The Besties - Death Stranding 2 Adds Fun, Subtracts Frustration

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

This week, the Besties deliver an episode on Death Stranding 2. It’s a big and heavy one, but we were happy to hike across the internet and leave it on your podcast app of choice. Plus, we dig into the mailbag! Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

So I want what so so when I want to get an honest answer From two separate people. Hmm. I text them separately Yeah to see what they think on that perspective and this happened recently. Yeah, I texted both Justin and Griffin separately Talking about how I felt about Death Stranding 2 which is the game we're talking about today Apparently they were sitting next to each other when they got the text. It was absolutely insane, my man. We were at Origins, Game Convention, thanks to everybody who came out.

Always loved to see the hoops, troops. And we both got the text independently, not in a group, but independently from Russ and both sent to me and Griffin. Identical copy. Well, yeah, I just copied and pasted it. You think I rewrote it? No, but like we realized it happened,

felt like we were in a Saw movie and decided to confront you. And is that the verb? Yes, that's what I did. Confront you about your actions. And would you like the chance to explain them? Yeah, I mean, I said it at the top. I wanted a honest response

that wasn't tainted by the rest of the group. So even before we get into the fact that you played us against each other, like a sociopath, I am disappointed in you for not being able to wait until after dinner to get your sweets, desserts, reaching out to us to get our exclusive thoughts on the video game before everyone who has paid for it

to hear these. The paying customers. Free little fareless food. You wanted to get our insights for free. I want a little sneaky peeky. That's disappointing too, my man. We have rules for a reason. What rules are we don't talk to each other

until we do the business? Right, that's fair. The question I guess, the follow-up question I have is this. How did you both find out that I texted you at the same time? We were sitting next to each other. But do you look at someone else's text? No, I said to Griffin,

Russ says that Death Stranding 2 is the best game, his best game. And I said he texted me the same thing and then we looked at each other like that can't be right. And we started like, have to compare. We're like Beverly enhance, enhance these texts Beverly. We think we have an impersonator. Absolutely wild. My name is Justin Macari and I know the best game of the week.

My name is Griffin Macari and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best, Chris Frenk, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host,

and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host,

and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, and I'm your host, member. This podcast, this episode of the podcast is gonna have the guts to ask a question that I didn't actually think we would be asking. And that question is, what if Death Stranding 2 fucks? Chris Plante, what does that mean? Speak on that.

Well, Death Stranding is the sequel to a game where you walked around and delivered packages in the apocalypse But now it's back with a lot less story a lot more delivering and a hell of a lot more Metal gear solid did I mention it's made by the same person I am now Hideo Kojima What a wild would love to diagram that sentence Protractor and we'll be right back after this I and I had a protractor and we'll be right back after this. I had a moment where Rachel was out at a book club and I was like, all right, I'll have some time to dip into Death Stranding 2 on the beach. And I could probably-

Sorry, I was confused for a second. I thought you were playing it on the beach. People should know that's the subtitle of- I am heading to the beach this week, so I could ostensibly make that happen. If I wanted to bring my 500 pound PlayStation 5 with me as I went, I could probably, if I sat here for a couple hours, come up with a short list,

but just like off the top of my head, I cannot think of a more bonkers game for a loved one to walk in on you playing. Then having her walk in from her club where she just discussed literature with her friends and then come home to see me making Norman Reedus drink his own piss. And then she's like, what's happening on the TV right now?

And I'm like, well, as a gamer you make Norman Reedus drink his piss and eat his bugs. And I don't see why that's weird. We both consumed art today, and I'm gonna discuss it later. Yeah, I think that's fair. I think we're just gonna talk about how weird it is when they come in and they're like,

so what are you doing? And you're like, well, I'm hand delivering this package. Like, how long have you been doing that for? And you're like, oh, 30 minutes. And like, anything else happen? No? Trying to get the trip on some rocks. Yeah, no, there's not a lot of random cross-sections

of this game that you could place in front of a normal person and have them not immediately go. So you just run across the mountains and you drink piss and you're Norman Reedus from Walking Dead? Yes. It was truly the example of an elevator pitch only working because it started with Hideo Kojima made this game, and then everything else is like,

okay, I guess we have to. I would love to provide my perspective on Death Stranding 2 on the beach because I did not like Death Stranding 1. It is a point of constant contention, I think, between the hosts of this video game podcast. I found it to be so laborious and anti-fun that I was unable to suffer through,

I was unable to eat my vegetables to get to the sweet dessert of Hideo Kojima's insane mind palace. Let me just say, I agree that the beginning of Death Stranding 1, the first five to seven hours, is pretty fucking brutal. Like, yeah. I played 30, I probably played 30 hours of it, and then I like took a break and couldn't go back to it, because I will say that I think it is way too mechanically dense, period.

So dense. Like, to me that's unquestionably a failing of Death Stranding. Whatever else you wanna say about it, it's just too complex for its own good. Now, Death Stranding 2. More complex. I feel like Death Stranding 2,

I had a tough time with at first. Death Stranding 2 presents itself very much as more of Death Stranding at the top of the game for the first five, six hours of it. I wouldn't even say it's... I don't personally think it's that long. There is a preface to the game. There is an Act 1 to the game, after which point things really kick off.

And Act 1 took me about six or so hours to get through. What I would say about the two Act Ones, because the first game is, I'm only making this point because I think there are a lot of people like you Griffin, that played the first game and fucking bounced off hard and I totally get that. The difference here with the beginning of both games

is Death Stranding 1, shitload of cut scenes, shitload of setup, I know you really wonder, do you understand what every character was, why they were, what happened, blah, blah, blah. This game more or less puts you in control almost immediately. And lets you start doing things almost immediately.

