Latest news with #DeathStranding2:OnTheBeach
Otago Daily Times
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Beached as, bro
REVIEWED BY BEN ALLAN Is Hideo Kojima the world's last rock-star game developer? It's difficult to think of anyone else these days who would have the clout - and get the funding - to make a triple-A game as extremely idiosyncratic as Kojima Production's Death Stranding 2: On The Beach . To be fair, maybe the funding part was easy. The first Death Stranding (2019) sold 19 million copies, so plenty of people were on board to steer The Walking Dead actor Norman Reedus (captured here again down to the minute details of the moles on his face) as he lugged packages across a post-apocalyptic United States. This reviewer missed out though, so coming into On the Beach , I had a bit to catch up on. Oh boy. So: the dead have returned to the world of the living as ghostly "BTs" (beached things); they brought with them a crystalline substance that has empowered new technologies but ruined others (like aeroplanes); you can see them with a bit of tech that requires you to carry around an unborn baby in a little pod; and if the BTs ever manage to consume a living being (which they seem keen to), something akin to a nuclear explosion goes off. As a result, there was a bit of an apocalypse, which ended up with the world's remaining population reduced to huddling in isolated bunkers and cities, cut off from one other and relying on porters, like Reedus' character Sam, to make lonely supply deliveries between them across a perilous landscape. In the first game Sam made his way one load at a time across the US, connecting these settlements to the "chiral network" (a sort of tech-magic internet) handily averting the extinction of humanity while he was at it. At the outset of the second, he's something of a fugitive (having run off to illegally raise his little pod-pal, Lou), but is soon brought back into the fold to continue the mission of spreading the chiral network, this time into Mexico - and then, thanks to some more Death Stranding -world magic - across the whole of Australia. So yes, in a way you could simulate the experience of playing this game by joining the exodus across The Ditch and getting a job with Australia Post - but you'd miss out on a lot. Much of the game is spent just navigating Sam by night and day across the graphically gorgeous wilderness of Australia (filled with what seem to be authentic Aussie voice actors, which is nice), which serves up hazards such as local earthquakes, storms, flash floods, bush fires, and just plain overbalancing on a scree slope due to your towering backpack, faceplanting, and sliding 30m downhill - likely one of the more wince-inducing experiences in gaming. (Oh, and there's the magic rain that rapidly ages things, too.) Sam has plenty of options to facilitate his journey, from ladders and climbing ropes up to more high-tech options like hovering cargo platforms and off-road vehicles, though everything he brings along with him must be managed as part of his overall load. It's gameplay of quiet satisfaction: planning your route, packing well, the often Zen-like quality of the journey itself, and the "job well done" of cargo delivered undamaged at the destination (uh, or maybe just a bit damaged - sorry, there were these ghosts). Your fellow porters are with you along the way, too. Though they never enter your game directly, you're able to share resources and supplies with other Beach players via the game's "Strand" system, which can include answering quests for aid, leaving signs or structures for others to find, completing your fellow players' deliveries, or collaborating on larger projects like road-building. There's a little buzz to the game letting you know that scores of people have used a bridge you built, but it's possibly even cooler to learn that a single player elsewhere in the world stumbled across and took shelter in the little hut you left halfway up a mountain in the middle of nowhere. Your travel vlogging, though, is interrupted by regular combat encounters out in the wilds, both with human banditry and the BTs. The former provide some fun, if standard, third-person melee / ranged / stealth encounters, with the wrinkle of occasionally finding yourself in a four-man brawl while wearing a backpack the size of a fridge. BTs though, while nicely terrifying, are a bit of a pain in the butt, employing a "tar" mechanic that often leaves Sam struggling to move, and are most heavily damaged by grenades that can be tricky to aim. They're also your opponents for most of the game's boss fights, which can be exercises in frustration until you adapt to the rhythm of managing your inventory on the go while fighting. Actual gameplay, though, is only so much of the On the Beach experience. If Kojima is a rock star, he's David Bowie - arty, outre and throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, no matter how weird. Get ready for Hollywood directors galore, forensically motion captured, to drop in as actors, Lea Seydoux to keep crying a Single Tear of Emotion while wearing a scarf that's a spare pair of hands, and red-hooded cultists schlepping their evil leader around through phantom tar in a Gothic techno-sarcophagus. Careening from bizarre to moving and back, the story makes the most of the possibilities of a world in which the afterlife is real, technology is basically magic and people can come back from the dead, taking big swings at big themes of loss, the importance of human connection and the inevitability of our extinction - all while pulling moves like "so this character is called Dollman, he's a possessed ventriloquist's dummy. Just roll with it". While it is a lot (and you sometimes have cause to wonder if anyone ever tells Kojima he has had a bad idea), it just about all comes together as something that's often quite profound. Perhaps more striking than this though is that as a gaming experience, it's so very singular - the sort of different that's normally destined to be ironed out of games with giant budgets that need the broadest possible appeal. You're simply unlikely to play anything like Death Stranding 2 until, well, probably Death Stranding 3 . So hitch up your pack, head for the horizon and think heavy thoughts about how human connection is all we have as our species heads into terminal decline. Oh, and also, Norman Reedus' bladder meter is full; press circle to have him pee in a bush.
