Death Stranding 2: On The Beach, Hideo Kojima’s newest… thing, has hiked its way onto PC. It gave me something of a revelation. I’ve realised I really like games that are ninety percent slow and meditative, but will suddenly go off the rails. Stuff like Pacific Drive or The Long Dark. In this case, I hiked my way carefully up a big hill, only to realise I’d blundered into a region of giant ghosts that sent me running off the hilltop and rolling right down to the bottom. It was great.
Death Stranding 2 seems fully aware of its meditative qualities too. It’s full of grand vistas, and has a haunting soundtrack provided by artists like Woodkid. As a keen hiker, pulling myself up a steep hill and being rewarded with a view of the world beyond is fantastic. For those of us that prefer something a bit faster paced, though, there is a good deal of action. I will say it doesn’t marry the two particularly well, but it’s a lovely package overall. I just wish it would stop trivialising its main features.
Going Down Under
I should say up front that Death Stranding 2 is my first proper Hideo Kojima game. I vaguely knew what to expect, but it feels very much like plugging into someone’s stream of consciousness. Here’s my best summing of the plot. After connecting up the whole of North America in the first game, Sam Porter Bridges is in hiding with his adopted baby, Lou. He’s soon tracked down though, and asked to connect up a chunk of Mexico and, after a great personal tragedy, do the same with Australia. His journey takes him across the continent linking up with friends and fighting against old enemies.
I love how weird everything is. Take the cast of characters that surround Sam. There’s Deadman, who is Frankenstein’s monster in a sharp suit; Heartman, a man whose heart cuts out at set intervals, Tarman, whose hand is lost and swimming through tar, and Dollman, who is a possessed doll. Meanwhile we’re constantly finding links to ‘Beaches’, which are similar to afterlives, and fighting giant, ghostly monsters. The first boss fight is against a giant slimy skull, with big tentacles coming off it. I love it.
That said, the writing is a bit weird too, and not in such a positive way. For one thing, you can basically separate all characters into good ones who are nice to each other, and bad ones that are not. There’s very little conflict within the group. Lots of emotions, but little friction. Sam himself mostly drifts about, with the vast majority of dialogue said at him, while he just nods along. It’s like everyone is vying for a turn to stand up and talk about themselves. Every time he links up a new node, the hologram there will vomit their backstory all over him. Bit odd, but the fascinating spin on the apocalypse makes it bearable.
Best Foot Forward
Gameplay-wise, Death Stranding 2 is very similar to the first game. We’re tasked with transporting cargo from one area to another, and linking up new sections of the continent as we do so. The cargo goes on your back, you draw the route and off you go. The actual hiking is great. Things feel weighty, so walking over uneven terrain can knock you off balance and send the precious cargo tumbling. Picking a sensible route is vital, particularly in the late game when you’re scrambling over mountains. A lot of the later missions are just one long route, too, and I really enjoyed the long treks.
Picking a sensible route is key, because there are other dangers than stacking it over a cliff. BTs, akin to something like ghosts, will beset you if you come near to them. Bandits will try and shoot you up and take your cargo. Combat is fairly basic third-person fare. You sneak kill as many bandits as you can and when that goes wrong, you pull out your biggest gun and open fire. Shooting feels quite nice and there’s a dizzying range of weapons to choose from. BTs, on the other hand, feel quite tense as you generally need to sneak around them. Generally, the trekking and the combat is married well.
You can pick a route that avoids them to spare your cargo, or be brave and push through. Ever so often though, it forces you into combat, which I liked less. The boss fights especially, while functionally nice, felt a bit out of place. A lot just have you shooting giant glowing weak spots. An odd action focus for an otherwise slow paced game. Most annoying is a repeated section where you have to fight a Solid Snake cosplayer. I will stress that, mechanically, it’s not bad at all. Sam’s dodge is a little pathetic, but it’s serviceable otherwise. It just felt like another, more generic game kept intruding on my Death Stranding 2 experience.
Death Stranding 2 – Calm And Chaotic
I don’t think Death Stranding 2 agrees with me though, as it keeps handing me tools that trivialise the bits I like. The massive range of guns and tools all felt redundant when pretty much every enemy went down to the basic assault rifle. What’s more, I was a little disappointed by the focus on vehicles. Balancing the load on my back felt like it had a sense of risk, but by the mid-game I was just loading things into my pick-up off roader and slowly trundling to my goal. It still felt meditative, but it almost felt like cheating. Especially when it came to hazardous materials.
Still, these gripes aside, I did very much enjoy Death Stranding 2. Giving us the overall aim of linking up Australia, and showing it all connect up on the map, made the deliveries a lot more fun. It even does the multiplayer well. Structures you build, like bridges and generators, can show up in other people’s worlds. As can their paths carved through the snow. It brought in a great unspoken feeling of camaraderie, which helps reinforce the themes brought across by the story’s characters.
In the end Death Stranding 2 really hit that note of calm-chaos I was looking for. Driving my pick-up through the torrential rain, listening to some of Woodkid’s finest, and seeing the lights of my destination grow closer was a great feeling. Then I’d be drawn into a firefight, or a desperate run from BTs and it would fall into chaos. I was never bored by Death Stranding 2 and the bonkers story kept me invested right to the end. While all its parts are not perfectly lashed together, Death Stranding 2 is one hell of a package.
