4.5/5 ★ – ChucklesBiscotti's review of Death Stranding 2: On The Beach.

Death Stranding 1 is to Death Stranding 2 as Far Cry 2 is to Far Cry 3. The comparison isn't a perfect 1:1 because the FC games changed creative directors (among other stuff), but they act as very similar comparison points in my mind. No doubt Far Cry 3 was a better "video game" than Far Cry 2 in terms of game mechanics and how it introduced players to the whole experience, but Far Cry 2 has remained the game I remember more due to its unrelenting nature. You got malaria at random moments, guns jammed, and it was just difficult to get around without being shot at. It fit with the worldview on display and what you were doing, and that is something games have the power to do when they want to in terms of using game mechanics to enforce the narrative and themes. However, it had middling reviews and sales, and it was clear Ubisoft didn't want to quite be that tough on its players again. Far Cry 3 would become the "perfection" of the Ubisoft style -- at least in the Far Cry universe -- and it was the style Ubisoft would stick with from there on out. While DS1 wasn't as tough as FC2 in terms of how often you die, Death Stranding 1's brutal nature came in the form of its pace. It was a very slow-paced and methodical game where even if you didn't need to plan out delivery routes, if you wanted to not take forever on many delivery routes, you did at least need to think about your build and route a little bit. And if you wanted to make future runs easier, you had to put in the time to build out your infrastructure so you could make up time later. In other words, you got out what you put into it in a way that exemplified the spirit of creating a real delivery network. In this way, it was also a Kojumbo-pilled version of a Truck Simulator or city builder game. Death Stranding 2 could have continued down that path and sort of become the AAA Truck Simulator where you carefully plan out your trips and take even more time to try and map out the perfect routes. Instead, I think it went the safer "game" route and created a sandbox that is more playful and less arduous. And, look, that's totally fine. I've played DS2 for 120 hours and still have a little bit left I want to do -- it's an amazing game that remains very unlike most stuff out there -- but DS2 no doubt softened some edges to an extent that it does lose a little something from the experience. You more quickly earn very useful items and equipment that make your trips easier, and you also have vehicles that are not as much of a mess on tough terrain. Factoring in the amount of fast travel options and other ways to move around the world, and it's not as complicated to get around, even if the tools to plan your routes and manage your cargo are so much better this go around. And perhaps all of that was inevitable since by the time of the Director's Cut, we had already been introduced to a bunch of new ways to make navigation easier, so it would have been hard to deny people those sorts of tools for too long in a sequel. Still, if Death Stranding is supposed to be some amalgamation of Euro Truck Simulator and SimCity, then it's more the SimCity stuff that works this time because the Euro Truck part doesn't feel as mandatory. Even on Brutal difficulty, while packages are more delicate, it's more the combat that gets annoying (bullet sponges) than the travel itself. However, building out roads, monorails, zip lines, and leveling up facilities for better and better goodies is how I spent a majority of my time. The satisfaction I get from being able to plop a bunch of cargo on a monorail, and then either hop a ride on the monorail or race it to its destination through a complicated network of zip lines is good fun for the city planner in all of us. And just like the original, it's very enriching to look at how the world looked when you started, and then how it looks when you have every road, mine, monorail, and part of the chiral network up and running (and I had to do this in offline mode for most of the playthrough since the servers weren't online yet). As for the Kojumbo of it all, there are certain gameplay mechanics I won't spoil because they're part of the Kojima experience as well. There's stuff you can do in this game you don't do in anything else, and even if they're not that useful sometimes, it's always cool to see some ways Kojima comes up for you to interact with stuff in his sandboxes. The same goes for the narrative, which I would say starts off with one of the more impressive graphical intros you've ever seen, keeps up a good pace with its story through the opening chapters, and then loses its way for a bit before returning strong for the final stretch. In fact, beat for beat, a lot of the pacing feels very similar to DS1 where it really bogs down in the middle and then ramps back up in a big way for the final stretch. You can get through that middle part much more quickly if you're just focusing on the main story, but there's some cheeky side stuff to discover -- and of course building out your vast infrastructure -- that grabbed my attention for many hours before getting back to the main plot. I don't think I'll play any single-player game more than I will DS2 this year, but playtime doesn't always mean GOTY. In this case, I think it will be in the running for best game of the year when I look back, and I will try my best to not ding it for not being the "exact" DS2 I dreamed about because ultimately I think this game will be more pleasing to people than the version I had in mind when I was dreaming about the sequel.