It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Hideo Kojima. When I found out that Death Stranding 2 was out, I couldn’t throw my $60 at the Oracle of Japan fast enough. Now that I’ve beaten the game, it’s time to release some pent-up frustration onto the page. It saddens me to report that he did not take any of my ideas into consideration. With that said, I’m feeling particularly useless today, so I’ll put my pundit hat on and critique the literal Floyd/Brady/LeBron/James Cameron of game development. This article is going to contain some mild spoilers, swipe left if that’s a dealbreaker for you.
The Cons
It pains me to say it, but Hideo Kojima made it clear that he’s running out of ideas. How can I tell? He leaned so hard on the Metal Gear Solid (MGS) imagery that Vulcan Raven wouldn’t be able to hold him upright. I found myself at large portions of the game audibly calling out which of his previous works he was visually referencing; my neighbors must’ve thought that I was a total schizo. One such example was when I barked MGS2 at the first mandatory underwater sequence at 2am with far-too-many decibels. Higgs burning Sam alive while Kojima made you mash the button to crawl was nothing short of a heavy-handed pass at the worst part of MGS4.
Neil Vanna was a considerable downgrade from Sam’s father in the original. While Sam’s father didn’t have much of an obviously discernible reason for wanting to fight Sam in World War 1/World War 2/Vietnam, Vanna at least had the whole motive thing going for him. That was about all Vanna had though. Other than his heavy-handed blue bandanna imagery (a not-so-subtle wink to Solid Snake), Neil Vanna was a weak boring cuck. Where’s Mads Mikelson when you need him?
I also disliked the pacing of the game; it was constantly interrupted by being nudged by the game to visit your private room. I can hear the haters now; “But Dan, that was present in the original Death Stranding as well!” Be that as it may, it wasn’t a good story-telling device in 2019, and it still isn’t a good one now. Sorry, both the player and Sam are not children, thus stop telling us to go to our goddamn rooms, Mom.
From a gameplay mechanic. Not a whole lot can be said. Kojima essentially made the same game twice. This was a bit disappointing considering he was the mastermind behind the cosmic leap in gameplay between MGS1-to-MGS2, which was nearly a quarter-century ago. To give credit where it’s due, the addition of the DHV Magellan was a nice touch. However, it was a wash since the DHV Magellan was stuck in the literal mud so often that it was a bit useless. Kojima would strand the ship when he wanted the player to have a mandatory back-tracking sequence. Mr. Kojima, it’s not 1998 anymore; you don’t need to have mandatory back-tracking sequences, doubly-so in a fucking open-world game!
Another thing that kinda pissed me off about the game were the random-ass difficulty spikes for little discernible reason. The squid-ghost-mech was a total pain-in-the-ass and a prime example of this. Sam does not have access to nearly the amount of firepower that would allow this to be a manageable boss fight; it was far too early in the game for such a high-defense behemoth. How do I know this? Because the next giant mech boss fight isn’t until dozens of hours later, and it’s a total cakewalk with a few portable warheads.
There was a random mission in the mountains where Sam must retrieve some breakable cargo deep into BT territory and then deliver it to a hard-to-reach researcher. It was so frustratingly difficult that it made me question the entire game’s premise. Why are all these BT’s suddenly bullet sponges? Why are these off-roaders not equipped to climb rockfaces? Why do these mountain-dwellers unrealistically expect pristine package deliveries to remote regions following an apocalypse? Want to know how I can tell it’s a random difficulty spike? Because two missions later Sam received the blueprint for an off-roader with tires that can scale mountains more efficiently. Grrrr…..
The final notable difficulty spike was the underwater tarantula mech in Mexico. Again, that fight was little more than a bullet sponge with an annoyingly often scripted game over if Sam got caught in its claws. Pair that with Sam’s relative unresponsiveness regarding standing back up after toppling and it was a definite precursor to the player needing blood pressure meds. That fight was far more difficult than Higgs, you know…the literal final boss of the fucking game.
The Pro’s
I was fond of saying this in the previous entry of the series; I think that Higgs is by far the greatest Hideo Kojima villain ever. In the original Death Stranding, he was so viciously cruel that I found myself viscerally hating him through the screen. One such scene in the first go-around was when he forced Fragile to run through the timefall storm that he induced. I actively cheered at his off-screen execution on Amelie’s beach at the end of the first game. But that just shows that Higgs was a well-written villain delivered by a fantastic performance from Troy Fucking Baker.
I’ll admit, Higgs this time around isn’t quite as downright evil in this one as he was in the original. However, what he lacks in consistently-abhorrent cruelty he makes up for in creativity. This is best displayed in the southern tip of Australia when he ambushes Sam with his guitar-shaped flamethrower. After engrossing Sam in blue flames (the hottest possible flame, by the way) and trapping him in an endless loop of burn-alive then revive, he then stands next to a crawling Sam while strumming a sarcastic love song on his guitar. Evil, yet creative; dastardly, yet clever.
The series of Sam v Higgs boss fights on the beach was entertaining as hell. Unlike the original, the game actually allows you to enter the Higgs fight armed rather than empty-handed, so it’s already an improvement. Smashing up the fake robot-ninja (Kojima’s favorite trope) was dopey-but-fun, but then the guitar-based firefight between the rows of servers in the shallow tar was pretty fucking cool. The exhausted slugfest overlooking the Last Stranding was a blast, even if it leaned a bit too hard on the MGS1/MGS4/ original Death Stranding imagery.
And the guitars? My god, the guitar-vs-guitar aspect was so corny, yet I couldn’t help but to absolutely love it. The saber-lock when Higgs started overpowering Sam, only for Sam to start strumming away on his guitar was so campy yet so fucking cool; how does Kojima keep pulling off that tight-rope walk? Granted, introducing the guitar as a new mechanic late in the game doesn’t rise to the level of Raiden’s Katana in MGS2, but it is surely Kojima’s silver medal in that department.
It seemed like Kojima had far more indie-soft-rock tracks playing in the background of missions in this installment. Personally, I was totally there for it; his curation not only painted a picture of the physical and emotional environment at hand, but also served as his indirect way of saying you’re home free. Among many other roles, Kojima is credited as the game’s music producer, and it clearly shows. Make no mistake, a lot of forethought went into the specific selection and placement of these tracks. His particular favorite was To The Wilder, which he subtly used a few times. Nothing with Kojima is ever an afterthought; nothing. Truthfully, it makes me want to go out and buy the game’s soundtrack.
Overall verdict: 0/10, no mandatory sniper fight…
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