00:00Finally, we got a brand new Metal Gear Solid game. Rejoice.
00:06Okay, I am exaggerating there a bit. I'm of course talking about Death Stranding 2,
00:11which honestly is a Metal Gear Solid game for me in a lot of ways.
00:16Something akin to a phantom pain.
00:19So one of the biggest, saddest parts of the Konami Kojima bust-up was
00:24it happened after Kojima and team finished up Metal Gear Solid 5,
00:29the Phantom Pain, which for my money is one of the best action games,
00:34one of the best stealth action games, and one of the best open world stealth action games.
00:39There aren't many games that are like it, and it was, you know, sad for a lot of reasons,
00:44but for me, the biggest issue I had was it was looking like we would never get a follow-up
00:49to Metal Gear Solid 5, which was difficult because it was bursting with so much potential.
00:55It finally had a really interesting format for the open world.
00:59And in terms of presentation and sound and feel, it was spectacular.
01:05Metal Gear Solid 5, both Ground Zeroes and the Phantom Pain, is one of my favorite games of all time.
01:11So when Kojima moved on to Death Stranding, I was a little disappointed for various reasons.
01:19Death Stranding, the first one, people would call it a game about walking, which it definitely is.
01:24So from that respect, it's not a Metal Gear Solid game at all.
01:28But it is in a few other ways.
01:31Most noticeably, it embodies Metal Gear Solid 5 spirit through how weird it is.
01:37The world is weird.
01:40The concepts are weird.
01:43It's bizarre in the same way that, you know, Metal Gear Solid has a psychokinesis user.
01:48Now I will move your control.
01:50It has a fat man on roller skate.
01:54Life is short.
01:55It's got an old dude that falls asleep if you take too long to shoot him in the face.
02:02It's weird.
02:03The issue was, from a gameplay sense, it is exactly what people call it.
02:07A walking game.
02:09It's not bad or uninteresting.
02:10In fact, quite the opposite.
02:11It's really, really cool and unique.
02:13But it wasn't Metal Gear Solid.
02:15Until the director's cut.
02:17When the director's cut happened, you could start to feel what was coming.
02:21And it was a shift towards more action.
02:23Didn't they even add like a cardboard box too?
02:26I believe so.
02:27But yeah, I think I remember in the trailer they like had a...
02:30From that point on, I knew Metal Gear Solid was going to be all up in Death Stranding.
02:35And it is.
02:36Like you play the second one and there are various overt and vague allusions to it.
02:43Which is straight up.
02:45I love that.
02:46I'm a big fan of that.
02:51So the director's cut introduced way more items and weapons and that kind of stuff.
02:57And a lot of people didn't really find that to be exciting because it undermines what Death Stranding is.
03:04But for me, it gave me options.
03:06And once I started playing it, I realized I could play that game more like a Metal Gear Solid game.
03:12And that has been realized in a much, much bigger form in Death Stranding 2.
03:16The format of Death Stranding 2 is essentially the same as Metal Gear Solid 5.
03:21Where each delivery where you're, you know, ferrying one item to the next is a side op.
03:26In the same way it was in Peace Walker or Metal Gear Solid 5 especially.
03:29Where you have that one main mission, which is your main delivery that will advance the plot in a major way.
03:34And then you have a series of side ops where they're just playgrounds.
03:37They're little playgrounds for you to do things and potentially get lost in the open world.
03:41And that, from a format perspective, is exactly what I want from an open world action slash stealth game.
03:48And what you do in the open world in these side deliveries, side ops, is incredibly varied.
03:54There's everything from go in here, get the item, and get out and deliver it.
03:59Which is expressly a stealth mission if you want it to be.
04:02And it's how I played it.
04:03Every opportunity to go into a place and alert no one, maybe tranq a few people and get out, I have taken that.
04:10And there's also stuff like, oh, kill this person or take someone else out, you know, while you're doing this delivery.
04:16Which, again, is a leaning deeper into the idea of action and giving you more opportunities to use the options you have.
04:24Which in this game is guns.
04:26And that's where also it changes in a major way where Metal Gear Solid 5 did this incredible thing, which I really loved.
04:33Which was it introduced guns that were non-lethal.
04:37Which was incredibly rare.
04:39And the reason I thought it was amazing is because I play stealth, I play ghost style.
04:44So I don't want anyone to know I was ever there.
04:47Or I want to tranq everyone and leave with clean hands.
04:51I do that with every stealth game.
04:53The problem is, when you do that, a lot of the times you're forced to not engage with a wide variety of mechanics.
05:01Take Dishonored, for example.
05:03I love Dishonored.
05:04I've played the first one, the second one many, many times.
05:07Always do a ghost run.
05:08The issue with the first Dishonored was, there were so many cool powers that were just exclusively for high chaos or more action focused runs.
05:18I never got to do the thing where you use the rats.
05:22Not once.
05:23Because I just did not engage with that.
05:25It was counter to my play style.
05:27But in Metal Gear Solid V, I had an assault rifle that was effectively non-lethal.
05:33I had various opportunities to kind of get through an experience while engaging with all the mechanics, but still play the exact way that I want to.
05:41And that is present in Death Stranding 2.
05:43So beyond the actual combat stuff, how you traverse and how you infiltrate is also much more varied.
05:50You have the basic ping, which tells you the kind of lay of the land and that kind of stuff, but also gives you a good look at who is around you and how you should approach it.
06:00It's effectively this game's version of whatever the next evolution of the Soliton radar would have been.
06:06We've had everything from the Soliton radar to like sound circles and in between.
