Death Stranding 2: On The Beach unfolds with deliberate, slow grace. The opening moments depict Sam Porter Bridges (Norman Reedus) and his adoptive daughter, Lou, embarking on a reflective journey home, navigating a breathtakingly photorealistic landscape bathed in the golden hues of a setting sun. A gentle, melancholic song by Woodkid drifts across the scenery, perfectly underscoring the serenity of the moment as Sam engages in endearing conversation with Lou, her delighted giggles echoing across the landscape.
As the pair advances, the weather takes a turn for the worse, the scorching sunlight giving way to a deluge of rain that lashes down. Rivulets of water weave through jagged rock formations, and slick mud clings to Sam’s legs. The meticulous environmental detail is so exquisitely rendered that I half expected David Attenborough to start narrating, extolling the majesty of this digital wilderness. The cinematography in this game is superb – so good that I’ve taken hundreds of pictures during my playthrough, and I don’t usually use an in-game photo mode.
Off on another delivery
The introduction leads into a visit by the enigmatic Fragile (Léa Seydoux), who chain-smokes Gauloises with theatrical fervour to remind us she’s really, really, French. Their exchange sets in motion Sam’s next objective: a mission to Mexico, the border of which is conveniently located a short stroll away. Once again, Sam must undertake the Herculean task of reconnecting isolated Mexican settlements to the Chiral Network (WiFi that uses the land of the dead rather than cables – just go with it), mirroring the sprawling odyssey across the continental United States that defined the first instalment.
Mexico functions primarily as a four-hour introduction, essentially a prologue that doubles as a tutorial for those unfamiliar with the mechanics of the original game. It meticulously walks players through the fundamentals of arranging cargo, constructing roads, and evaluating terrain — every single aspect that returning players already mastered in the first instalment is re-explained through methodical missions. While there are nominal additions, the most conspicuous change is that Sam now carries a child, thereby losing his ability to detect Beached Things (BTs) at a distance. In addition – prepare yourselves for this groundbreaking revelation — an experience points system has been added, offering marginal enhancements.
At this point, I began to grow concerned for what was to come. While there are a few moments of Kojima’s typical absurdity, there is also an awful lot of repetition from the first game, and while that is not a bad thing – I did give that game 10/10, after all – it did leave me feeling disappointed.
The Plate Gate that allows travel between Mexico and Australia.
The repetition is most obvious in the graphics and audio, which remain largely indistinguishable from its predecessor. The models and animations have undergone little to no evolution, the sound effects are recycled, and Mexico and every other region you traverse bears a striking uniformity. Deserts, forests, grasslands, and snowy peaks are all represented, yet they are so generically rendered that, without a label on a map, it would be impossible to say if you are walking to Mexico City, Melbourne, or Manchester. A core appeal of post-apocalyptic settings lies in the thrill of uncovering iconic landmarks in ruin – tangible remnants of a once-familiar world. As some pre-Death Stranding architecture remains intact within the game it would have helped to include the decimated husk of the Sydney Opera House in a distant corner of the map, simply to provide a geographic anchor.
The majority of its innovations are, in essence, minor refinements of mechanics already present in the original game. Take, for instance, the Cargo Cannons. They return from the original, but can now fire grenades so you can use them as improvised weaponry. While mildly amusing, this is hardly the kind of inventive thinking one has come to expect from a Kojima production.
Tar Man meets the utterly adorable Tar Kitty.
Even mission design suffers from repetition. The ridiculous timed pizza delivery returns, complete with identical constraints: keep the box perfectly level and arrive within a strict time limit. Was there truly no time over five years to reimagine this task with something more novel? A precariously stacked tower of gourmet burgers, perhaps, or a box of delicately fragranced chicken wings susceptible to jostling? Instead, we are given a recycled objective that reinforces the feeling that this sequel is struggling to forge a distinct identity beyond that of its predecessor.
What I’m playing is a retread of the same surreal Kojima flourishes: infants sealed in artificial wombs, viscous tar-like apparitions, spectral entities lurking in the mist. All were new and exciting in the first game, but now they barely register a reaction. From a world-building perspective, the stagnation is at least narratively justified—the sequel unfolds a mere nine months after the events of Death Stranding—but from a creative standpoint the experience feels, and I can scarcely believe I’m applying this word to a Kojima production, indolent.
The team discuss their next move.
The entire Mexico segment is narratively dispensable, save for a fleeting appearance by Higgs (Troy Baker), and once a pivotal moment takes Sam toward Australia, the game reverts to the precise framework of Death Stranding. Once again, Sam is equipped with a Bridge Baby (BB) contained in a pod and once again, the player is tasked with methodical traversal, network reconnection, and infrastructural expansion. It’s not until ten hours in that the actual narrative begins to emerge with the introduction of Tomorrow (Elle Fanning) and Neil (Luca Marinelli), the latter assuming a role strikingly similar to that of Mads Mikkelsen in the first game: a morally ambiguous figure trapped in a Chiral purgatory, this time resembling a nightmare version of Mexico, who pursues Sam with a battalion of spectral soldiers. Soon after, we meet Rainy (Shioli Kutsuna), and if you fail to deduce her abilities just before embarking on a mission involving a forest fire, congratulations, the ensuing reveal may still surprise you. The rest of us are unlikely to be so fortunate.