Otago Daily Times
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Review: Beached as, bro
Is Hideo Kojima the world's last rock-star game developer? It's difficult to think of anyone else these days who would have the clout — and get the funding — to make a triple-A game as extremely idiosyncratic as Kojima Production's Death Stranding 2: On The Beach. To be fair, maybe the funding part was easy. The first Death Stranding (2019) sold 19 million copies, so plenty of people were on board to steer The Walking Dead actor Norman Reedus (captured here again down to the minute details of the moles on his face) as he lugged packages across a post-apocalyptic United States. This reviewer missed out though, so coming into On the Beach, I had a bit to catch up on. Oh boy. So: the dead have returned to the world of the living as ghostly "BTs" (beached things); they brought with them a crystalline substance that has empowered new technologies but ruined others (like aeroplanes); you can see them with a bit of tech that requires you to carry around an unborn baby in a little pod; and if the BTs ever manage to consume a living being (which they seem keen to), something akin to a nuclear explosion goes off. As a result, there was a bit of an apocalypse, which ended up with the world's remaining population reduced to huddling in isolated bunkers and cities, cut off from one other and relying on porters, like Reedus' character Sam, to make lonely supply deliveries between them across a perilous landscape. In the first game Sam made his way one load at a time across the US, connecting these settlements to the "chiral network" (a sort of tech-magic internet) handily averting the extinction of humanity while he was at it. At the outset of the second, he's something of a fugitive (having run off to illegally raise his little pod-pal, Lou), but is soon brought back into the fold to continue the mission of spreading the chiral network, this time into Mexico — and then, thanks to some more Death Stranding-world magic — across the whole of Australia. So yes, in a way you could simulate the experience of playing this game by joining the exodus across The Ditch and getting a job with Australia Post — but you'd miss out on a lot. Much of the game is spent just navigating Sam by night and day across the graphically gorgeous wilderness of Australia (filled with what seem to be authentic Aussie voice actors, which is nice), which serves up hazards such as local earthquakes, storms, flash floods, bush fires, and just plain overbalancing on a scree slope due to your towering backpack, faceplanting, and sliding 30m downhill — likely one of the more wince-inducing experiences in gaming. (Oh, and there's the magic rain that rapidly ages things, too.) Sam has plenty of options to facilitate his journey, from ladders and climbing ropes up to more high-tech options like hovering cargo platforms and off-road vehicles, though everything he brings along with him must be managed as part of his overall load. It's gameplay of quiet satisfaction: planning your route, packing well, the often Zen-like quality of the journey itself, and the "job well done" of cargo delivered undamaged at the destination (uh, or maybe just a bit damaged — sorry, there were these ghosts). Your fellow porters are with you along the way, too. Though they never enter your game directly, you're able to share resources and supplies with other Beach players via the game's "Strand" system, which can include answering quests for aid, leaving signs or structures for others to find, completing your fellow players' deliveries, or collaborating on larger projects like road-building. There's a little buzz to the game letting you know that scores of people have used a bridge you built, but it's possibly even cooler to learn that a single player elsewhere in the world stumbled across and took shelter in the little hut you left halfway up a mountain in the middle of nowhere. Your travel vlogging, though, is interrupted by regular combat encounters out in the wilds, both with human banditry and the BTs. The former provide some fun, if standard, third-person melee / ranged / stealth encounters, with the wrinkle of occasionally finding yourself in a four-man brawl while wearing a backpack the size of a fridge. BTs though, while nicely terrifying, are a bit of a pain in the