You're getting vehicles almost immediately. Compare that to like Death Stranding 1 for the first two hours, you're carrying the worst body ever. It's like the body of your mom. And carrying bodies- She's nine and a half feet tall, and she weighs 600 pounds.

Carrying bodies is the hardest thing to do in all of these games, including Death Stranding 2. That is like, oh, you have to carry a body, fuck that. And they let you do it first thing. So this game does learn that lesson where the things that you're doing first are much easier and more approachable. Yes, the game makes a better first impression

than Death Stranding 1 without a doubt. Death Stranding 1 makes a fucking bad first impression. So I'm not sure that that bar is particularly impressive to clear. However, after that first act, shit goes absolutely bananas in a way that makes me truly believe that Hideo Kojima is a madman at the height of his powers right now.

Truly, truly, truly, and not just outrageous in like a, I don't know man, the kind of way you'd expect from the guy at this point, like absolutely off the wall fucking over the top even for him level shit, that also kind of dovetails with the same point where, like, the game starts to get kind of fun to play, and that, it really, really, really, really has clicked for me. It shares some of the stuff. I think it's fine to share.

I mean. Okay, after Act 1, you meet a whole menagerie of characters all at once, all of whom are more deranged than the last. I don't know how deep we wanna go into it because I don't wanna spoil anything because it truly is when the game starts to come alive and I would not like to steal that moment

of satisfaction from you. But like, you get access to the little scooter really fast and then all of a sudden your opportunities for running is dramatically decreased, which is absolutely wonderful. You can adjust difficulty, specifically like filtering out mechanics of the game that you just don't care for. I don't like having to press L2 and R2 every second and a half to adjust my weight

onto my left and right foot because of the way that I put some box on my back. You can pretty much just phase that out if you'd like to. There's also a fucking ghost puppet. Like there's a haunted- There's a ghost puppet, yeah. I mean, I'm blending together. I'm saying there's a nice moment in this game

that is worth- Goofin's trying to save some surprises for the people. I think it's worth pounding through the first part of this game because I really do feel like it becomes something that I wanted it to be, and I have been enjoying it a lot more since then. My broad take on it, and I'm somebody who, like, I did like the first one, but it took me a really long time to get into, and it took me very little time to get out of,

because I just kind of dropped it. This, to me, reminds me of Assassin's Creed 1 to Assassin's Creed 2. The first game was, okay, we're gonna try an entirely new thing, an entirely new sort of structure for doing video games. And it's not gonna be fun, but it is gonna take us another iteration to figure out how to make it fun. It's gonna work fundamentally, but it's not gonna be pleasant. And I feel like what is so cool to me about Death Stranding 2 is,

I have always thought of Hideo Kojima as somebody who is self-indulgent. And I think that it's pretty easy to lay that at his feet a lot of the time. What I will say is Death Stranding 2 is not to me, someone who is self-indulgent. Death Stranding 2 is someone who took it on the chin a bit with Death Stranding 1 and said,

okay, I actually am gonna make this fun. I'm actually gonna double down on this and I'm going to make it work. I feel like he is somebody who is at the height right in this game of editing himself to make it into a pleasant. This is somebody who I did not think had that in him. I thought Death Stranding was something that is just gonna continue down the road

of like weirder and more self-indulgent. This is weird and self-indulgent, but it is absolutely disciplined and like practiced in how it's deploying it. And also self-aware There's a great fucking beat where Sam is talking to leah Sado's character fragile Who has these two fake ghost hands that float on her neck that she can that also sort of like controls and does little sort

Of mine comedy never discussed, but yeah Well you can read the Kodak entry if you really wanna fucking get into it. But there's a moment where she sits down and her and Sam are having this conversation and she stops and the dark light of the tar world shines across her face as she just kinda stops talking for a good 20 seconds, pulls out a cigarette, lights the cigarette with the fake hands,

takes a huge rip of that dart, puffs it out and just kind of sits there looking contemplative in this super artsy black and white shot and then it hard cuts to Norman Reedus as Sammy just goes, cool, so. Like the game is fully, fully like says like, yeah, it feels like it fucking gets it and it's kind of in on it and that gives it license to do whatever the fuck it wants

and I'm down to clown absolutely. My version of that, I agree. It feels like they, somebody there is editing him. I don't get the sense that Kajima himself is, you know, both the writer and editor here. It feels like somebody has been brought in that is editing both the gameplay and the story. It feels like a producer, like bringing a producer into work on the second album of like a garage band that like cleaned off the rough edges. That's a really good, yes. And I don't necessarily know that Kojima has that in him.

Like that's not his thing is like doing that stuff. One of the ways that they've changed this is Fragile Now, that character who was in the first game who is played by leo seto she basically is narratively consuming all of the cutscenes on your behalf to the point where there you meet a new character and they the literally you'll like kind of peek in seal peek in and leo will be like, hey, it's a little crowded in here. Can you go back to your bed

and maybe just go run some errands? And like, I'll catch you up. I'll send you some text about what we learned. She is the exposition eater. Yeah, yeah. Has allowed her to consume it in your stead, and then she will barf it into you. And eat little nuggets, little pellets.

I walked in on two characters singing, raindrops keep falling on my head together, having this beautiful moment that's leading into a little bit of exposition. And Sam is sitting in the doorway, not even part of it. And at the very end, it cuts to them realizing he's there, and then he starts singing. Except for I had just run to Aaron and my character is covered in blood and excrement.

