Content from Last 48hrs

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach It's more Death Stranding. Like, shockingly so. The intro was a huge surprise and the ending was completely bonkers in the best way but the middle 80% of the game basically feels like a rehash of the first game. I don't know what I expected but I figured Kojima would switch things up more than that. And it just overall wasn't as captivating as the first game for me. The first game did such a fantastic job with its world-building that it just doesn't feel weird and mysterious anymore. I can just roll with whatever weirdness the game throws at me. That's not to say I didn't love every second of it, though. Like Mister Jack said, the game is definitely way easier than the first one. The only missions I didn't S-rank with ease were some of the boss fights. I remember struggling with the Mads Mikkelsen sections in the first game but I never had any issues dealing with Solid Snake wannabe in this one. Getting access to vehicles very early on also really trivializes the game. I was playing on brutal difficulty and the only times I was challenged was when I had to deal with those ghost mechs. In hindsight, I probably should've played on that new To The Wilder difficulty but I'm always wary of new "eXtRa DiFfIcUlT fOr PrO pLaYeRs OnLy" modes because more often than not they feel like over-tuned bullshit. It's always a treat to play a new Kojima game but at this point it's starting to feel like he's just remaking the same game since MGSV. Sam controls almost exactly like Venom Snake, he just has a different moveset. They're all set in open-worlds with mission-based story progression and big story moments delivered much more sparingly than in his MGS2-4 era. I kinda hope he'll switch things up a bit more with Physint. I'll be there day one no matter what but I wouldn't mind a different structure in his future games. Anyway, normally I'd keep playing and 5-star all locations and get all the achievements but I started playing Pragmata and it's actually really fucking good. So I'm gonna focus on that for now and probably get back to DS2 later on.