When Death Stranding came out in 2019, although it did catch my eye, I was not really interested in playing it. I knew Hideo Kojima only by name and had never played any of his games, so his name on the product didn’t mean much to me. Even so, the number of celebrities that were involved in the making of the game was impressive: Norman Reedus, Mads Mikkelsen, Léa Seydoux, Margaret Qualley, Troy Baker, even Guillermo del Toro. This game had some serious start power, more akin to a summer blockbuster. It wasn’t enough to get me to play the game though. This wasn’t made any better by the discussions following the game’s release, which mostly centred on the debate as to whether the game is just a glorified walking simulator or not. The game came and passed and I didn’t follow it or its story anymore. This was until 2022 when the sequel was revealed. I was under the impression that Death Stranding was a singular project and that Kojima would focus on something else afterwards. Nevertheless, as more was shown about the game, I found myself in a similar situation again; where despite the new celebrities involved and the trailers that were intriguing I didn’t care that much for the game. Something that was different this time was the general reaction to the game. After its release the reviews seemed more positive than they were for the first game, or at least the reviews were not as divided as before. This was the first domino that would later result in me giving the game a shot.

I started thinking about how I’ve never played a Kojima game, and I felt something that I was missing out on something. Even if it may not be for me, a felt some kind of obligation to at least try one of his games so I could experience and see what many gamers are passionate about. During the year of 2025 there have been many good games that occupied my time, so I didn’t play the game when it was released. Thankfully, Black Friday came to save the day as Death Stranding 2 was on a discount and I was looking for a single player game to play anyways.

Let’s start by talking about what I was most concerned about, the gameplay. It is a little tricky to discuss because my feeling towards the gameplay changed throughout the game. The beginning was not very positive. Mexico is obviously meant to be the tutorial, to show you the ropes and how the game is played. Even in good games these tutorial sections can be the negative part as you are yet to fully enjoy the game and its complete range of mechanics, not to mention that in a game like DS things need to “click” for you to enjoy the game and how it’s played. This doesn’t mean that I didn’t appreciate the small touches that gave some depth to the gameplay, specifically the traversal and exploration. It was very interesting when I realised that you have to be careful with footing as small rocks can trip you and make you loose balance. Same thing can be said with vehicles, not only do you have to worry about collisions damaging your cargo, but you have to be careful not to run over animals as this will deduct from your popularity - though this is a very minimal effect and animals are scarce in the world.