Death Stranding 2 Review

Review by Karak with ACG Check out my video version here. https://youtu.be/wuCV05gcKh4

Gameplay Metrics

Death Stranding 2 is a wilder, wider, and more workable game than the original—and for many gamers, that’s an instant invitation to leap in. For others, watching Sam fly off a ladder like his own missile or pound into the ground like 400 pounds of rocks and old toothpaste is just as comically enjoyable.

Death Stranding 2 opens not with a bang, but with the sigh of a man who just wants to be left alone—and is absolutely not going to be. Set eleven months after the formation of the United Cities of America, it finds Sam Bridges doing what he does best: avoiding people and then getting sucked into the world’s most fragile, high-stakes Amazon internship ever. Now holed up in peaceful solitude with Lou, Sam’s version of retirement is rudely interrupted by Fragile—who’s founded a rogue courier corp called Drawbridge. She wants Sam to help extend the Chiral Network, because apparently nobody else in this weird nation is capable of hiking over a hill with a box of supplies.

Death Stranding is a delivery sim wrapped in a third-person action game with survival elements, all tied together by inventory management. The terrain fights back, weather patterns are cranked to “apocalypse roulette,” structures degrade over time, and the threat of a decomposing body triggering a tactical-nuke void-out hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s a world both familiar and destabilized—sadder, lonelier, and somehow even more dangerous—and you’re the guy lugging it all on your back again.

Story & Plot

Sam Porter Bridges has withdrawn from the world. Automated porters do the bulk of the work now, and the UCA doesn’t need him. But Drawbridge does. Fragile’s independent operation wants Sam to push the network farther south, through Mexican territories rendered nearly uninhabitable.

The western-movie aesthetic is hard to ignore—the land unwilling to help itself, the stranger with a secret past, resistant to aiding but compelled anyway. Sam’s tools aren’t always guns; they’re the infrastructure that can rebuild (or imperil) civilization. Alone, no one survives; connection is everything, and that’s Sam’s job.

Gameplay

Make no mistake: despite improvements, Death Stranding’s core loop remains—take thing, carry thing, deliver thing. Sprinting, jumping, climbing, and shooting require planning. Weight, balance, traction, and terrain matter, and more often than before you’ll tear up an enemy base for loot to recycle, upgrade, or craft equipment. Successful missions boost Sam’s skills, improving traversal and combat.

The QPID and Chiral Network still underpin everything. Build ladders, anchors, generators, bridges, zip-lines, trams, vehicles, and more once bandwidth allows. Deliver successfully, save a hostage, kill a major BT, or explore, and you’re rewarded with supplies and a five-star Yelp clone.

Packing gear is survival: every gram counts, and one trip can scatter it all down a cliff. Time-fall ages cargo, rivers swallow ladders, and a mis-step spawns a mini-delivery quest to rescue your own stuff. The strand mechanic connects you to ghost data from other players: their footprints, gear, warnings, and oddball infrastructure populate your world.

Combat—still secondary to traversal—now offers more variety. Bolo guns, tasers, rubber bullets, blood grenades, holographic decoys, and launchers let you neutralize threats without corpses. Human AI calls reinforcements; BTs ignore rubber but hate other rounds. If things heat up, stealth is viable—just don’t try hiding 300 pounds of cargo stacked like a telephone pole.

Vehicles expand options: the tri-wheeled bike is fast but finicky; big haulers trade maneuverability for capacity and battery drain. You can build or steal rides, though stolen ones don’t upgrade like your own. Zip-lines and trams eventually turn the map into a high-speed web, at the cost of gathering fewer resources en route.

Graphics & Performance

Kojima still doesn’t skimp on visuals. Decima renders photo-real terrain—from dry grit to rain-slick mud and BT fog—while motion-capture drives characters’ worn faces and detailed gear. Interiors feel sterile, but the outdoor presentation more than compensates.

PS5 offers Quality (30 fps) and Performance (60 fps). Performance mode is the clear pick: the frame-rate boost outweighs mild resolution drops and occasional pop-in during asset-heavy scenes.

Voice & Sound

Norman Reedus returns as stoic Sam—minimal dialogue, maximum grunt. Fragile, Deadman, and others deliver metaphysical, philosophical, and sometimes downright weird lines. References abound; some land, some don’t.

Audio is superb. Rain pelts, wind howls, boots squelch, and BT encounters thin the mix until only your heartbeat and breath remain. Commercial tracks punctuate missions, while subtle themes color exploration. It’s atmosphere as character.

Experiences & Fun Factor

Triumph and disaster sit back-to-back: rescue cargo, trip on a rock, watch it tumble, then spend an hour recovering it—only to repeat uphill. Vehicle power drains at the worst times; gravity carts snap; yet five-star ratings beckon you onward.

Everything players liked (or found intriguing) in DS1 returns, but faster to access. Guns hit harder, melee expands, enemy AI challenges, and vehicles enrich the logistics puzzle. Menus remain dense, systems nested, and sometimes Sam ignores inputs, but when the plan clicks—charting a route, dodging storms, sliding into base as your battery dies—it’s transcendent.

Rating

Buy

Rating