And he's like, okay, see you later. And then just disappears. And I was like, this perfectly captures the game, which is these three women are having an entire adventure and then I'm out here fighting blood babies and every once in a while, giving them some tools that they might need. There's also, I have to shout out another,

I've yet to hit a cut scene that I felt like went too long. When they do introduce all those characters, that one's a little bit lengthy, but there's a great bit where you go and you meet up with Guillermo del Toro, Dead Man, I think? Yeah, okay. And he's giving-

Not Die Hardman. Not Die Hardman, Dead Man, and he's giving you a lot of exposition. And right when you're like, fuck man, I don't know Guillermo del Toro, he's like, you know what? I'm tired, let's take a break. And you're like, oh, okay,

I guess we're taking a break in the middle of the cut scene. Then you go outside and do this huge fucking badass boss fight, and then you come back in and Guillermo del Toro's like, woo, okay, I guess we're taking a break in the middle of the cut scene. Then you go outside and do this huge fucking badass boss fight and then you come back in and Guillermo del Toro is like, oh, okay, let's pick this back up. It really feels like someone was like, Kojima, you simply can't have this one cut scene of Guillermo del Toro explaining about gatequakes.

You can't have that come on for five minutes when man, you gotta throw in a big boss fight in there. And he's like, yeah, absolutely, let's do it. Now it's worth remembering, even for the like sickos of Death Stranding, the people that are obsessed with all of the fucking nitty gritty details of the world, that's all still in there.

You get texts that give you that background plant mention. There's also a codex, which has like, probably an encyclopedia's worth of nonsense across every single like mechanical beat and world beat. So if you want to know about anything in the world that's all represented, very easy to search. But it feels in that way. There's specifically a codex entry for fragile's ghost hands.

Which is why I know what they are. I appreciate it. Yeah, I do kind of want to find out what the fuck's going on. It feels a little bit like the Souls approach, which is like, if people want it, they can find it. You just have a little dig for it. And for all the normies out there, fucking enjoy moving these packages around

because it is pretty fucking fun. Can we talk about that? Sure. Yes, please. Fun. I don't know why. Here's what's so interesting. Justin, you're still kind of early.

You're still in like one of the earlier parts of the game Yeah, I'm surprised that you find it More dramatically more fun than previously because I think like you don't get a lot of the new wacky toys until Wacky toys. I just feel like it's a lot of that they they from the very beginning Tell you here's how we would approach this tell you, here's how we would approach this. Plot a route, you see the hazards on a map. It is gamifying walking. It's adding that layer, right?

Which I think really helps, because it makes everything more concrete and it makes the idea of packing for a route really make sense. You know what you're gonna need. I'm gonna need a ladder when I get to this river. Gonna need a ladder, because I've got a place I get to this river. Gonna need a ladder, because I've got a place on here for a ladder.

Gonna need some guns, because I'm about to drive through these idiots. Like, you know, you need a plan. And honestly, if you deviate from that, you're choosing to, but it's your choice. I mean, you could execute on your plan and it'll go pretty much the way, you know, you think it's gonna go.

But then there's like, you'll see some sort of cool thing you wanna go look at, some sort of treasure you wanna go get, and then you get into a bit of a pickle. But it is, if you get into, I'll give you another one that's real good. If you see an encounter with enemies, you can look at it with your binoculars. You tag all your enemies, that's nothing new.

But then you gotta count at the top of the screen, and then when you start eliminating enemies, it starts decreasing it. Four out of six, three out of six, two out of six. So you know exactly how many bad guys there are to eliminate in the encounter. Just let those sort of quality of life things make what he is trying to do feel more, like it removes removes more the rough edges and just makes it into more of a

Can I say my biggest quality of life upgrade? You can see the fucking monsters now You can see the fucking monsters like yeah, dog the monsters shouldn't be invisible You shouldn't be constantly pursued by invisible monsters while you're trying to go from point a to point B It did make the monsters in the first game more scary, but also miserable to deal with You shouldn't be constantly pursued by invisible monsters while you're trying to go from point A to point B. On a laborious track. It did make the monsters in the first game more scary, but also miserable to deal with.

They are still scary and still, frankly, my least favorite part of the getting around experience because I do not like being on my cool bike, going on an interstate, international road trip, and then getting stopped abruptly because tar monsters fucking appear and try to slow me down. I think- Yeah, but it's also like so early, by the way,

where they're like, good news, and we found some cool magic for bullets that makes them work on ghosts. Yeah, right. The other very nice quality of life feature that I think people sort of forget about the first game, you can actually stealth into areas now.

There was a convoluted way to do this where you have to like revert a scan, but in the first game, every time you walked into enemy territory, the second you walked in there, a scan would ping you, know that you were carrying cargo, ping back and all the enemies would run at you. There was like, there were again, ways to stealth it, but it was a pain in the ass.

That's all gone. You can now play in enemy encampments like you can in Metal Gear Solid V or any other stealth game where you are sneaky and you hide in the high grass and you throw decoy grenades and you sneak up behind people and tie them up. Like that's all completely fun. And the combat in the first game was basically an afterthought.

Like it fucking sucked. Yeah. So. Let's go down that route a bit because the first, the first act or whatever is a shorter area in Mexico, similar to how the first game had a like open world you went to before the large open world. The second area is Australia and all of Australia. It felt to me like the first act in Mexico is

kind of a speed run of the first half of Death Stranding 1, which is the, you know, walking as an action game. I was surprised once you get to Australia, and it makes sense because the size of this game, it becomes a bit like blaster master and the NES. And by that, I mean there is an on foot game and there is a in vehicle game and vehicles were in the last game, but they were not nearly as predominant as they are almost always on my turbo trike.

That shit. Yeah. Right. Or once you get a truck, like I feel like I go everywhere with the truck at this point, cause I'm always carrying materials to build these highways that you'll come across or there's monorails in this game.

