My opening moments with Death Stranding 2: On The Beach are simple but strong. A sprawling desert. A flowing river. A windy canyon. A rocky mountain. Fluttering strings. A personal but palpable sense of relief that we have another Death Stranding to play. Norman Reedus, playing Sam Porter Bridges again, comes into focus and kisses Lou on her forehead. It’s obvious they’ve bonded in the eleven months that have passed since the first Death Stranding, but the two need to get home.
Following an incredibly cinematic and yet somehow understated introduction, the camera pans behind Sam as he gets up. The mountains ahead of him stand tall, implicitly challenging the player. This is Death Stranding 2: On The Beach, and supplemented by some incredible music, it’s hard not to appreciate the ambition of Kojima Productions’ first sequel. The fact we’re even getting a sequel feels like a fever dream at this point, and it’s in these opening moments that it becomes obvious what Hideo Kojima wanted to accomplish with this sequel.
While there will be inevitable comparisons to Metal Gear Solid, I’ll mince no words. Death Stranding 2: On The Beach is still Death Stranding at its core. Your objectives remain the same – deliver cargo, connect people to the chiral network and deal with everything in between. In this incredible opening, the game makes clear how things will be different.
THE CHEAPEST PRICE: $99 WITH FREE SHIPPING FROM AMAZON
First off, the world we’ll be exploring is new. We’ve moved beyond the UCA and onto a new continent to connect. But this continent is different. A few steps onto this rocky mountain range that I’m traipsing, and it starts to collapse. It’s a “gate quake”, a new event that sees the mountain in front of me shifting and sliding as it collapses under the pressure of this new world. It’s a scripted event, but it permeates what will become a running theme throughout Death Stranding 2 – the world is so much more alive.
It’s an introduction that is easily one of Kojima’s sharpest, offering a vertical slice of what’s to come from the rest of the game. It’s larger than life, equally thrilling and inspiring, owing largely to an incredible song selection that perfectly establishes the sequel’s new mood, tone and setting less than a few minutes in.
And with the mention of minutes, I think the most resounding thing I step away from Death Stranding 2 with after almost forty hours with the game is clear. Kojima has refined his craft. While the world is still weird and whacky, the game’s pacing is much better focused overall than any of his games. While I liked the original Death Stranding, the beginning and end of the game were loaded with heaps of cinematics. Without the baggage needed to set up this world that Kojima, Shinkawa and others have created, Death Stranding 2 can hit the ground running. It feels more aware of the issues the original game had and does a great job of peppering just the right amount of story between the gameplay segments to keep you hooked.
And while the plot is important, it can’t be stated enough just how much of an improvement this is upon the original formula from a gameplay perspective. Kojima’s intent with Death Stranding 2 was to include more of everything from the original game, resulting in more choices for the players and how they approach their deliveries. But if you want to go full-on combat mode, you can. It’s a much more engaging and viable option for those wanting to take cocky cargo bandits head-on. Improvements to AI also make stealth a lot more feasible, though so is avoidance. These choices lead to a game that provides less friction between the player and itself, but it also means the game is a lot easier to get into without sacrificing the spirit of the original’s unique concept.
That’s not to say it will be a breeze, however, as the world of Death Stranding 2 does feel like it’s plotting against you sometimes. While I dropped my cargo less than in Death Stranding, there were times when rising rivers or floods would destroy structures I’d built or relied upon as a result of heavy rainfall. The aforementioned gate quakes would also show no mercy when it comes to destroying your structures too. Hell, even if a sandstorm starts and you find yourself in it, Sam becomes harder to balance and steer. The weather feels dynamic, but not over-the-top to the point where it feels gamey, which helps lend a sense of realism to the world.
Similarly, major improvements to Death Stranding 2’s combat are immediately obvious. Put simply, it feels good to shoot at things in Death Stranding 2, a sense of mechanical satisfaction that I ironically haven’t felt in a game since Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. That doesn’t make the game like MGS, mind you, but it does mean that I wasn’t dreading an awkward encounter where I would just lob grenades or spam my strand (excuse me) like in the first game.
The improved combat dovetails beautifully with the game’s boss battles as well. I’ve only sampled about four of them (one of which was optional), but they feel a lot more considered than those found in Death Stranding. There was a clear way to defeat them beyond just shooting at them, and many of the boss battles feel like a more considered balance between those you’d find in the Horizon games or even Zelda. And, of course, Yoji Shinkawa’s effortlessly haunting designs do great work here to sell the idea of these otherworldly beings.
And while I won’t talk about it and you won’t see it here, one of the encounters I played was one of the most stunning and visually spectacular I’ve ever experienced in a video game – and I’m excited to see what else the team has up their sleeve given how strong it is visually.
Beyond bosses, though, threats take on more forms than the traditional bandits and BTs – there are chiral creatures now, too. Some of them look like bats, swooping at you to feed on any battery you might be carrying. Others look like little jellyfish, plodding around on the beach until you disturb them, either intentionally or accidentally. While the threat of the bandits and the BTs are still here, being swarmed by these little creatures for disturbing their flock can be just as harrowing, if not slightly intimidating.
Though we can’t continue to ignore the elephant in the room – it’s wild to think that the majority of Death Stranding 2 takes place in Australia. You can read more about how much I appreciated the Australianisms in the game elsewhere, but it’s a unique take on the continent that manages to filter our geography through the distorted apocalyptic lens of Death Stranding. While the original UCA barely resembled the United States, instead resembling Iceland more than anything, Death Stranding 2’s Australia looks and feels like Australia at times. Clearly inspired by the remote mid-north of the country, it feels like an earnest attempt to replicate the country compared to the original game’s UCA.
And you can’t help but feel a sense of bizarrely placed pride in Australia being the setting for Kojima’s latest adventure. The Australianisms are peppered effortlessly throughout the dialogue, flavour text, and item descriptions. That sense of camaraderie, of the Aussie spirit, is captured perfectly in the game. It really feels like a perfect setting for a game of this ilk, and it’s an arid playground that I’m excited to see Kojima continue playing in when the game releases next month.
Despite all my optimistic assertions, I’d be lying if I didn’t have some (admittedly mild) concerns. While Death Stranding 2’s narrative is compelling, it feels very modular. I have concerns that, having begun development during COVID, this might be an intentional artistic decision. But I do hope that eventually, Kojima will find a way to masterfully bring all of this together, hopefully with a lot more elegance than the original Death Stranding or the controversial Metal Gear Solid 4. Given the strides Kojima and his team have already taken in my time with the game, I trust him. He’s vehemently self-aware of his shortcomings here and puts tremendous work into correcting them without betraying the spirit of his creativity.
But even if Kojima doesn’t stick the landing, I have faith that Death Stranding 2: On The Beach will be just as wild, wacky, and fun to play as the original. It’s already a better game mechanically than the first, eschewing tedium and monotony for a systems-first type of design that affords players the freedom to truly make the experience their own. It’s the kind of sequel that is so confident in itself that it easily eclipses its predecessor. It’s hard to imagine Death Stranding 2: On The Beach will be anything but one of Kojima’s magnum opuses.
So far, Kojima has pontificated in trailers as to whether we should have connected. Death Stranding 2: On The Beach could not exist without Death Stranding, so while I’ve yet to understand the narrative implications of the statement, I can confidently say that I’m glad we did, this is easily Kojima and his team at some of their best.
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach launches on June 26th 2025 for PlayStation 5. The cheapest copy is available for $99 with free shipping from Amazon.
The author travelled to Tokyo, Japan, as a guest of Kojima Productions.
