Gamebro.biz.id - At one point, the people who made the Switch 2 thought about naming it the Super Nintendo Switch. They opted against it, though, because it could play original Switch games, while the Super NES from 1990 couldn't play games from the NES from 1983. I played with it all weekend and think the Switch Pro is a better moniker. It's more like a modernized and improved version of the original system than a whole new generation. The bigger screen and faster processor are the most visible improvements, but every part of the system is better. The larger Joy-Cons seem stronger and are easier to operate. I like how they magnetically clip onto the console. The user interface is a graceful but somewhat monotonous version of the Switch's, with mild haptic feedback and nice little sounds that make it feel like you're playing. Some people might be upset that the Switch OLED model goes back to a regular LCD screen, but the quality is good and the extra screen spac...
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach review—an art-house game that will keep you hooked with an A-list cast
Gamebro.biz.id - What does Death Stranding 2 want to say? During the second part of Hideo Kojima's hypnotic, mysterious, and provocatively slow-paced cargo management simulator series, you will ask yourself this question numerous times. First, because when you are on your lengthy, boring journeys through its mystical versions of Mexico and Australia, you have all the time in the world to think about the little things and figure out what you just saw that was so strange. And second, since the question often reveals something deep.
The fact that it can hold up to such a long time of thinking about it shows how well-made this game is. No one is writing down notes to figure out what Doom: The Dark Ages is about or watching Marvel Rivals' cutscenes for hints, even if those games are great. It's not often for games to be put under this kind of scrutiny, and even less common for them to pass it. Death Stranding 2, on the other hand, has the mood and storytelling style of an arthouse movie. The story is light, but the gameplay elements are really deep. The conflict between the two is what makes it so interesting. At first, you fight for one and then, over time, you enjoy both.
Yes, this is the second game in a series about transferring freight between locations, either on foot or in a vehicle. You deliver parcels of food, tech, and luxury products, like a post-apocalyptic Amazon driver. At the start of the first game, something strange happened that changed the world forever. The dead could come back to life as ethereal beings called Beached Things (BTs). A BT kills a person, and that causes a terrible occurrence termed a "voidout," which is like a nuclear bomb explosion that leaves behind a huge crater.
People were scattered and living in subterranean bunkers, thus the main character, Sam Porter Bridges (Norman Reedus), was given the job of linking the last bits of civilization in the US to a global tech network called "the chiral network." This gave people hope for a better future. He did it, though, carrying Lou, a kind of miraculous baby, in an artificial womb across the whole continent. In this sequel, he is living a quiet life in Mexico with Lou, who is now a toddler.
And trust me, those are the shortest cliff notes you can get. Death Stranding 2 starts with six minutes of cutscenes that try to show off the weird sci-fi universe and poetic metaphors that Kojima has built. Even that feels like a quick overview. part the pleasure here is figuring out the puzzles (the other part is moving the boxes), but even if you don't become that involved in the environment, it has its own type of dreamlike logic that starts to make sense. For example, it's not clear if Death Stranding 2's Australian ever looked like the one we know or if it was always a mix of Icelandic tundra, snowcapped mountains, and multicolored desert. What important is that it feels the same.
It may be meditative, but this isn't a game where you watch Sam enjoy being a father and retire for 50 hours. He has to go back to work, this time to connect the Mexican and Australian people to the chiral network for Drawbridge, a logistics company run by the returning figure Fragile (Léa Seydoux) and backed by a mysterious benefactor. If that sounds a little boring, what if I told you that Fragile wears a pair of long Greta Garbo gloves around her neck that she can move like a second set of hands?
A group of swashbucklers helps Sam on his mission by following him about on the DHV Magellan, a ship with more A-listers on board than a red carpet at Cannes. Troy Baker, a professional game actor, plays the main bad guy Higgs, and Seydoux, George Miller, Guillermo del Toro, Nicolas Winding Refn, Elle Fanning, and Shioli Kutsuna also deliver great performances. The main characters are mostly just poetic devices and dark metaphors: Rainy (Kutsuna) is an ostracized optimist who makes it rain everytime she goes outside. Tarman (Miller) lost a hand to magical tar, and now he can use it to steer the ship through its currents. Heartman (Darren Jacobs) dies and comes back to life every few minutes. They should all be too odd to make you feel sad, but there are times when the metaphor is turned down and they act in human and moving ways. It's not just Deadman who is dead inside if you don't feel a knot in your throat when Rainy and Tomorrow (Fanning) sing together.
Strangely, package delivery is shown to the highest levels of gameplay. It may sound uninteresting, but these sophisticated systems have a magnetic pull that makes you want to get involved. In the last game, combat felt like an afterthought, but this time there is more of it because missions put you in confrontation with both BTs and other people. The mechanics are also generally smooth, making it just as satisfying to throw a bomb or snap a neck. You can make items to take with you, such ladders and climbing ropes for mountain paths, and assault rifles and grenades for when a confrontation is likely. The fun is in both the planning and the action. It feels nice to bring some order to a world that is otherwise chaotic and hard to understand. That's probably why we all made so much banana bread while we were stuck at home.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Kojima had a script for the tale of Death Stranding 2. But after being locked down with the rest of the world, he wrote it all over again. You don't have to look too hard to see the influences: a populace that is too terrified to go outside, governments that promise to keep you safe by stopping travel and physical contact, and the deep loneliness of Sam's profession as a porter traveling alone through empty landscapes.
You can interact with other players, but only from a distance. You can share gear, build structures, and leave holographic signs and likes for other players in their own games. This is a sharp work of lockdown satire. As time goes on, the world gets more and more full of flickering icons, and as more buildings sprout up, you are always faced with "like" signals. It feels like the mind-numbing attention spam of social media, and there's no way this is a mistake.
The first game had the benefit of being unexpected. Death Stranding 2 doesn't. A lot of the wonderful and bad things about this game were also true in the other one, but this one has made each strange part better. The world map looks more hand-drawn, the missions are more varied, and the combat seems more powerful. It should feel like a practical joke to ask you to perform all that walking around again in a fresh game, but because it is so mechanically complex and full of significance, you just nod and put the backpack back on.
Death Stranding 2 has a lot to communicate, but the most important one is that you are never really alone. Even though large tech, global calamities, and even death itself can make it harder for us to communicate with one other, they can't completely cut off our connection. Not a horrible game about delivering boxes.
Death Stranding 2 comes out on June 26 for £69.99, US$69.99, or AU$124.95.
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