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"A Hideo Kojima game" has become an memetic ode to the excesses of one of the industry's most celebrated directors. Long cutscenes, esoteric storytelling, and Hollywood stars rendered in such loving detail that it borders on the obscene – yes, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach has all of that in spades. But the real magic of a Hideo Kojima game, contrary to their reputation, is the "game" part, and Death Stranding 2 offers the kind of luxurious feast of gameplay options that even the best open-world games often struggle to prepare.
Death Stranding 2 is, in its way, a trucking game, where the challenges are all about moving cargo from one place to another. Sometimes, that means piling big ol' crates up on your back and hiking in a straight line to your destination. At other times, you might have to navigate a fortress full of hostile bandits to recover the cargo you need to deliver. Maybe you need to get across a river, or descend a sheer cliff without damaging your load. Perhaps you'll find a swarm of ghosts blocking the way, or some massive tar monster trying to ruin a peaceful journey.
You develop an arsenal of traversal tools and improbably non-lethal weaponry to deal with all those challenges over the course of the game, but you can probably complete about 95% of Death Stranding 2's challenges by loading your cargo into a big truck and simply driving like hell past whatever obstacle tries to stand in your way – most of those obstacles can't catch you on four wheels. Certainly, you could criticize Death Stranding 2 for being easy enough that you're never forced to engage with its deeper gameplay systems, but for me, that's a feature, not a bug. Every moment ferrying cargo feels like mapping the tip of an impossibly massive iceberg.
Truckin'
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Most of your tools and upgrades come from raising your connection level with various facilities and prepper outposts, which means the vast majority of them are optional. Did you know that The Architect will automatically repair your buildings if you reach level 4 with him? I sure didn't! But as much as I'm retroactively bummed to have missed that upgrade, I'm simultaneously feeling sorry for the poor souls who didn't level up The Lone Commander enough to get the silenced tranquilizer handgun. Imagine!
And even if you have unlocked a given tool, that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to find time to use it. I took a leisurely run through Death Stranding 2 that lasted nearly 70 hours, and I still have no idea what surfing on a coffin looks like, despite repeated in-game reminders that I could. I never once deployed a floating carrier, though I've certainly seen other players call them essential tools.
However much time you put into expanding your arsenal, you will end Death Stranding 2 with an absolutely head-spinning variety of weapons and items at your disposal, each of which – at least, among those I found the opportunity to use – is fully thought out and totally satisfying to deploy. I used that bola gun maybe twice across my entire playthrough, but by gum it felt good to incapacitate the bad guys with it.
Most games would be satisfied with giving you a small handful of options to overcome any given situation, turning every encounter into a puzzle that you need to solve with a limited set of tools. You'd probably even call that 'objectively' good game design, since it helps designers ensure that all the challenges are balanced and they're not wasting their time creating things that 99% of players will never see.
Death Stranding 2, however, is more than content to let you say "big truck go BRRRRRR" and literally steamroll most of its challenges. But simply knowing that everything else is there gives the game its texture – you never know when switching up your loadout will see you make use of a new tool that you won't be able to live without, or when you'll stumble upon some little secret it feels like no one else would ever discover.
Still in a dream
There are a lot of moments from Death Stranding 2 that are going to stick with me for a long time to come. There's a world in which this essay is, instead, an ode to the game's utterly absurd, climactic, and surreal final battle. But the bit that best defines my love for the game is one little Easter egg. Sometime during the game, you'll likely hear Dollman tell Sam that his favorite song is Daichi Miura's 'Horizon Dreamer.'
If you remember that bit of dialog while you're hanging out with Dollman at your home base, you might decide to see what happens if you pull up 'Horizon Dreamer' on your in-game music player. Surely there's a little bit of extra dialog between Sam and Dollman, right? No – what you'll instead get is a sudden, apparent dream sequence where Dollman splits into four and does an extended backup dance sequence behind a digital recreation of Miura in what's effectively a full-length music video whose lighting and camera angles you can control for yourself.
For me, this is the kind of thing that really defines what a Hideo Kojima game is all about. The melodramatic stories and detailed technobabble are part of it, too, but the reason it all works is because these self-serious stories are constantly undercutting themselves with goofball Easter eggs and wild gameplay mechanics. Remember distracting guards with pictures of pretty ladies in Metal Gear Solid 2? Fighting through a vampire-themed nightmare in Snake Eater? Turning your PS2's clock forward to make The End die of old age?
A Hideo Kojima game is one with the bravery not to cut its dumbest ideas, whether that be Easter eggs or those little gameplay systems the vast majority of players will never, ever see. It's a deep, textured open-world sandbox made all the more engaging by the little hints of what might be lurking below the surface. After all these years, I don't think there's ever been a more Hideo Kojima game than this.
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