the real wonder that they’ve achieved with their updates on tech shows is how they make sandstorms, rain, and snow look, and how these dynamically change how the light cuts through all of it. This is probably the most noticeable change off the bat. More subtle changes are those involving textures, making everything look more detailed. This is particularly true for everyone’s skin and Sam’s suit, as it gets splattered with tar, mud, rain, or blood. All these changes help produce a more consistent, interesting, and beautiful image throughout the game. Though those with trained eyes can tell when the frame rate suffers a bit when a lot of dust or rain is going around. However, I don’t think this ever happens at the same time as combat is going on, and my standard PlayStation 5 doesn’t seem to choke too hard during these times. So I would give Death Stranding 2 a pass for this issue.

Stages also feel more interesting to go through, and abandoned urban structures are now also part of the environments you will go through. What you get to look at during the more relaxed part of your travels like the sky, the mountain range, and the surrounding bodies of water also serve as little spectacles you get to enjoy when you’re not trying to dodge ghosts, bandits, or robots, or at least not get dragged to the land of the dead by any of them. Getting over a mountain ridge felt plenty rewarding without having to go up one, so I get to enjoy a nice view and not feel out of breath.  Even private quarters and other indoor spaces also don’t look as sanitized; they look more and more lived-in as you progress through the game as well.

 

Another thing that improved would be Norman Reedus and Lea Seydoux, their performance felt more natural, more expressive, while not getting too far from their more subdued style of acting. I’d have to say Troy Baker was definitely the scene stealer back in the first game, and even this time around. However, the rest of the cast aren’t resting on their laurels either. Sam Bridges and Fragile are more fleshed out with the wider range of their actors can express themselves with. Maybe they feel more comfortable now working together, maybe they learned more from people like Troy. Perhaps another part of it would be the more consistent presence of a wider set of supporting cast this time around. It would give them more personalities to bounce their energy off of and opportunities to show different sides of their respective characters, given their relationships with them. A stark contrast from its predecessor, where people were more isolated in general. That being said, the script plays out in such a way that it’s like I’m watching a stage play. I think that some of the way they talk and how there seems to be a pause before anyone responds during a dialogue could definitely go faster, but maybe that’s just my preference. I mean, you can totally see that in how fast I talk. Fatih Akin’s performance was what I enjoyed the most, who played as Dollman and was more or less Sam’s advisor. And the comedy that his acting won me over, while he’s mostly sitting as a strangely animated, lifeless doll, is not lost on me. The guy just has a way of talking to you and makes you think everything is going to be okay. 

Speaking of things you hear, the music selection in this game is amazing. The music they play at the opening sequence as you walk down the mountain, perfect. Generally, many of the music pieces that they’ve included in this game are of a healthy variety. Definitely, the bulk of them are meant to be these relaxing tunes that help get you immersed in your surroundings as you trek through the lands of Australia. And to be honest, I think they’re all great to listen to. Now, there are a few tracks in there that definitely stick out from the rest, and they’re just there for fun. Not to say that the game isn’t consistent in its theming, Woodkid’s compositions are a great fit for the game. My personal favorite would be Minus Sixty One, as it really encapsulates the scale of Sam Bridge’s journey across the continent. On top of that, they’ve also built a score around some of the first game’s themes, BB’s theme being one of them. And well, I’ll leave it to you to hear it and enjoy it for yourself.

The way Death Stranding 2 has presented itself is actually kind of bolder, with the performers on the screen having more confidence in the roles they’ve taken, and the tech being able to better translate Kojima’s vision. And honestly speaking, I believe it’s all coming together when you’re playing the game and the best song for the moment starts up.

 

 

 

Mechanics

 

The basic mechanics of how Death Stranding works as a game haven’t changed that much in its second installment. Your basic mission is still being a deliveryman, bringing cargo from one place to another. Where your setup is that of the Bokos of Japan. Delivery men who make it their duty to bring items to people in more remote, hard-to-reach places that most delivery vehicles can’t reach. Going through difficult terrain, and somehow balancing a towering stack of items on their back. You, playing as Sam Bridges, are to do the same thing. It’s not as exciting as your usual action games where you get down to shooting baddies, and that’s most of the game, no. This is a game about planning and logistics, and if you’ve seriously played an RTS or been exposed to conflict, you’ll quickly learn that managing logistics is one of the most important things to get right, or else your whole operation falls apart.

Once you decide to take on an order, you plan out your delivery route first, evaluating the risks and obstacles you might have to take versus the time and effort you’ll have to spend should you choose to avoid them. Overall, what truly matters is the condition of the cargo once you get to the destination. So long as you can guarantee that, how you approach and solve the problem is up to you. Maybe you’re okay with carrying a few extra ladders to cross that river with minimal risk. Maybe you’re confident about dealing with the bandits whose camp is in the way of the best route to take. Nothing like a little stealth to knock an entire base of soldiers unconscious, right? No unfamiliar territory there.