And yeah, it's basically the reason that you eventually have to get on foot is there's some train that forces you, but there's also a lot more Metal Gear Solid 5 in this game. Like a lot also a lot more Metal Gear Solid V in this game. Like a lot, a lot more Metal Gear in this game than the previous one. What do you mean? What do you mean Metal Gear Solid V specifically or Metal Gear at large? Five.

I mean Metal Gear Solid V specifically where it's the open world Metal Gear, hey, here's a big fort, how are you going to go about solving this? Like with maybe around like the five or six hour mark, there is a mission. And this is early in, I think Australia where you need to go into a base and bust like hack their satellite or whatever, you know, some generic prompt. And you can snipe them if you've unlocked that from like a distance. But the sniper rifle is extremely loud. So it attracts a ton of attention and suddenly you have like a horde of people running at you.

You can do the usual Metal Gear Solid sneak around where like people never even see you. You can barrel a vehicle right through the thing and just kind of pray as they all- Non-lethal, I have non-lethaly shredded some fucking dudes with an automobile. It has some like Spider-Man like logic where it's like, I mean, sure I heard his neck break,

but he's definitely still alive. In the first game, there were a ton of weapons that were lethal weapons that basically were worthless. Cause the second you kill someone in the world of Death Stranding, a BT shows up, a void out occurs, which is basically like a nuke going off in the middle of that area.

It takes some time, but so it made lethal weapons basically worthless in a lot of ways. This game corrects that by giving you a ton of non-lethal options, and most of them work on both BTs and people. Yep, helpful little icons too on each weapon that show does it work on ghosts, does it work on dudes. And as you're doing missions for people,

it's not just like, well, the bar's going up, you're also getting new gear every time you rank up a relationship and things like that, and all the new gear has a purpose for some sort of gameplay style, whether you're playing stealthy, whether you're playing like full on assault, uh, all that stuff, like just makes the experience of getting around the world more fun and more, this is where I think the big difference is and why this game has

clicked so hard for me. This feels way more like an RPG. I feel way more control in control of my character and like what I'm able to do in the world. There's like a passive perk system that wasn't in the first game. All of this stuff kind of combines to make me feel, again, the middle of your solid comparison.

I feel the same way about this that I did that game, which is you eventually get to a point where your snake is like very, or I guess big boss in that case, your big boss is very unique to anyone else's based on what you're bringing along. Were you afraid he'd gonna beat you up? No.

Ken, Russ, you're probably best equipped to talk about this because I think you're probably for this. I think the game is delightful from a narrative perspective just because of how much wild shit it keeps throwing at me. There have been some moments of emotional resonance, I will say, and I don't wanna sorta like, get too deep into what that is,

but also I have hit wide swaths of the story where it kinda just feels like they're saying Kyroll over and over again, and maybe the narrative is not quite as gripping. I'm wondering your sort of take on the narrative successes of this thing, barring the obvious like it's Hideo Kojima being a wild man, which we all love, but how is the writing sort of from a more traditional storytelling? I think both this game and the first game are very, very simple stories, very

straightforward that are obscured by chiral bridge connections across the void out BT death, et cetera, et cetera. But at its core, the first game is really just like, hey, we're trying to bring America together by connecting people, and that'll make us all stronger in the long run. And this game is very similar to that, but there's also an element of like fatherhood and the importance of family and things like that,

that is kind of layered on top. That is really all you need to keep in mind. If you wanna go down the freaky Kojima rabbit hole, you can, but most of that stuff is not in the cutscenes. Like as you mentioned, the cutscenes are pretty short. Half of them are like, we're just gonna have Norman Reedus do some goofy ass shit. I went into a hot spring at one point

and he just starts like singing a song in Japanese and his like little like baby carrier thing starts like spinning around in the water like it's like a fantasy musical. So like half of them are just jokes and then the other half are like you know it'll be like evil bad guy shouting at you but realistically like your goal is still the same it's still you're trying to connect in this case Australia and there might be as with the first game I think the final act of that game narratively was like a total shit show mess

I'm sure something similar will also happen here where it's a total shit show mess I don't care because I'm so compelled by both the goofy shit and also just like the minute-to-minute gameplay like scratches Exactly the right itch in my brain. Yeah Yeah I will say I I think there's a bit more there in the cutscenes as the person who loved the first game and you know sits through all the cutscenes here. I mean I do. I think that there's like a bit more about like the themes of this one are Kojima being still really upset about not making the rest of Metal Gear to like some pretty on the nose

detours that the game takes. It is his really peculiar obsession with kind of natalism and like what it means to have babies and who gets to have babies, which is bizarre. And then there is a whole, whole lot about people need to log the fuck off the internet. Right. Um, and I think that's like, again, like Russ is right, you can understand the story, the plot, I guess, on you need to connect all these people

together and is that good or bad, but he's still doing Kojima, he's just doing it in three to four minute chunks. Instead of, I think of that die. Was it not die hard man, heart man, heart man. Yeah. We're like, that was the iconic go on forever cut scene of death stranding one where it truly went on for like 35, 40 minutes. We don't have any of that so far.

We haven't really talked too much about the like other identifying characteristics of this franchise, which really has no parallel in other game franchises, which is the fact that like people are contributing to your world based on what they build and vice versa. When you build things, it can appear in other people's worlds. When I was playing this game over the course of the last week and a half or so, for most of that, the servers were off.

