Gideon’s Perspective
I think my biggest worry going into Death Stranding 2 was the fear that it would stray too far from the original. That fear was unfounded as Death Stranding 2 is still a weird game about making deliveries amid a world filled with beached ghosts, pod babies, and Troy Baker having an absolute blast playing one of the strangest roles ever cast.
You can find a video version of this review on YouTube.
The problem is, Death Stranding 2 is a terrible game compared to the first one. It’s a huge downgrade, and for every step forward it takes five steps backwards. Death Stranding was, and is, one of my favorite games of all time, and I’m utterly soul-crushed by the sequel. I haven’t been this disappointed in a game since Spore was released.
I’m going to be a bit unprofessional here, but I can’t fathom the fact that Death Stranding 2 scored so much higher than the original. The only thing I can think of is that reviewers rushed the main story and left the score due to the emotional impact the game left on them. The story is, in fact, fantastic in all the weird ways that only Kojima could manage.
However, it’s a video game, not a movie, and despite the fact that Kojima games are always cut-scene-heavy. You still spend 80% of the time engaging with the gameplay, and in Death Stranding 2, the gameplay is anything but engaging.
| Gideon’s Bias | Death Stranding 2 Information |
|---|---|
| Review Copy Used: No | Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment |
| Hours Played: 60+ | Type: Full Game |
| Reviewed On: PlayStation 5 | Platforms: PlayStation 5 |
| Fan of Genre: Yes | Genre: Third Person Open World |
| Mode Played: Brutal | Price: $69.99 |
Plenty of Hammers, No Nails.
The core gameplay loop of Death Stranding is making deliveries. To do so, you need to plan out a route through treacherous terrain, hostile territory, and timefall-ridden areas full of BTs. The planning and execution are the game. You don’t simply walk or drive from one area to another. You have to contend with difficult terrain, raging rivers, tall cliffs, and a variety of other hazards. At least, that’s how the first game was.
Death Stranding 2 has all of those things but outright ignores them. Almost every location in the game has a relatively flat path straight to it. You can make any delivery just by holding the left stick or by driving a truck. There is nothing tricky about it, even hostile areas can easily be evaded with almost no tools whatsoever. Death Stranding 2 completely ignores its own gameplay loop.
It’s a game that is completely disengaged from its own mechanics. It throws numerous tools at you, tools that would be very fun to use, that you absolutely never, ever need. Cliffs and rocky terrain are almost always avoided by following the most logical path that’s already laid out for you. Vehicles can drive through rivers of any depth, and if you happen to equip any type of exoskeleton, you rarely stumble, even if your stamina is depleted.
Could you take an alternate path, purposely making it harder for yourself? Yeah, you could. But that’s awful game design. The equivalent would be playing Doom, and all the enemies fall down without you ever pulling the trigger, unless you went out of your way to find some longer path where they don’t. It makes no sense.
The first Death Stranding was never perfect in this regard. I even made a whole list of house rules I used to improve the game. However, such a list wouldn’t even help in Death Stranding 2’s case, because the problem is built into the design of the map.
The map is designed to allow you to beeline to your destinations with minimal effort. All of the friction that the first game at least tried to place in your way is gone entirely. You don’t need to prepare for a delivery, you can just go. There is a huge irony here that haters called the first Death Stranding a walking simulator. That was always a disingenuous take on the game, as there were a lot of logistics and careful execution into its “walking”.
Death Stranding 2 is quite literally a walking simulator, or driving simulator if you wish. You can ignore every mechanic in the game by simply holding down the left stick or the gas pedal.
Death Stranding 2 also touts natural disasters as a new feature, and outside of story missions, they barely exist. The only bushfire I ever encountered was scripted. Earthquakes often happen, but they largely do nothing except make you stumble. I saw rocks fall one time and a single avalanche. The most common disaster you come across is that rivers sometimes expand due to the rain. Which doesn’t matter because you can drive or wade through them all the same.
Should We Have Connected?
Like the first game, you can connect online and come across cargo, requests, and structures left by other players. Just like the first game, I found the feature to be rather intrusive. By playing fully online, any friction in the first game was often greatly lessened or erased by other players’ structures and paths.
In Death Stranding 2, the entire concept is laughable. Initially, I tried leaving it on, but it became a cluttered mess quickly, so I turned the setting to only share some. However, a good portion of roads still ended up being built before the game ever even introduced me to roads.
Here’s the thing, in the first Death Stranding, the online feature had its moments. There were times were I came across a trike, generator, or timefall shelter at the perfect moment, and it made me appreciate the connection. In Death Stranding 2, there is no friction, so those moments never happen. You can’t appreciate the help of another player if you never needed it in the first place.
One big thing is that players can request gear and supplies, but why? First of all, you never need them. Second of all, I spent the entire game so packed full of resources that I could always make anything I could possibly need anyway. It just makes no sense.
I ended up turning off the online component entirely, just like I did in my second playthrough of the original. That stopped other players from solving my obstacles for me, but it didn’t change the fact that I never faced any in the first place.
Combative
One of the few improvements Death Stranding 2 made over the original is the combat. You have a lot more options for both stealth and direct combat, and you no longer have to contend with that weird radar ping the MULES used to do. The portions where you face human enemies can very much feel like a Metal Gear game.
But once again, it lacks any kind of friction, even on the brutal difficulty. Weapons that were overpowered in the first game, like the Bola Gun, are still laughably broken. However, pretty much any weapon you use will allow you to blow through any enemy camp with very little resistance.
You feel like a one-man army, and the game itself even treats you like one, with new elimination missions that feel thematically out of place for Sam, treating him like a soldier rather than a porter.
The BTs put up a slightly bigger fight, in the very rare cases that you actually see one. The BTs have much less of a presence in Death Stranding 2. What few areas of them exist are often far out of the way and relegated to side content. That’s disappointing, as BTs are a core part of the entire game’s theme.
You do, of course, have Kojima’s signature boss battles, which are very cool. However, you aren’t allowed to fail most of them. If you die, you actually don’t. You just pop right back into the fight via Sam’s repatriation ability. Once again, not an ounce of friction, regardless of difficulty level.
Verdict
I loved the original Death Stranding. It wasn’t perfect, but I could accept its imperfections as nothing like it had ever existed before. I expected the sequel to iron out those aspects, not leave them in place and go in reverse.
I’ve never seen a game so utterly disengaged from its own core mechanics, and I’m disappointed more reviewers didn’t call it out. No other game would get away with it to the same degree as Death Stranding 2 did.
I’m upset because I want to love it, I should love it. But it seems that chasing mass appeal once again wrecked the integrity of another game. That’s the only reason I could imagine that the game was stripped down so hard, to appeal to people who never liked the first one.
I wouldn’t think that catering to a new audience in a sequel to a game with a convoluted story about beaches, ghosts, bridge babies, and people with names like Heartman, Deadman, and Die Hard Man would be a good idea, but look at the review scores, maybe I’m wrong. All I know is that if you didn’t play Death Stranding 1, you ain’t gonna understand a single thing in Death Stranding 2. The in-game recap is woefully inadequate.
The story is emotional, gripping, absolutely insane, and truly great. However, when I can experience the best part of a game through a YouTube video, I find that to be a problem.
Death Stranding 2 keeps the spirit of the original by continuing to be a game about deliveries. However, it threw away its soul by removing any and all friction involved in those deliveries. Instead of overcoming obstacles, the most direct path rarely has any, and the entire game is designed to allow you to ignore its core gameplay loop without engaging with what the game actually is. I can’t overstate just how disappointed I am with this sequel.