Sam goes surfing on a coffin.
While there’s so much familiarity, your gradual expansion of the Chiral Network and infrastructure is still strangely satisfying, and before long I found myself engaging in side missions and obsessively completing every stretch of road. Alongside all the returning tools from DS1 is the DHV Magellan, a tar-based craft that appears near settlements once they are brought online. This mobile base allows for instantaneous transport between regions, including all stored cargo and even vehicles. Instead of laboriously driving across terrain, I could load up a truck with materials, drive it into the DHV Magellan, and teleport across the map in moments, although the game does disable this mode of transport at key points so you do have to do some of the hard work. Another substantial addition is the monorail system: construct the full line, and you and an impressive amount of cargo can go soaring above hostile landscapes with ease.
Your progress is still bound to the same upgrades as found in DS1, even if that makes little sense when Australia is meant to exist within the same Chiral Network as the US – surely Sam should be able to fabricate everything already? A few additions stand out though, such as the introduction of teleportation devices and, most delightfully, a high-velocity Coffin Surfboard. Yes, a coffin that doubles as a surfboard, capable of gliding at great speed across any terrain including water, snow and tar. During combat, you can even leap inside and momentarily escape into the realm of the dead.
Neil, his soldiers, and an awful lot of fireworks. You have to see this in motion it is spectacular!
The asynchronous multiplayer connectivity found in Death Stranding returns in its sequel, allowing players to once again encounter structures, signs, and vehicles left behind by others as they traverse the world. This seems to be have been significantly amplified with overly generous results. Strategic mission planning becomes redundant when ladders, ropes, and other structures appear with uncanny precision wherever you might require them. I quickly abandoned the effort of carefully equipping myself, knowing that, inevitably, another player would have placed the precise tool or building I needed at the optimal location. There is an option to limit the amount of help you receive, so I suggest you turn that on from the start.
Combat encounters remain a highlight and raiding human encampments provide thrills and spectacle. The gunplay feels substantial and tactile—evocative of Killzone in its weight—and the enemy AI behaves with satisfying realism. Higgs’ robotic legions are deployed sparingly, but when they do appear the mix of humanoid and bestial adversaries brings a welcome unpredictability to encounters. These animalistic foes pounce from afar or dart past you with sudden ferocity making them a very different enemies from the humanoids.
Is this Mexico, the USA, Australia, or Croydon? Who can tell.
There are hints at new gameplay mechanics, though they often falter in execution. One mission tasked me with recapturing an escaped kangaroo for Chvrches , the real-world pop group who make a suitably surreal cameo. I had high hopes: perhaps a mini-game involving stealth or pursuit but I instead walked up to the animal, wrangled it into a container, and completed the objective. Likewise there are now Gate Quakes which shudder the land and can trigger an avalanche or rockfall. However. most of the time the screen shakes and not a single pebble moves, a random boulder plummeting down a hill would have added some excitement, even if it was off in the distance.
BTs, the tar-drenched phantoms that were a constant presence in DS1 are less of a threat as vast swaths of the map are devoid of of them. I found myself missing the tension of barrelling down a highway only to be abruptly confronted by squid-like terror erupting from the earth. When they do appear, there are some new variants, the most compelling of which is a colossal winged entity that soars overhead, deploying explosive payloads and countermeasures with the sophistication of a modern aircraft. Their seemingly erratic design belies a deeper narrative significance which is revealed in an epic battle near the game’s conclusion.
More deliveries than Amazon.
Given just how deeply reminiscent so much of this game is to its predecessor, I feared the experience might conclude without anything exceptional. It’s a sequel, so there’s bound to be common ground, but it feels like the second episode of a TV series rather than a blockbuster movie sequel. That is until Hideo Kojima metaphorically bursts onto the stage after 30 hours and the game descended into glorious, unhinged chaos. The story, which had until that point been a personal tale with subtlety and emotional restraint, suddenly swerves into a realm of outrageous, genre-defying spectacle. A late-game revelation left me so stupefied I had to pause for half an hour and process exactly what I had been told. Somehow, it makes sense within Kojima’s meticulously crafted mythology, but it is unquestionably batshit insane. Even if you had a hundred years, you would never guess what had been going on.
Death Stranding 2 ends on a high – a deliriously absurd, emotionally resonant, and breathtakingly bold high. I whooped. I laughed. I cursed. I even shed a tear. It was, without question, the most fun I’ve had in a game this year. Troy Baker absolutely steals the show in these final hours, delivering a performance that channels the anarchic menace of Heath Ledger’s Joker, amplified to eleventy-stupid. Norman Reedus, largely reserved throughout the journey and communicating in terse grunts, also steps into the spotlight with a moment of genuine pathos and gravitas to deliver at just the right time.