The servers were on at the very beginning when I first started playing, and then for most of it, the servers were off, and then about three days ago, the servers turned back on again. And holy shit, it is so fascinating to play this game both offline and online. Yeah, I can imagine. It's clearly balanced for online

because there's a lot of like grinding resource management stuff that I was actually kind of getting a kick out of, but it just takes much longer to do anything. But when the servers flipped online, it was going from like a backwater wild west town to going in the middle of Las Vegas. And suddenly there's fucking neon signs everywhere

and jump packs and giant fucking spring boards. Just like run into a charger, yeah. I will say it is wild. That mechanic works for me as often as it does not, but it does frequently deliver this moment. Sorry, just to clarify, do you mean works like actually technically works or works like you enjoy it? Oh, maybe a little column A, a little column B.

I was also wondering, I think Russ has cleared up to me why I've had stretches of this game where I didn't see shit and it's possible that it was just like a pre-release server outage situation, but the number of times where I've had the moment where I would be in the shit But the number of times where I've had the moment where I would be in the shit, way far away from an outpost with a sack full of garbage and out of supplies, my shoes are all fucked up,

there's BTs crawling out of my ass, and then I will just happen to come across a shelter someone has built right where I need it, right where I would have built it if I'd had the supplies, is a very, very cool moment. Because you think like, oh, okay, someone was thinking the same way that I was, except they actually bothered to bring a PCC with them or whatever.

Or you'll look around with a tough situation, you'll see a watchtower nearby, and you're like, okay, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, I can get there, sure. You get it, you get it. It is cool, it takes, there's a pretty steep learning curve to that stuff, I will okay, yeah, I can get there. You get it, you get it. It is cool, it is, it takes, there's a pretty steep learning curve to that stuff, I will say, because like, there is a, learning the economy of this game takes a while.

You have these resources that you need to make items and to build these big structures, and that resource is not constant. It's like you stockpile some medals at this one outpost and then when you go to the other outpost, it's not necessarily gonna be there because if it was, they wouldn't need porters. They could just fucking teleport everything that they need.

Ah, yes. There is a helpful thing once you get to Australia that kind of negates this, but like, the stress I felt in the first game about, like, well, fuck, does it make sense to, do I have to keep my supplies with me every Time I move to a new outpost. I have to truck 200 kilograms of garbage From point a to point B. I I feel like they they mitigate that quite a bit. Yeah, they definitely do

I mean this felt to me like Monster hunter in some ways because because of the DNA that I learned in the first game I was much it was much easier for me to jump in and know that like, oh, chiral crystals actually have negative weight, so I should get as many as I can at any given time. I don't think I ever absorbed that information from the first game.

And also just like, oh, I should, you know, if I'm at a base and they have a bunch of materials, there's no reason not to take it out of that base so long as I can carry them. So there's just a lot of DNA that I remember from that game that has helped me kind of get a little bit of a leg up, but it feels like, I don't know, man, this feels like a good starting point for a lot of people

because you're not suffering through what is just a really steep learning curve of that first game. Yeah, I frequently felt during the first one that Kojima was trying to teach me a direct visceral lesson about suffering. The suffering that I was experiencing. I'm not even kidding. No, at the beginning of the game especially.

The misery of the experience was part of the point, and a little of that goes a long way. It's like, thank you. I don't get that sense in this game. It is about hardship in some ways, but it's not trying to as much give you the visceral experience of struggle that the first game, I think, was trying to get across.

I do think it is worth mentioning, because we keep talking about this as a good starting point. The recap that is provided for the first Death Stranding game is a 17 slide info dump that you can shoot through in about 100 seconds. Yeah. It is so tight. It's great.

It's tight, it tells you literally, so far, I feel like I know everything I need to know, which is kind of damning, I think, of the story of Death Stranding 1, because that game takes longer than 100 seconds to shoot through. That's what I mean by simple. Like it was a pretty simple plot.

I mean, if you're not looking at the themes, it's pretty straightforward. But I did not play a ton of Death Stranding 1, because I didn't like it, and I do not feel at all lost here in Death Stranding 2. So, um, I, I, I agree that this is a good place to start. I do think if you really enjoy this, and you want more after you play, you know, 200 hours of this game, the director's cut of Death Stranding 1 is still going

to be enjoyable, I think, for that sort of person. It's the director's cut has a lot more in common with this game than the original version of Death Stranding does. It's just infinitely more forgiving and has way more things to play with. It has way more combat, has a lot of the stuff that they ended up doing with this game. Um, I will say there is a certain sicko like myself who will miss some of the rough edges. I don't miss having two hour cutscenes interrupted,

but to your point hoops of a little goes a long way. That's true, but I found in Death Stranding after like 40 or 50 hours and I had built, um, you know, zip lines over a mountain. The feeling of success of achievement was one of my favorite things I've ever felt in a video game. In here, you are achievement comes like constantly, you are constantly being rewarded. I mean, it really wants to make sure that even

for like the smallest action you do, you're getting a treat out of it. I don't think that's bad. I that even for like the smallest action you do, you're getting a treat out of it. I don't think that's bad. I'm like, too clear. This is like my, no, no, I really don't. It's for filthy casuals, just saying. No, I like it. I just, I wish I could have like both at times.

I'll give you a concrete example of what you're talking about, Plant. And I think this is very fitting. The zip lines in the first game. Zip lines could only go line of sight in the first game. You could go in a straight beam line, and that was the only way to do it. And when you line them up perfectly, you're like,

oh shit, I could see the bars of the other zip line. This feels really fucking good. I felt like I earned it here. In this game, they let you bend the line a little bit, so you can go around a mountain or up and over something. And it's just like that tiny little like, hey, this is a nice thing for you. That I was like, I kind of wanna just ignore this

cause it feels a little unearned, this helpful hand that they've given me. But that's a very sicko point. Oh good, okay. Yeah, I acknowledge you. At least you recognize that. A free point. The other, okay. Yeah, I acknowledge you. That's a free point. The other thing I wanna mention, Justin, you mentioned this earlier.

