Released in November 2019, Death Stranding was perceived as the announcing of the 2020 confinements: deliver parcels to humans who governed in bunkers after a disaster; Connecting each home by a futuristic version of the Internet in order to reconnect the handful of survivors … This contemplative odyssey, in which most of our time consists in crapping with heavy cargoes through stony moors and mountains inspired by Icelandic landscapes, was also an invitation to travel during this period of inactivity.
Clevary at its exit because of its radical slowness, the game of Hideo Kojima, revered creator of the series Metal Gear Solidmade a success on time: its studio, Kojima Production, founded in 2015, today claims 20 million players and launched the production of an adapted film.
Five years have passed from the pandemic and Hideo Kojima does not intend to tread. Death Stranding 2 : On the Beachavailable Thursday, June 26 on PlayStation 5, turns into action. The hero, Sam Porter Bridges, embodied by Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead), can now carry the equivalent of a small high-tech armory in its backpack. As long as we just follow the main story, our delivery man is regularly transformed into rabbo for infiltration or enemy camp elimination missions. “You finally decided to exchange your rope for a stick”summarizes the harmful Higgs.
“Hello, it’s the delivery man”
Those who will be saddened that Hideo Kojima renounces the stretched, sometimes exhausting pace, of his previous game will nevertheless be filled by the wide range of secondary missions. They send us to walk, sometimes with the equivalent of two fridges on the back, from one point to the other of the two cards offered (Mexico, then Australia) where we can replay in our loop the ethereal soundtrack, part of which was composed by French Woodkid.
It is never lost time: the services rendered are rewarded by various equipment that makes the following clashes much less repetitive. If we did not have token at the door of the bunker of this military in post-traumatic shock, we would not have had our sniper rifle. And if we were not reminded at the foot of a cliff recovering the vinyls of the Japanese pop star Gen Hoshino, we would never have obtained the most devastating version of the pump rifle.
The straight line is ultimately the less good way to apprehend this time -consuming experience: during the week we devoted to it (35 hours of play) we barely seen half the main frame.
Longer than its predecessor, Death Stranding 2 : On the Beach Above all, we seemed to be better punctuated. His flamboyant narrative sequences borrow as well from Asian action cinema, a John Woo or Zhang Yimou, as in Hollywood cinema, like the James Bond of Sam Mendes. The kind of musical is even summoned a few times, especially during a tribute supported to the film Singing in the Rainduring the introductory scene of the character of Rainy.
A more digestible scenario
Without giving up his usual oddity, Hideo Kojima concentrates this time on the essentials: his futuristic universe and the figures that inhabit him. He fades digressions (political or metaphysical) which increased the previous opus and puts his hero at the foreground. Sam, and the player through him, is thus shaken by an unspeakable drama which still haunts us a few tens of hours later.
In the interluded courts interchanged between each mission, the cracks of the secondary characters, embodied by an impressive international cast, also expose themselves: Léa Seydoux whispers a few words imbued with guilt in her sleep; She Fanning sleeps strapped on her bed; George Miller, the director of Mad Maxwhich here, camps the pilot of our vessel here, leaves a photo of his deceased son in the bookmark of his copy of Moby-Dick… In Death Stranding 2the deep link that unites beings is ultimately as much that of the network as we are responsible for deploying as the mourning that haunts the survivors.
In short:
We liked:
- The pebbles that fail to make us stumble, the rivers to cross and the cliffs to be reminissed with the equivalent of a washing machine on the back;
- La Playlist, sometimes electro, sometimes folk;
- The four -star cast and the film staging.
We liked it less:
- The brigands that spot you at 300 meters around but are unable to realize that their companions fall like flies.
It is rather for you if:
- You like hiking;
- You love video games at high spectacle;
- you have Metal Gear Solid in the skin.
It is rather not for you if:
- You have knees pain;
- You are afraid of ghosts.
Pixels’ opinion:
10,000 steps a day/11,000 things to do