 

 

You also might want to leave some space in your backpack, carrier, or vehicle for some unexpected packages towards your destination. Sending these to the intended recipients will give you additional likes from them, helping you improve your relationship with them, basically for free. Being a lighter packer also gives you an advantage in being able to move more easily and manage Sam’s stamina better.

I haven’t even talked about the run-and-gun action of Death Stranding 2, and there’s so much to consider and balance out in what sounds like a boring time. I thought it was, but I was proven wrong. But I’ll get back to how it managed to vastly improve my experience as compared to the first game later.

Another way to make deliveries easier and more successful is to build and improve infrastructure. We’re talking literal bridges, watch posts, charging stations, shelters, full-on highways, and even train lines. Yes, these can get tedious in terms of having to bring what is probably a large amount of resources to one point, to the point that you’ll likely need to make return trips regularly. But it does pay off in being able to guarantee fast, safe travel between locations. It makes doing requests between them convenient. This in turn lets you farm likes, improve your relationships with other people. When that happens, you can get more resources from them, you gain more points for your APAC upgrades, and they give you new or improved technology for you to try out, or maybe just a nifty hat. Either way, the game is willing to reward you for putting in the time to build up. I honestly got held back by a bunch of hours just working on this for a while, because I genuinely enjoyed it. Then I realized I had a time limit to get this review out, so I couldn’t afford to build a network of roads for the rest of the game.

 

 

In a sense, it’s like you’re developing an ecosystem, you gain more benefits out of it by taking care of it, but you also have to consider what your immediate goals are, and if you’re willing to put so much time and effort into places you might not really like returning to. You also have to rotate what you’re focusing on based on your resources. Sure, you can develop mines to give you all the ceramics and metal you need to build roads, but to operate those mines, you need Chiral Crystals, a resource you can best farm off of tar pits, and well, giant BTs (Beached Things). And if you want to have a stock of weapons ready to hunt them down, you’ll need other types of resources to produce and maintain an arsenal, blood bags, exoskeletons, and more. It is quite a complex set of relationships, but you never feel like you’re out of options on what you can do next. And how this system works in essence hasn’t really changed, yet it works so well this time around. What changed? I believe it’s because of how well-paced the content is.

 

 

 

Content

 

The game starts with Sam enjoying his life of isolation with his baby, Lou. You are visited by Fragile, and she asks you to finish one last job, which doesn’t seem to be too much to ask for Sam Bridges. After all, what could be wrong with getting everyone connected to the Chrial Network? If it were just one more mission, we wouldn’t have the rest of the game happen. But let’s just say tragedy strikes and this leads to a journey through yet another continent. The agreement for the review asks us not to reveal anything big about the plot, and I do think it’s best that I don’t and leave that to be discovered by those who want to play the game. If anything, I’d like to say that the main plot, leaving out lore implications, isn’t too complicated. It all ties up pretty well in the end, and for now, you’ll just have to take the ‘trust me bro’ seal from me.

More importantly, I find Death Stranding 2, as a game where you do things and not just wait for a cutscene to finish, much better paced. Back in the previous title, you might end up with long stretches of travel where it felt like you were waiting for things to happen. There would be climbs that took so much time just getting over the peak, and had to manage a treacherous, steep climb down. And not to say that these moments don’t exist in the second game, but you’re getting to the action faster.

Your delivery routes will have you deal with either a change of terrain, a new threat, or a side objective for you to consider. And these changes tend to happen without overstaying their welcome. Especially if you’re basically sticking to the critical path of the main story quests. You can be doing a regular delivery first, then you find yourself having to dodge BTs or bandits within a few minutes of your departure. You’ll be going through craggy rocks, sand dunes, forests, snow-covered mountains, and dangerous tar pits. Maybe you finally got to your destination, only to find a boss lying in wait. Or to just completely avoid combat, you choose to build a railway or bridge to make your life easier. I, for one, couldn’t help myself when I saw gaps in the chiral network and ended up serving those locations even if I didn’t need to. This is actually what consumed the bulk of my sidequest time. If there was a section that I wasn’t expecting to leave such an impression on me, it would be going through a forest fire, having to pace myself between stopping to shoot to snuff out fires and running away for dear life. The way they put you in the middle of it while desperately trying to escape. I never realized how terrifying it could be to be in the middle of a bush fire.

 

 

There are also a couple of new toys for you to use and play against for whatever challenges you come across in the game, specialized equipment for traveling, combat, and more. New types of weapons, the blood boomerang being an interesting, on-the-nose addition. Dollman also doubles as a drone camera you can freely use as a way to safely scout the area around you. There’s even a rubberized pizza out there, if you’re willing to find it. This is more of an open-world game, so there is content to be found out there that’s away from the critical path. Reading a book can lead to watching the origin story of a certain character, and raising the relationship with someone can unlock a funny event. There are even landmarks that are left out there in the open and you’ll never reach if you stick strictly to story missions. 