I think if you quit this game for three days, you're never coming back to it. For the same exact notes that you gave previously. This game is, even though it's more welcoming, and even though they're giving you a lot more things, it is incredibly fucking dense to the point of like, I don't, like, I think this is like an all or nothing momentum thing that I don't know that I could keep

bouncing back into. Like, I'm gonna play this game to the end. By virtue of the fact that it's not on my, on my rogue ally, I have taken quite, we've gone on tour since we've had it. And I have streamed the game've gone on tour since we've had it. I have streamed the game while I've been at home, which is fine, it's just kind of annoying

that it takes that extra minute or two to get it streaming. And I usually play things in pretty short little bursts. This would be kind of perfect for that. I would be delighted if it was there. So I would disagree with that. I took a couple for that. I would be delighted if it was there. So I would disagree with that. I took a couple of breaks from this game and I did not necessarily struggle to get back.

I think that there is some, I think that I am partially, this game is a lot more enjoyable for me because I played the first one and it is not having to do a whole lot of, it's not even like restructure my entire brain as to like what kind of thing this is. And I think that shorthand is really helpful.

It communicates it if you haven't played them before, but the last one, but I think that like having that as a basis to work from really, really helps. Also on the cut scenes, I just wanted to say, I feel like with the editing and the writing and it let being less self indulgent to Kojima, I think having the random celebrity cameos feels a lot less. I think exploitative or like it is the word that I want to use here, but I think that that's right.

Like it feels less like here's someone I got in my game because I'm a fan of them. It feels like you get a little bit more of the actor's personality and the, the person's like personality coming through that makes it feel like less creepy, like fan service and more a little bit like it's a fun collaborative. Yeah, sure. If that makes sense. Yeah. Like they're one of the people who was in Terrace House

is in this game for people who remember that Netflix reality show. Yeah, oh my God, yes. The artist? Yes, and she's an artist now. Yeah, Lauren. And she does like real art. She does exhibits across the world.

And when you come across her, her character helps you, one has the same name, two is an artist, three gives you like color ways that you can use to change your stuff, but four, her actual art from the real world is hanging around her like little, her bunker. And same thing with like, there's a musician that you come across and he shares his actual music and the real vinyl records are hanging on the wall. It like really wants to introduce you to these people in the real world through the game, rather than like you said, who's being like, oh, well, if you know, you know.

There's, I think it's like, okay, the George Miller thing, George Miller pops up. It's a real fun character intro. It's 30 seconds long. It's fun. You move on. He pops up. He's like, what's the George Miller thing. George Miller pops up, it's a real fun character intro. It's 30 seconds long, it's fun, you move on. He pops up, he's like, what's up? I'm George Miller, here's what's weird about me. Have fun, have fun today. And it's not in the first S training, I think it would have been like, I'm George Miller.

I'm gonna talk to you for 20 minutes until you're so fucking sick of me that you delete Mad Max from your computer's hard drive. You know, like, it feels a little bit more, like, respectful of the person like George Miller's kids and maybe even George Miller himself, because I think he plays video games, aren't going to play and be like, God, I'm really, this is a really boring part. You actually can access the 20 minute full backstory and the way they do it is they make it optional in your room.

You'll be like looking through a book and you'll see a photo and it's like, ah, you should probably share this with George Miller, but do you really want to? And you're like, oh, I know what that means. I know what you're saying. Yeah, you're just saying, do I want that 20 minute cut scene? And then you watch it on your own and you choose to, turns out much more enjoyable. There is a context sensitive skip button in the game. That is what maybe this game's

greatest technological achievement. If you hit circle during any non-interactive scene, it'll drop out to this thing where it'll be like continue or skip or options or whatever. Or you can just hold X. If you hold X, it takes like, I think you can adjust the amount of time it takes for the skip.

I highly recommend adjusting the time it takes because you skip a lot of fucking cutscenes in this game. Because here's the thing. But no, there's different kinds of skits. For good, cutscenes, and bad ones. That's it, right? So Norman Reedus goes and takes a piss for the 100th time and eats a bug.

I've seen that. I can just hold X for a second and then zoop. We're literally instantly right past it. That's awesome. But sometimes I'll go to the mirror because I need to shave his fucking gnarly face and I'll start to hold in the skip button and it'll take a little bit longer than it's supposed to.

I'll be like, oh shit, wait, like something cool is about to happen and something cool will happen. It tells you very discreetly, like, hey, you should watch this next part. It's pretty fucking crazy. Makes me feel all the more powerful when I do skip those scenes

because I just want to get outside and haul some more boxes around. So many of Hideo Kojima's worst instincts have been almost completely neutralized, I feel like, and it is all killer no-filler for me so far. By the way, interesting, I just thought this was interesting. I showed Sydney, I was very early and she happened to be in the room.

It was when you had a toddler on your chest at the very beginning of the game. You could take it out and soothe her and if she gets upset by your walking, you need to take her out and soothe her or whatever. And Sydney was in, I was like, hey, look at this. And I showed her, she actually thought was, and the way it's handling the game was actually pretty impressed that there was a mechanic that was attempted in the game

that wasn't shooting or tying people up. Like, and I felt like in the first game, it was it seemed a lot more awkward and a lot more weird. And I feel like it feels more humane in this game. And it feels less like a joke, and a little bit more like a, I don't know how to make this fun, but it is part of the stuff that happens in the game, is taking care of a baby. Yeah. So this is my game of the year so far.