butt, employing a "tar" mechanic that often leaves Sam struggling to move, and are most heavily damaged by grenades that can be tricky to aim. They're also your opponents for most of the game's boss fights, which can be exercises in frustration until you adapt to the rhythm of managing your inventory on the go while fighting. Actual gameplay, though, is only so much of the On the Beach experience. If Kojima is a rock star, he's David Bowie — arty, outre and throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, no matter how weird. Get ready for Hollywood directors galore, forensically motion captured, to drop in as actors, Lea Seydoux to keep crying a Single Tear of Emotion while wearing a scarf that's a spare pair of hands, and red-hooded cultists schlepping their evil leader around through phantom tar in a Gothic techno-sarcophagus. Careening from bizarre to moving and back, the story makes the most of the possibilities of a world in which the afterlife is real, technology is basically magic and people can come back from the dead, taking big swings at big themes of loss, the importance of human connection and the inevitability of our extinction — all while pulling moves like "so this character is called Dollman, he's a possessed ventriloquist's dummy. Just roll with it". While it is a lot (and you sometimes have cause to wonder if anyone ever tells Kojima he has had a bad idea), it just about all comes together as something that's often quite profound. Perhaps more striking than this though is that as a gaming experience, it's so very singular — the sort of different that's normally destined to be ironed out of games with giant budgets that need the broadest possible appeal. You're simply unlikely to play anything like Death Stranding 2 until, well, probably Death Stranding 3. So hitch up your pack, head for the horizon and think heavy thoughts about how human connection is all we have as our species heads into terminal decline. Oh, and also, Norman Reedus' bladder meter is full; press circle to have him pee in a bush. By Ben Allan From: Sony / Kojima Productions
Time of India
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Death Stranding 2 is full of Hideo Kojima's bizarre Easter Eggs, even his team didn't want them
Hideo Kojima I Credits: Kojima Productions Hideo Kojima is back with another wild ride, and this time, he's not holding back. Death Stranding 2: On The Beach brings more emotional storytelling, haunting visuals, and intense gameplay, but it's also hiding something else. The renowned video game developer himself has packed the game with Easter eggs, and he admits, many of them might just make players cringe. From strange references to subtle sky messages, the legendary game creator has sprinkled his signature style all over the sequel, whether you like it or not. Kojima went full 'Kojima' In an interview with GameSpark , Kojima openly said that most of the Easter eggs were his idea and his team didn't even want them. 'Even if I asked the staff to add them, they just pretended not to hear,' he joked. But he went ahead anyway, hiding secrets that players will only notice on a second or third playthrough. 🙏👍🫶😍🙇🏻🎮🎬 — HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) June 26, 2025 Some are funny, some are just plain weird, but all of them are very "Kojima." Easter Eggs that might make you 'cringe' Kojima warned players that some Easter eggs could make them uncomfortable. Want an example? Looking at the stars in a hot spring at night might show you some unexpected things, if you zoom in closely. He says it's all for the players who love to explore and dig deeper into the game's world. Cameos, self-references, and odd surprises HIDEO Kojima san <-> Feet Fetish, dates back to MGS IV days (Quiet🤫)If you know, you know! ->— Pure PlayStation (ピュア プレイステーション) (@Pure_PS) June 25, 2025 Just like Death Stranding, the sequel features tons of familiar faces. Kojima said many celebrities came to the studio asking to be included in the game. Not all of them made it in, but many were scanned and saved for later use. On top of that, there's a character named Neil who looks and sounds a lot like Snake from Metal Gear, a clear nod to Kojima's past work.
Time of India
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Death Stranding 2: Who is Tomorrow and what powers does she have?
In Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, a mysterious character named Tomorrow appears in Episode 5. She's first seen walking alone in the land of the dead before being rescued. What shocks Sam and his team is not just her survival, but her rare powers. Later, it's revealed that Tomorrow is actually Lou, the baby Sam once carried in the first game. She was separated from him after a brutal ambush by Higgs in Mexico and was raised in another dimension by Fragile. That strange childhood shaped her into someone incredibly powerful and important to the story. What are Tomorrow's powers in Death Stranding 2? Tomorrow has powers connected to a rare condition called DOOMS. This allows her to interact with the world of the dead in ways no normal human can. Tomorrow - Death Stranding 2: On The Beach She can: Turn objects and enemies into dust with a single touch Use tar currents to travel underground and strike from surprise spots Handle close combat with great agility and speed Destroy armored mechs by disintegrating them Her powers are dangerous enough that Higgs, the main villain, tries to use her as an Extinction Entity, a living tool to end all life on Earth. But Sam steps in to stop him, leading to an emotional and action-filled rescue. How Tomorrow shapes the story Tomorrow isn't just powerful, she's personal. She's Sam's daughter. That twist adds emotional weight to the game's second half. Although she's not playable, her role is central. She changes Sam's mission from delivering hope to protecting family. In the final act, her powers help tip the battle. She's not just a character in the story. She's the key to it.
Time of India
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
How to get the Otter Hood in Death Stranding 2?
(Image via Kojina) If you're tired of drowning every time Sam touches water, the Otter Hood is about to become your new BFF. This quirky yet insanely useful gear makes a glorious return in Death Stranding 2: On The Beach, and this time, it's not a celebrity cameo gift. Getting your hands (and head) on it takes a bit of effort, but trust us, it's worth every awkward trek through the sludge. Here's how you can find and use it. What Even Is the Otter Hood? If you've played Death Stranding 1, you already know the Otter Hood was Conan O'Brien's hilarious gift. In Death Stranding 2, though, it's back with a purpose. It's not just quirky headgear; it actually lets Sam float across dangerous water, helping him survive sudden floods, wild rivers, and the ever-growing mess of tar. Where to get the Otter Hood | Death Stranding 2 On The Beach (DS2) Where to Find the Otter Hood in Death Stranding 2? You'll find the Otter Hood after connecting with 'The Inventor', a new prepper located on an island literally surrounded by tar. Fun. His hideout is: North of West Fort Knot Past the Mine North of F1 Look out for the monorail track. Once you're heading along it, check the left side Eventually, you'll see his isolated base chilling in the middle of a tar sea. That's your guy. Getting There Without Drowning Here's the not-so-fun part: reaching The Inventor is a pain if you're unprepared. The tar will swallow your vehicle whole, and walking? Bad idea unless you enjoy respawning. Your best options: Use the monorail and jump right before it passes the island Spot a zipline from the nearby terrain and glide over Feeling risky? Drive till the tar eats your bike, then sprint across with stamina boosts and healing sprays Quick tip : don't go empty-handed. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Nhà container với cách nhiệt và chống thấm hiện đại Visionary Echo Tìm Ngay Undo Bring any lost cargo tagged to The Inventor; it'll win you instant brownie points and make the connection smoother. How to get to Inventor's Island and connect it to Chiral Network in Death Stranding 2 When Do You Get the Otter Hood? Once you connect The Inventor to the Chiral Network, you'll unlock the Otter Hood. No fetch quests, no drama. Just show up, link up, and enjoy your new floaty fashion. Bonus : after unlocking it, you'll see Sam actually do otter swim moves. It's adorable. 10/10 would rewatch every time. Why You Need It, Like, Yesterday With Death Stranding 2's evolving weather system, rivers and lakes change on the fly. One minute it's dry, the next it's raging. The Otter Hood makes sure you don't get swept away mid-delivery. If you like: Surviving flash floods Not drowning in tar Looking like a majestic aquatic creature …you need this thing. Water obstacles get gnarlier as the game progresses. The Otter Hood isn't just a nice-to-have; it's a lifesaver. Get it early, and you'll thank yourself every time a sudden flood tries to take you out mid-delivery. Game On Season 1 continues with Mirabai Chanu's inspiring story. Watch Episode 2 here.