06:11So this fits very neatly into that slot.
06:13The biggest introduction for me that I appreciate was Dollman.
06:16Dollman is dumb as hell.
06:19Okay.
06:19Little puppet.
06:21What?
06:21Puppet?
06:22No, no.
06:23No, I am alive.
06:25But as a reconnaissance item, he's amazing.
06:29Every time I approach any sort of encampment or any sort of scenario where I might be engaging someone, I use Dollman, chuck him into the air and then scope out where I need to go, a route and also enemies that are nearby.
06:43I get information on what they might be carrying, what type of class they are, which helps me figure out how best to approach it.
06:48And it is effectively the same kind of loop that you would have in Metal Gear Solid 5, which is you approach, you kind of pull out your binoculars and look around, see everything, what's going on, tag stuff and then make an attempt at it.
07:02Which, again, very, very Metal Gear Solid feeling.
07:05For me, as someone who loves those games, I felt like I was playing Metal Gear.
07:08The other thing that I think is very, very Metal Gear Solid 5-esque is the movement.
07:13Metal Gear Solid 5, I think, for my money, has the best moving across environments feel.
07:19The way Snake runs and the way he responds when you push the stick forward and the sound of his equipment knocking against his suit and his suit material rubbing against itself, the sound of the wind rushing by, as you can hear his breathing get deeper and deeper.
07:36It all comes together in a way that is so satisfying that even today I will turn Metal Gear Solid on just to run around because it feels that good.
07:47Although Death Stranding doesn't allow you to do it quite the same because it would undermine the kind of deliberate slow nature in which you traverse and go from A to B, it does give you options in the sequel.
07:58One of the things that really helps in also kind of replicating that is the exoskeletons, which you get a variety of for different purposes.
08:07I stuck with the speed one because obviously it meant that I could run super fast.
08:11And in this game, you press the button and it starts to use the battery that Sam has on it.
08:16But the effect that you get from it is very, very similar to that same kind of audio-visual feeling that you get from Snake in Metal Gear Solid 5.
08:23You can hear it rev up and then you can see the increase in pace.
08:28And before you know it, it's like you're in a car and you can hear the pistons moving and you get so much speed out of it.
08:34Not so much that it's, you know, it's ridiculous, but enough that you feel good about running forward.
08:40And my favorite thing about it is it also impacts the way you jump.
08:44So if you're running and then you jump, you go absurdly far.
08:48Like not hilariously far, but far enough to be like, yeah, that feels like what an exoskeleton would give you.
08:54But it means that you can clear like relatively small to medium streams without having to trudge through them.
09:00I just sprint at them and then launch myself to the other side.
09:03And Sam does the same kind of like landing, almost snake-like landing, the Terminator pose, and then gets back up and carries on going.
09:10That is another part of this game that makes me feel like I'm playing a new Metal Gear game.
09:15That kind of traversal, that jump, it is for me the equivalent of when you run a snake and then dive into prone and then you're just like safe.
09:24That feeling of going from one movement to the other, it's more thorough in Metal Gear Solid V, but it scratches the same kind of itch.
09:34The one area where I would say Death Stranding isn't perhaps as good as Metal Gear, older Metal Gear games, is the enemy AI.
09:42I don't feel as challenged by them.
09:44A lot of the kind of hurdles that are in place when I'm infiltrating stuff are stuff that I've put there myself.
09:52I'm choosing to go in here and do a clean hands run or a ghost run.
09:56And that is kind of where the kind of challenge comes from.
09:59The enemies in Metal Gear, they feel much smarter, they react more, they have a curiosity around them about finding someone.
10:08Whereas in Death Stranding, they don't really have that.
10:10They feel a little more gamey and artificial.
10:14The thing they have is absurdly long vision.
10:16Like they can see you from well far away, which can catch you off guard.
10:20But once you're aware of that and you work in Dolman to do some reconnaissance and scout out, it's pretty easy to get around them.
10:31And if you choose to engage, you can use the taser, which is good because it kind of takes most enemies out as long as they're not armored in one hit.
10:40You have to charge it and you have to be really close.
10:42So when you're using the taser, that's taser gun, that's where the tension comes from.
10:46However, if you switch the actual Trank gun, the text on it says it's medium range and you need to be relatively close.
10:53But you can shoot from pretty far away and get a headshot.
10:57And in an off chance, you miss and they're alerted.
11:00You get that same Metal Gear Solid last chance to make the right move moment where you concentrate.
11:05And as long as you shoot them back in the head again there, you're safe.
11:09So the enemies are kind of pushovers, which is the one disappointing part of it.
11:12But I understand why it's like that.
11:14You don't want to get people bogged down in that part of it when the core meat and potatoes of the games is to move between locations and the experience of being isolated and going from one point to the other.
11:26So that's where it kind of is let down.
11:28But overall, I think of this game as a Metal Gear Solid V sequel in a lot of ways.
11:33And the kind of itch that I wanted scratched when the whole Konami thing happened and it was looking like Metal Gear Solid V is never going to happen.
11:42Metal Gear Solid 6 is never going to happen, sorry.
11:44It has been scratched by Death Stranding 2, which I did not expect.
11:47So those are my rambling, very excited thoughts about Death Stranding 2 and my Metal Gear fandom jammed into one.
11:55I made it work.
11:56Let me know what you think about it.
11:58How are you feeling with Death Stranding 2?
11:59Does it do the same for you or it makes you feel like you're playing Metal Gear Solid?
12:03Let us know in the comments and remember to subscribe.