I still haven't played Blueprints, because we've talked about it, but this is the best game that I've played this year, by like, a lot. Like, not even a question. Cool. I'm a lot further than you guys are. It's always been more fun. Always gotta get the brags in there.

I love that part of your personality. Excuse me guys. It's been great. So I hope people get to experience it. I'm bummed that it's exclusive to PS5 because more people should play this, but I'm sure it will come to PC as the other version has. And I think the other version even came to Xbox eventually.

So yay, good games. Love to see them. Love it. Love it. Let's take a break. Then when we come back, we'll talk more Kojima. So I thought we'd just do a quick recap of like Kojima stuff coming because

there's like basically two and a half Kojima games that are gonna be coming pretty soon. So just as a reminder, pretty soon. It's gonna be five fucking years. Anyway, the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake is coming out. He is not working on that. He has no association with Konami. He hates Konami. Konami hates him. But there is a remake of the game that was probably one of his best titles ever released that's association with Konami. He hates Konami, Konami hates him. But there is a remake of the game that was probably one of his best titles ever released that's coming out later this summer. I think it's an August release, so I'm very excited about that. There are two legit Kojima games coming. There's OD, which is a horror

game that kind of looks like PT, I guess. And then there's Fizzint, which I guess looks like Metal Gear Solid. And both of these games basically feel like throwbacks to things he's worked on previously and people really liked. But it's exciting to like- Fizzint has to be like a working title, right? Fizzint? That's Fizzint.

Maybe. Death Stranding sounds like a working title. And they went with that. If it sounds like, hey, listen,ent. Maybe. Death Stranding sounds like a working title. They went with that. If it sounds like, hey, listen, check this joke out. If it sounds like a working title, it fizzent. That's cool. Pretty good. Hmm.

I don't know. How are you guys feeling about? I mean, I'm very excited. I, the names attached to OD are exciting to me. And then, but there would, it would be cool to see what it is and what it looks like and what it does. What kind of game it is and anything.

Anything at all about it. That would be so cool. Stands for Orange Dick. Just a heads up. Okay. Oh no. Now we know that and now we're ready to move on, I guess. We have some reader mail. Okay.

First question. This one is from Matt. As a veteran game journalist, or I guess journalists, did you ever take a hard stance against a game that everyone loved at the time? And what game made you feel like you were on another planet than everyone else playing that game? Fucking, it happened on this show, my friend. Go back and listen to our Starfield episode,

and then go back and read any review, aside from maybe a small handful of reviews of Starfield. I genuinely, genuinely, is the most poignant example of this, where I absolutely felt like I was being gas lit by the entire industry writ large. I still have no explanation for it. I don't know anybody that likes that game I think it's crazy. But anyway, yes, I mean I think the the overarching narrative is people have come around to our side on the matter bike, but it's not but the game I

Don't know that the game has changed so fundamentally. It hasn't I think I think That's just one of those cases where we were right and everyone else was wrong, and I don't know a nicer way of saying it than that. You know what I mean? Like, we have been doing this a long time and we're probably smarter than a lot of other people doing it. Yeah, it's genuinely quite scary

to be the outlier critic on a thing. I say scary like it's like some horrible, terrible thing is going to happen to you, but it is troubling when the reviews come out and you're like, oh wow, I was a lot harder on this thing than everyone else, or I liked this thing much, much more than everyone else. I will also say, for whatever it's worth,

that if you are the solo game critic working somewhere and you don't talk to other people, and maybe it's probably a lot harder to trust that your take on Starfield is accurate. Maybe the problem is me, because I think this sucks. Oh well, I better just sort of go with the flow, because I don't want to be sticking my neck out,

because that is a really uncomfortable position to be in, to be the dissenting, but I like Nier a lot less than a lot of people, but that's okay. The example that I thought of was that Saints Row reboot game that I actually kind of really liked. You remember that game?

I had a lot of fun with that game and everyone fucking hated it. Part of that is like SJW, Anti, Woke, whatever, but also just like people hated it in general. Yeah. Mine is Last of Us 2, and I have felt vindicated by the reaction to the second season of the TV show.

Yeah, it only took like eight years to get there. There is an inverse side of this too, where like I remember giving Skyward Sword like a perfect glowing review. I was absolutely gaga about that game, and it received fairly middling reviews, I would say, on average from a lot of other places. And that is also sort of a very weird

kind of alienating feeling, but I can't think of too many examples. Do you regret it? How did that happen? Do I regret it? No, I don't think so. You would stand by your language about Skyward Sword? I mean, okay, knowing what Breath of the Wild

and Tears of the Kingdom would kind of become, like obviously it doesn't hold a candle, but I do think there's a certain amount of walking so it could run, that could happen, so no. Last question, this one comes from Harry. With the increasing rise of popularity of game to movie adaptations, what is the key to picking the right IP? Is

it a game with a well written story like Last of Us? Fitting. Trying to get those iconic giraffe moments or is it better to go the Sonic route where you pick a character we love with more freedom to do what you want to do with the story? Yeah, I think it's about finding the right match of the tone and structure with the right game and the right people who actually enjoy the thing and know what's fun about it. I think that Sonic, the tone of Sonic is just exactly as reverent of Sonic as anyone feasibly should be.

I think that's a big strength for Sonic. Yeah, I feel like folks get in trouble when they try to adapt the story of a interactive branching narrative to a non interactive non branching sort of format. And so I do think I think Sonic represents maybe the most successful video game to film adaptation like ever and they've done it three times and that's just, that's really spectacular. I saw an interview, Alex Garland is working on a Elden Ring movie and I saw an interview with him where he was, the interviewer was asking him like he was gonna trip him up,

what boss did he struggle with the most? And he said, none of them, really. And I was like, oh yeah, this guy does play Elden Ring. And then the host said, I struggle with Radon. And then Alex Garland said, Radon is not hard. And then I was like, yeah, this guy gets it. I don't know if he's gonna make a good Elden Ring movie, but he certainly plays Elden Ring.

