I adore 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Death Stranding. Kojima Productions’ post-apocalyptic Deliveroo Simulator harbours so much reverence for its own nonsense🐟 that it circles back around to being an innovative, albeit bizarre, masterpiece. Its characters, narrative, gameplay mechanics, and overall vibe are unlike anything the medium has seen before, and Hideo Kojima didn’t hold back.
But it was also polarising, and I love that no matter who I talk to, they either love or hate this game and everything it represents. As a lifelong 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Metal Gear Solid fan aᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚnd appreciator of smaller Kojima-led titles like Zone of the Enders and Policenauts, I’m aboard the hype train for the upcoming sequel, which is lo🐻oking weirder, darker, and even more ambitious.
We have little idea how it🀅 will play or what the actual story is𒆙 about, but that only makes me more hyped.
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach (yes, they really did call it that) had a big appearance at Tok𝐆yo Games Show late last month, even if we didn’t see a release date or that much of the moment-to-moment gameplay.🌞 But we did see plenty of other stuff, so let’s dive into it.
The TGS presentation begins with Sam Porter Bridges (Norman Reedus) returning to his🍬 base as Tomorrow (Elle Fanning) and Rainy (Shioli Kutsuna) unpack their belongings before talking about the nature of pregnancy in this strange new world. Then a talking puppet, which hangs from Sam’s belt, begins to tell them about the nature of mortality. It only gets stranger from he🍸re.
Heartman (Nicolas Winding Refn) also returns, a character whose heart must be restarted constantly by a strange machine on his chest, while he still spends all his time hiding inside a strange base filled with zombified creatures. But now he is equipped with a support unit that allows hi♚m to flatline anywhere he likes without falling on his face. We then cut to Fragile (Lea Seydoux) and Tarman (George Miller), both of whom are a light shade of blue and are piloting a ship inside some form of supernatural limbo. Yet again, it’s beautiful and bizarre nonsense of the highest order.
Fragile even has black gloves around her neck acting as a living scarf of sorts that lights her cigarettes. I didn’t even mention the winged feline made of tar that ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚsits on Tarman’s shoulder. Is it a real cat🔜? Is it made of urine like Sam’s grenades? Who knows!
The talking puppet is called Dollman, because everything is litera🍰l𝔍.
It seems they are piloting a submarine that allows them to dive beneath the tar that’s taken over some of the world’s landscape, potentially introducing new areas to explore and deliver packages within. Lou - the baby in the pod - is also back, but seems to be trapped in some sort of new dimension you will need to rescue them from during the story. Sam certainly seems worried, and is eq⭕ually as gruff and emotional as he was in the first game.
Tokyo Game Show also featured a number of existing trailers and peeks at gameplay, with Sam and his comrades eager to expand the Chiral Network and bring more of our broken humanity back into the fold, even if i▨t means travelling across regions ripe with hostility. It’s much more varied than the previous game, which looked like it took place entirely within the mountains of Iceland. Gorgeous, yet unus𓆉ually one note.
Here we see so much more, and expanding the narrative means that world design naturally grows alongside it. There is even an instance where Sam is delivering packages on the moon. How you end up there is anybody’s guess, but𝓰 it’s already got me excited about building bridges and dropping off deliveries again.
You can spend time at the base snapping selfies with real life celebrities using an uncanny photo mode, customise Sam to the nines with different outfits and equipment, or embark into the open𝓰 world and not return to sanctuary for hours upon hours. Anything is possible in Death Stranding 2, and in the triple-A space, that is increasingly rare to see. I admired the original game so much because it somehow managed to tell a heartfelt story that touched upon surprisingly relevant real world themes with characters you fell in love with.
A genuine feat when everyone in the cast is seemingly aware of how ridiculous the entire situation is, but put in enough of themselves that the absurdity circles back around to what became one of the most memorable g🃏ames in recent memory. There is a good chance that the sequel will end up taking things too far, but even if it does, I’m curious to go on that journey and see precisely how Kojima makes it all fall apart.
Death Stranding had me rolling my eyes in comical disbelief and wiping tears from my face with everything it had to offer, and I’m still bowled over by how effortlessly it balances it all. Controlling Sam as he crosses the threshold of a mountaintop, only to stare down into the rocky abyss as a sombre musical track begins to play out is awe-inspiring, with the way I control this character🐲, the threatening world around me, and the diegetic sounds that help give it life combine to create something magical. Then minutes later, I bump into a guy who has a heart attack every ten minutes and can help me create grenades from my own urine.
Such a stark juxtaposition should be celebrated, and we’re lucky that games like this are still being made in a landscape where everything has become so dry and predictable. Love it or loathe it, Death Stra♍nding deserves its ꦉflowers for that.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网: 📖Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
- Released
- June 26, 2025
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ // ℱViolence, Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Stro🎶ng Language
- Developer(s)
- 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Kojima Productions
- Publisher(s)
- 😼 🀅 Sony Interactive Entertainment
- Engine
- Decima
- Franchise
- 🐻 Death Stranding
- Number of Players
- Single-player
- PS5 Release Date
- June 26, 2025
Embark on an inspiring mission of human connection beyond the UCA. Sam—with companions by his side—sets out on a new journey to save hum🏅anity from extinction. Join them as they traverse a world beset by otherwor♋ldly enemies, obstacles and a haunting question: should we have connected?
