DEATH STRANDING 2: ON THE BEACH

I just finished the game and wow... this was something else. It took everything about the first game and either doubled down or improved on what made it so unique. Absolutely fantastic. And the story! Well. Let’s just say it's one of the most raw and emotional games I have ever played.

It's not a walking simulator, it's a frustration simulator. I love Kojima-isms. I can deal with the weirdness, the little winks, jabs that waste a little bit of your time but make you smile - love all that stuff. Well, I loved it in Metal Gear Solid games, because I knew it was a brief detour from a solid 3rd person stealth action game that was actually fun to play. That is not the case with the Death Stranding games. The Death Stranding games are unplayable. The gameplay is a 0 / 10. It bills itself as a "walking simulator", but the gameplay simply does not back this up. You can hold triggers when prompted (and it will prompt you every single time you need to do so) to sturdy yourself when you're about to fall. That's about the only "walking simulator" mechanic I can detect here. The rest of it is just an avalanche of gameplay mechanics that make no sense, implemented with a Kojima-ized physics engine that defies any sort of logic and is certainly not any fun to figure out. When I play Gran Turismo (a driving "simulator"), I expect that the cars' behavior will approximate real-world physics. The fun is in how I can master the subtleties of movement to achieve better results. With Death Stranding, the physics are basically carried over from MGS. They were fine in MGS. If you throw a flash grenade at an enemy, that enemy does a front-flip before falling to the ground with stars floating over its head. Hilarious, enjoyable. No notes. In a "walking simulator", you are just walking along, and then I suppose the ground slopes a bit, so you jump forward, out of control - I suppose it's meant to be "stumbling", and you just accelerate for no discernable reason before stopping way further than you expected to. When driving a vehicle, if you encounter the smallest pebble on the ground, your vehicle unexpectedly comes to a full stop and bounces inexplicably before allowing you to basically continue as you were before. How should I correct my driving to account for these obstacles? What is the game punishing me for? I've finally realized it's for Kojima's personal vendetta against gamers. There's something he's angry about, he thinks we're all dumb, and maybe a lot of us are. But some of us want to experience a great game by a legendary auteur. We don't deserve to be punished. Anyway, to close out my frustration with the vehicles - they're too slow, they are floaty and unrealistic, and worst of all just zero fun to drive. They also allow a player to completely bypass anything approaching a "walking simulator" - you can just drive to point B, snipe all of the enemies (the game is nice enough to slow down time for 5 entire seconds every. single. time. you kill an enemy). Let's dive into the "combat". I don't know what they were going for. I have poured a few dozen hours into these games (yes, I have spent a lot of time with a game with 0 / 10 gameplay, but there is a reason for this), and I still don't really get how to best do the combat in these games. The shooting is so easy it's effortless. Aim for the head, pop them a couple of times, the game slows down time (I suppose it's supposed to be 'awesome'?), repeat 12-15 times and you get a little notification: "enemy base neutralized"). For the BT's - I simply have no idea what they're going for with that. You can hold your breath, but it does absolutely nothing. It has no effect. It slows you down to a crawl, and there's a beeping sound so you're forced to release the hold on your breath. All you accomplish is slowing yourself down and allowing the BT to catch up to you. The only way to deal with BT's is to lob grenades at them, which just kills them instantly, or run away through sludge. The first time, it was scary and stressful. But you realize there's no depth to it. It's just trudging through mud. Sometimes the BT catches you, sometimes it doesn't, determined on the basis of the game's whimsy. This brings me to the most egregious sin this game visits upon its victims: the UI. This is where my theory that Kojima hates whoever is playing these games has the most evidence. On any given screen, there are 5-15 different focal points of each image. There are multiple identical objective markers, countless icons that have no immediate relevance to what you're doing in the game, menu after menu after menu to accomplish the most basic and repetitive of tasks, needlessly complicated interfaces, just flashing nonsense everywhere you look. And the characters, the tutorials - just never cease. Big, blue tutorial messages that you CAN'T CLOSE just pop up, almost as though they detected you might start having fun and were like "we need to put a stop to that". There's no "immersion mode" - the only mode is "anti-immersion mode". And all of the notifications - do you think, if I'm 16 hours into Death Stranding 2, that I have a bustling social life? You think this game, with 45 notifications per minute about fellow Porters picking up or dropping off materials, repairing bridges or structures (all of which are essentially useless), liking various things I've done, text messages from characters - you think this is the cure? I'm playing this because I want to be lost in a carefully crafted world, enthralled by a unique and compelling story - why are you giving me so many damn notifications? The problem with this game is - the aesthetic, the music, the graphics, the voice acting, the cutscenes - these are a 9/10 - 10/10. It's such a brilliant concept, and in the cutscenes they are executed gorgeously. In that way, it's almost worth playing just for the story. For Death Stranding 1, I decided to spare myself the frustration and just watch someone play it on Youtube, fast-forwarding through the "gameplay" so I could get the story. I was so excited for Death Stranding 2 because it was critically acclaimed. The reviews made it seem like they fixed the gameplay, that the walking simulator was finally realized. I am sorry to report this game is essentially identical to the first, although they showed a small mercy in allowing you to drive vehicles to bypass most of the gameplay. So, unfortunately, I can't recommend you spend money on this game. Kojima is a genius, but he needs somebody to rein him in, or what results is an unplayable mess, wrapped in brilliant aesthetic, marketing (I mean, the cover of the game alone is just awesome - with Sam kissing the kid, that font - so great). I don't think there will be a DS3 because (shocker) this game didn't make a whole ton of cash. I hope Kojima can filter his brilliance into a product that has just a smidge more respect for the player's time and visual field. Also, I'll just say this to all Japanese products in general - you don't have to use the biggest possible English word to communicate your point. Brevity is the soul of wit. Take whatever dialogue you think is necessary for the character to say, and cut it down by about 90%. I don't need 2 paragraphs to let me know "hey, the enemy has stronger armor now". I don't need a pretentious little puppet to say "he appears to be unconscious" when there is an unconscious person lying in front of me. That being said - I'm gonna keep playing it, because of the story, the characters, the world-building. But I'm gonna hate myself for doing it. Do better Kojima - you beautiful bastard.