Moush Death Stranding 2: On the Beach Review

Having only just played the first Death Stranding before this sequel was released, I was already sold into the game’s world and the game loop of making deliveries, traversing varied terrains and building roads and structures. Keeping to those same mechanics and world-building that the original had, the sequel iterates on it in a much bigger and ambitious manner. As immersed as I was into the story here though, I do think the pacing was unfortunately all over the place in this sequel. Cinematic cutscenes were quite scarce in this iteration, and I think that may also have contributed to the pacing issues. Sam’s dialogue/acting also seemed quite stunted overall, especially during crucial emotional beats where his acting/reactions didn’t match the enormity of the emotional weight in those scenes and directly affected the immersion in the story. Besides that, I do wish that some of the gameplay loop was broken up with some other missions/levels where we could have gotten to play as some of the side characters as well. Like when Fragile and the girls went out on their own, I so wished we’d have been able to play as Fragile for one mission. Or towards the end-game, when Heartman/Deadman’s controlling the DHV Magellan giant BT-head fighting the other giant BT’s, I wanted to so play that myself rather than just watch a cinematic of all the action. Other than that, the music is just phenomenal and I can’t stop listening to the playlist on Spotify! Overall though, it’s been an exciting ride, mostly because I love being in this world that Kojima has created, making my deliveries, five-starring my connections with all the preppers and building those roads and monorails - it’s almost this calming zen (especially when that music kicks in) as I go about making all those deliveries even after finishing the game! Keep on keeping on, as they say!