I’ve finished up my Yeah Nah Gaming review.
It made me feel a bit ‘hinged’. Especially with how much I’ve been looking forward to this game. I mean I’m not a door for heaven’s sake! So let’s lean into the insanity of what it’s like to love and play Death Stranding 2: On The Beach by Hideo Kojima. And I’m going to try doing that by cobbling together my list of thoughts I had made while playing it.
MOST CINEMATIC OPENING EVER. 11 months after the events of Death Stranding, Sam and Lou have settled into a simple life. We’re on a mountain range, making our way home—backed by a SOUNDTRACK THAT STILL ABSOLUTELY KILLS1. Arranged by Woodkid, who also appeared in Death Stranding, does a great job of producing the melancholic feeling found in a world where we desperately want to reconnect.
DAMN, THE DECIMA ENGINE DOESN’T MESS AROUND. While this wonderful soundtrack plays, the mountain range shows the first of many new environmental effects that can occur. The first game did have avalanches, timefall and minor rockslides, but this one now has full blown landslides. And this is thanks to earthquakes that will randomly happen in different areas of the map. Timefall can cause flooding, while bushfires are caused by Beached Things (BT’s). Then there’s also sandstorms in the desert and lower vision at higher altitudes. All just happening even if you’re not near them which adds a new liveliness to the world. And I SURVIVED MOST OF THESE IN MY FIRST 45 MINUTES.
THE GAME HAS ALREADY BUILT ON THE FORMER.
Providing MORE INTUITIVE AND QUICKER WAYS TO MANAGE YOUR CARGO, AND THEREFORE YOUR JOURNEY. It’s things like MAP ROUTING. This IS A GOD SEND. It worked in Death Stranding, BUT IT IS BETTER in On The Beach. It gives players the ability to mark and link multiple paths so you never feel lost while out on deliveries. And thanks to this new way to digest information, it makes NETWORKS OUTSIDE OF CHIRAL RANGE LESS SCARY. Because you can see your escape more easily. And I assume you have a background in Death Stranding which helps a lot too.
MY BELOVED POO AND PEE GRENADES ARE GONE. That might sound weird, but it’s a first game thing and makes complete sense. In the 11 months since the first game, a new company known as APAC has strived to keep the connection of the UCA intact. Which means they’ve created new ways to take down BT’s without requiring excrement from Sam. And the time that has passed is also the reason Sam has managed to forget the majority of the things he learnt first time round.
COMPARED TO THE ORIGINAL, AND EVEN THE DIRECTOR’S CUT FOR PLAYSTATION 5, THE LOAD TIME IS INSANE. You simply open the game, select CONTINUE from the menu and YOU’RE BACK AT THE LAST SPOT you saved. Which reinforces the EMPHASIS ON OPTIMIZATION. EVERYTHING JUST KEEPS GOING. IT’S AMAZING. This also hands over to FAST TRAVEL2. New transponders take over jumping duties from Fragile, who supplied this in the first game. But we also now have the DHV-MAGELLAN.
This TAR-DIVING, FUTURISTIC SUB…SPACESHIP DRIVEN BY THE DIRECTOR OF MAD MAX, acts as a sort of forward operating base. It can meet you at major locations to provide you with quarters to rest in. A garage. And resources meaning it acts as a sort-of traveling Distribution Center. These locations being the major outposts Sam could catch a breath at. And I think this supports the core of this game and the way it parallels the first.
CAN THE MANY TAKE THE FEELING OF CONNECTION, AND ACTION IT FURTHER?
Feeling REWARDING FOR VETERANS AND INVITING FOR NEW PLAYERS, On The Beach does a great job of explaining this onslaught of information without OVERCATERING TO EITHER AUDIENCE. Veterans tried to drive up the snowy slopes of the first game. Death Stranding 2 adds spikes to tires to make it easier to do so. And to offset that, certain slopes can cause your vehicle to slide backward, even if they have tread meaning both vets and newbies will find pros and cons to it. YOU CAN also PICK UP CARGO AND CHIRAL CRYSTALS IN VEHICLES NOW. But you can’t do this in trucks until you get a certain piece of equipment. Again, rewarding for vets and noobs. And it also flows through to VARIETY IN MISSIONS and how ‘Likes’ are rewarded. While main orders have impact, the standard orders have as much impact to help you grow your connections and therefore your skills and tools. And it’s even more noticeable, as entrusted cargo will show up at its location, rewarding you with a lower ‘Like’ count, but ultimately adding to your overall gains.
CAMO is now part of the colorways for your suit. Pair this with the VR MISSIONS and certain weapons which pop up, you can see why when asked that this game feels like Metal Gear in EDGE magazine 411, Kojima answered with:
I felt that myself when I played the game. When you return to your bed on the Magellan, it’s the same feeling as returning to the plant in Metal Gear.”
Hideo Kojima, GamesRadar+
The aforementioned certain weapons also pair well with utilities which make the JOURNEY MORE COMBATIVE.
No doubt responding to some of the feedback from Death Stranding, there’s more engagements, and more ways to fight. Being able to remove your backpack to make you lighter is a welcome change. And growing Sam’s stats through in-game actions means everything can make a difference to each encounter. So if you want to fight a BT head on, you can. But you also weave in and out avoiding them at the same time. And the tar encounters where a BT catches you, may you reward with a Pokémon-like item that also resonates with the parts-Ultraman and parts-Kaiju. OH! There’s also a Kojima code situation, which I appreciated as a fan of the famous CODEC code from Metal Gear Solid.
Outside of wondering why SO MANY MEN IN THIS GAME HAVE MUSTACHES, THE PACE IS MUCH BETTER. MAIN DELIVERIES NEVER REALLY FEEL STRETCHED OUT3, unless it’s to provide TENSION for the current episode you’re playing through. Episodes are how the main story is laid out for players. I enjoyed this a lot because I love DELIVERING BY CHOICE, NOT BECAUSE I HAVE TO. And the FINAL EPISODES ARE AMAZING. The Decima engine got to shine toward the end again too, providing an incredible WATER EFFECT which has to be SEEN TO BE BELIEVED. It’s a ROLLING STREAM OF PAYOFFS AND TWISTS, which left me CRYING MY EYES OUT FOR THE LAST HOUR. Because for me it felt like the games’ opening had taken away from our resolution of trauma and belonging in the first game. But it instead delivers something completely different where “you will never be alone” has a major impact to both Sam and the player.
Kojima has done it again.
Making a wholly more accessible title with the most wild of premises, sees a chance that this game may get more fans, and even more people seeing Kojima’s many statements on both past and current political climates around the world (there is one particularly bold statement in the concluding missions that just made me go…”YES KOJIMA YOU MAD MAN”). I may come back and do a follow-up…thoughts post? Because not being able to talk about the wild stuff Kojima Productions does just has me fizzing like I’m a beached thing ready to break through.
Because he really said “F*ck Konami”. And may have left it open enough for us to see a Death Stranding 3 in future.
- Editor’s note: We went with all caps for our list of thoughts, haha. ↩︎
- See! The random caps make it seem unhinged! ↩︎
- Damn, this really was a sentence from my list of thoughts huh? ↩︎
I've been wondering how many reviewers managed to push past the 30 hours our guidelines recommended. Because I completed the game in 40 and loved it. BUT...
My god, everything past it has been an incredible journey on just how much they took from Death Stranding and IMPROVED UPON IT. Death Stranding 2: On The Beach is my kind of 10 out of 10.
