Sequel to Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding is just as weird and mesmerizing as its predecessor, even if it doesn’t pack the same punch

The 2019 game Death Stranding was something unique, an ingenious meditation on the meaning of connection in a world on the verge of annihilation. Its core premise — that we have nothing if we don’t have each other — was at once universal and dazzlingly distilled to the travels of one lonely man in a society full of disconnected people. And that’s before supernatural entities, the possible end of all life and babies floating in pods came into play. The game was weird, messy, convoluted — and distinctly memorable (thanks in large part to the trademark weirdness of writer-director Hideo Kojima), with a sense of weighty importance threaded throughout. The world was coming to an end; how could we not come together?

While it didn’t always connect, the Sony-published game from developer Kojima Productions was always grand in scope, a big game with big questions. In the sequel, the PlayStation 5-exclusive Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, everything feels just a little bit smaller, a touch less important, as if the strands that bound us together in the first game were frayed.

Read the full review at The Seattle Times.

Three “Are we there yet?” stars out of five.