Death Stranding 2: On The Beach

To help us recall the rhythm of Kojima Productions' unique debut, we're asked to walk a mile — or thereabouts — in its protagonist's shoes. Eleven months after reconnecting a fractured USA, Sam Porter Bridges is in hiding with Lou, the government-owned pod-baby he's now secretly adopted. As the game begins, Sam gazes out over a remote peak with Lou strapped to his chest; our task is simply to guide them home. We begin to trot down bumpy slopes, learning once again to watch our step, hold the triggers to maintain balance, and wield the left stick with care.

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It’s a handy recap, and it’s pleasing to be handed control before the game’s star-studded cabaret of a story lurches to life. But if Death Stranding 2 is again about walking, it’s not long before Kojima and co start to run. As a sequel, you could call this iterative, but the success of the original grants the developers momentum and a confidence to remove the brakes altogether. What was an odd, complex, dazzling fiction becomes even more so. The gamification of getting from A to B gains further layers, stacking up like the containers Sam takes on his more arduous deliveries. True, there are too many ideas vying for space here, not all of them great ones, but you have to admire the audacity of the operation, how it sucks so many disparate elements into a single orbit.

Sam — still bearing the likeness and voice of Norman Reedus — is coaxed out from seclusion by Fragile (Léa Seydoux), who now runs a company called Drawbridge and wants to continue to link up pockets of survivors in the post-apocalypse. We leave Lou under her care to travel down to Mexico, marching from one settlement to the next, attaching each to the Chiral network — a technological lifeline in a world littered with ‘BTs’, the malicious souls of the dead. Later, thanks to a new phenomenon known as a ‘Plate Gate’ — a kind of intercontinental warp portal — we take our cause to Australia, where the bulk of this grand tour takes place.