When you get a big new game to play, like Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, there is a strong temptation to gorge yourself on it. There are several impulses that might lead you in this direction. You might want to delve into its story as quickly as possible to find out what’s going on. You might be conscious of the gaming time you have available and want to push through and clear this game before the next one comes along. You might just want to hungrily wolf down the gaming banquet the developers have put in front of you.
Take my advice: don’t. At least, don’t take this approach to Death Stranding 2. Hideo Kojima’s latest may be a smoother, more accommodating proposition than the first game, but it’s still a game to sip carefully and savor slowly.
Death Stranding 2 takes some time to build up momentum in its storyline and to truly open out its world, but on a systems and gameplay level, it’s front-loaded. There’s a lot to digest, even if you’re familiar with the first game, and the pace of unlocks is pretty quick. And while the game will remain playable and enjoyable if you’re only superficially versed in all its tactics, gadgets, and idiosyncrasies, you’ll get a lot more out of the experience if you take the time to immerse yourself first.
Play the VR training missions. The first of these unlocks early on, when you reach the first base with a private room for our hero Sam Bridges. Recalling the VR missions of Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid games, they’re succinct, well-crafted challenges that will walk you through a huge range of stealth and combat techniques and weaponry, and more besides.
They’re also a lot of fun in their own right. They often present tight, puzzle-like conundrums, and they balance moderate difficulty with lower stakes and fewer random elements than the game’s “real” missions, so they’re very replayable. It’s a good idea to tick off all the new VR missions as soon as you get them, and come back to improve your ranking later if you like.
Similarly, take your time out in the world. Death Stranding 2 offers a lot of sub-objectives: Sub Orders, repeatable Standard Orders, and Aid Requests, in addition to the Main Orders that advance the storyline. Playing these will help you grind out Likes, gather resources, level Sam up, and earn rewards — all the usual side-quest stuff. More than that, though, they’ll deepen your familiarity with the game’s map, its environmental challenges, and its odd but absorbing hike-and-carry gameplay. You can even set your own mini-missions — heading back out with a cargo carrier to collect some heavy material caches you noticed lying around earlier, for example.
Through doing these missions, you’ll find yourself building more infrastructure and delving deeper into the game’s fascinating toolkit, as well as finding more lost cargo to deliver. The more delivery work you do, the more you’ll start to develop your own preferences and playstyle for crossing Death Stranding 2’s forbidding landscape with cargo. That’s just inherently rewarding, and will make the entire game more fun.
Here’s the really important part, though, and perhaps the hardest to accomplish. Don’t try to optimize your tasks or your time in Death Stranding 2. Don’t stack Orders and don’t overload yourself. Do one thing at a time, plan it carefully, and take the time to prep a bespoke loadout for every sortie, rather than lugging around a bunch of all-purpose equipment you might need.
Unlike so many open-world games, Death Stranding 2 is a lot more satisfying to play if you stay focused and enjoy it piecemeal. It feels as though it was designed this way. There’s a deep pleasure to the game’s rhythm when you play it in this manner, taking Orders one at a time and taking breaks to regroup in between. It also breaks the game up naturally into play sessions that can be quite short, but feel complete and satisfying. Unlike many games of its type, Death Stranding 2 is perhaps best enjoyed if you play it an hour or two at a time — it suits its rhythm.
It also suits the game’s theme. Death Stranding 2 is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s a game about crossing distances slowly and methodically, painstakingly rebuilding something that was lost. No surprise that it works better if you play it this way.
And it’s a timely reminder, perhaps, to stop rushing and bingeing, and savor more of your gaming time. Meet games where they are. Enjoy each quest or journey for its own sake, not for what it gets you or where it will take you next. Take a break and look forward to the next one. You might find the game flowers into something even more incredible when you do.
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