These new additions, new factions, and new tools for you to play with. Shows that Kojima is a bit more comfortable with his history, that he’s willing to infuse more of that into Death Stranding. You’ll see a lot of references and nods to his older works, and I’m all here for it. Because I believe that his creative vision really becomes complete when he allows himself to be silly, when he allows himself to take his silliness seriously. You’ve seen the trailers, you know there’s a guitar gun out there, along with what looks like a giant cyborg samurai. And the amazing part is it doesn’t stop there.

 

 

That comfort and confidence spills over to the other people involved in making this game, cameos were allowed to make their own in-jokes. Actors were able to express themselves better. And things that I typically don’t think Kojima would really come up with, I find them here and there. Proverbially, the game director is literally walking the talk, as his game speaks strongly about collaborating and contributing to something bigger. And what we end up with is a game with a rounder, more varied, larger-scale game. And all of it is neatly tied up together by its themes.

 

 

 

Features

 

Death Stranding 2 features a training mode along with missions to match. I greatly appreciated this because it gave me a space to test new weapons and master how the combat worked. It also doubled as a gallery if you wanted to see enemy units up close, because some of these are gorgeous or horrifying, depending on your taste for mechs.

It also has a data archive that lets you review your current and past orders, as well as gives you some easy-to-read text to catch up with the story in case you need to be refreshed on certain details. Several auto-save slots help you roll back any accidents you may have ended up doing , like losing an entire vehicle filled with cargo to a tar pit (couldn’t be me). It even has a summary of the first game’s events, so you’re not too confused when you start the second one.

Finally, there’s the online feature, where it all comes together. You see, building roads, railways, and other infrastructure is a daunting task for one person. For example, the largest load of metal you can bring is 400 units. You need this to develop roads and improve things like charging stations, as well as craft gear. You can bring maybe three or four of these with you without a vehicle. But that’s leaving out the idea of you farming this amount of metal. You’ll later find that to build roads, which is the best structure you can have in the game, you may need several thousand metal, along with other resources. Imagine having to spend so much time finding, retrieving and delivering that much material to complete a stretch of road. That feels disheartening to hear, right?

 

 

Well, with the help of the Chiral Network, that might not be as hard as it sounds. Once a region is connected, it is now going to share the contributions of other players within that region to your game session. I don’t know what the specific ratio is, but they can help out with how much you need to spend to get those things built. And you can help them in return. This isn’t just for roads or railways either, there can be bridges, ramps, watch towers, and more that can be shared between players to make everyone’s journey that much easier. You can even entrust cargo and equipment to terminals within your ship or other locations so that somebody else who might need gear can use that in their time of need. Or, maybe you just want to leave stickers and messages to leave hints along the way.

For my own game, somebody left me a fully kitted-out off-roader vehicle, which I eventually turned into my invincible tank that lets me carry all my cargo and can take me anywhere I want. This is how I dealt with most of the latter part of the game as I raced to the finish line. In return, I left weapons and other resources where people asked for them, and helped build roads that were convenient enough for me to do along the way. This helped me farm likes, which also plays as a multiplier when you’re getting graded for your deliveries.

As an open-world game, you can also enter the post-game after clearing the main story. Letting you do whatever you want, whether that be completing roads or railways, you decided to come back to later. Or link up areas left in the dark to the Chiral Network. Or simply do other fun activities that the game teaches you about later (find out!).

Finally, my favorite feature, the music player, is available at any point for you to use, so long as you’re not in combat and are in the chiral network, which was my primary motivation as to why I was trying to make sure I was under coverage all the time.

 

 

 

Conclusion

 

 

When you expose yourself to a lot of creative works, like games, movies, and more. You can start to tell the difference when a person truly involves themselves in whatever they’re working on. Like if they put a piece of themselves into it, you can see that. Like you can hear a promotional song for a product or some politician, and you get sick of it instantly. You know it’s just advertising to you. There are works that just try to please as many people as they can, and it doesn’t really work for anyone. But then you see something like Hideaki Anno’s Evangelion, or Gawr Gura’s Ash Again, and even Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. These works draw from something within their creators, and you can relate to it. As you experience what they show you, you can tell there’s another person on the opposite side of that creation.

This could be the fanboy in me, but I really did feel like Kojima was able to do this again with Death Stranding 2. If you research his pas,t you might be able to see the parallels he’s lined up in this story with his own life. If you played his work,s you’ll be able to easily recognize how he celebrates them. And if you at all understand his tastes, you’ll soon feel like he’s geeking out, gushing about things he likes in front of you for a huge part of this game. It comes off as honest, and by extension, authentic.

By the time you’ve reached the final chapters of this title. He knows he has you in his grasp, and he just starts playing you through all these crazy scenarios where I might as well be watching him set up big dioramas of action scenes and promptly asks you to go ahead and enjoy it. I was laughing, dropping my jaw in disbelief at what big action set-piece he has next. Where he would take the game from 0 to 10, and then 11, then why not? 12.

He and those around him have learned a lot about what they did right with the first Death Stranding game, and stuck to their guns while recognizing what they needed to improve on for the second installment. So what else can I say, but Kojima Productions has truly delivered?

 

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is a journey you should take. Scoring a 5/5.

 

Available exclusively on the PlayStation 5.