He's a legit Elden Ring fan. He definitely plays Elden Ring. I bet you he beats Radon no summons. I bet you he's a strength-filled no summons. No, he goes to summons. He just explains you gotta get the right summons and then it's not hard. And he's like, yeah, that's accurate.

So I will see. Elden Ring's a weird one, man. I don't know how the fuck you adapt that. I genuinely don't. It's not the story of the see. Elden Ring's a weird one, man. I don't know how the fuck you adapt that. I genuinely don't. It's not the story of the game of Elden Ring. That would be a bad story. My wet man ran through the blood fields for 50. My dead wet dad.

My dead wet dad eats shrimp to get strong and kill God. I mean, the manga does a very good job because it's basically a comedy manga of the Elden Ring story, which works, but probably wouldn't work for an Alex Garland movie. I think there's one narrative related to Castle Mourn, where the castle gets overrun by a bunch of monsters and boots out the humans that were there,

because the monsters are like, sir, I think that's the only way to do it, is you pick one side story and around the edges of it, you have the world of Elden Ring, but really you're just focused on the one side story. I think the story about Radon and Melanie, not Melanie. Melanon, Millennia. Millennia and Radon.

Millennium. And the blight and all that shit, ending with the festival, that would be pretty sick That would be pretty rad. But yeah, I don't there's so much story there, man. I don't know what you get I would like I couldn't resist, you know, yeah He was like I'm gonna make a movie about men and they're like, yeah, he's like, yeah You know, he's like I'm gonna move about a civil war and like yeah, I go for it I'm gonna make a movie about warfare and then I'm gonna make a trilogy about 28 days later

that's actually about coming to terms with death. And they're like, sure, sure, sure. And he's like, now I'm retired. Like, that makes a lot of sense. You've done a lot of work. You know what, I wanna get one more. And they're like, oh, sure. Like, is it women?

What do you got? And he's like, so I just played Elden Ring. I think that's gonna end my career. I love it. Go for it. You guys that's gonna end my career. I love it. Go for it. You guys been playing anything else? No. Okay.

So much Death Stranding. A lot of Death Stranding. I mean, people should go see 28 Years Later. That's my thing. People should go see 28 Years Later because it's a miracle that movie got made and it is not the movie that is being advertised really at all. I didn't see 28 weeks later. Is that an issue? Yeah, actually for the better because they retcon it into oblivion within seconds.

Perfect. I love it. I will say if you are the sort of person who loves just British comedy and history and the BBC, the movie is going to really click with you in a way that it won't with everybody else. Everybody, I think, will enjoy it. But it is a movie about British culture in the most blunt of, in fucking wild of ways. I want to, speaking of BBC comedy, I have been watching Taskmaster, series 19, I think. It's the one with Jason Mantzoukas on it. And it's fucking, it's a strong one.

I have fallen off that show, just mostly because I was watching other stuff, but I really was curious about how his particular energy and brand of comedy would adapt to the Taskmaster format, and I have not been disappointed. The whole cast is very strong. It is an unhinged season, and Rachel and I have been really enjoying watching that at night.

I also- Let me just say, apparently he's the first American that's flown to the UK to do Taskmaster. Oh, that's interesting. I guess, I mean, May Martin's Canadian, huh? Yeah, I guess so. I've also been playing Pokemon TCG Pocket again, the trading card game, collectible trading card game.

They added some stuff since launch, and one of those things was trading. You can trade cards, but they've made it as obtuse and shitty as possible to keep people from getting the cards that they want without buying into the Pokemon TCG Pocket ecosystem. And someone has made a companion app called Poketrade, where you can find people who have the cards that you want

and set up the trades with them through a third party platform. And in using that, I have completed all but, I think, one of the sets that are available now. I just like collecting the cards, I like opening the packs, feels good, man. Nice. I would like to recommend Lord of the Rings,

The Two Towers on PlayStation 2. I played a good bit while we were on tour, and if you want to hit some of those scary ghosts with your sword and protect Elijah Wood, it is a great time. Are there ghosts in two towers? You can be Frodo, and you can't be Frodo, and you can be Legolas, and Aragorn or Gimli,

and not Frodo, again, just to be clear. You could just be those three guys. And there's the scary wraiths. Oh, the ring wraiths, sure. I guess that works. Sure, yeah, that works. I was thinking the ghosts in the third movie. There's also, there's clips from the movie,

so a lot of times you can't even tell if you're watching a movie or playing a game. It's kind of a seamless blend. Wow. Hylia says that, you can fucking completely, absolutely tell. I can absolutely tell this Justin show me a picture of stretched out stretched ass Gimli that looks so fucking profane

There's no way I would confuse I got it. I had it on with wide screen hacks. It's great. It made Gimli too wide Dude, he looked fucked up didn't think it was possible. All right, that's gonna do it. What are we doing next week a little game? called The alters. Hey, that's gonna do it. What are we doing next week? A little game called The Alters. Hey, all right. Hey. Didn't make sense. That sounds fun. I wanted to thank our patrons over at the besties, patreon.com slash the besties. Thank you everyone for being patrons.

We have a new Resties episode that's up. We have a new Bracket episode. It's gonna be slightly delayed, a couple days. I apologize, we apologize. Scheduling conflicts abound, but it's gonna come out still that same week. So keep an eye out for that in the first week of July. And thank you all, we really, really appreciate you.

Be sure to join us again next time for the Besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!