Latest news with #Kojima
Daily Maverick
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Maverick
Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding 2: A bold exploration of grief and redemption awaits
Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding 2: On the Beach successfully captures the magic promised by the original game, and it'll go down in history as one of the definitive games of the PS5 era. Death Stranding was an unusual proposition when it first launched. A post-apocalyptic courier sim was a hard sell in 2019, and its divisive structure — long cinematics punctuated by laborious treks — meant it didn't land for everyone. But there was an undeniable charm to it, a unique magic that helped it stand apart from the sea of third-person shooters and live-service games of its time, cementing its legacy as a flawed classic. Six years later, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach continues Sam Porter Bridges's story, this time across a new continent. Like most sequels, it expands on the original's ideas, but it's also bolder, more refined and proudly wears its sincere heart on its sleeve. It's not just one of legendary developer Hideo Kojima's best games; it's a love letter to life, connection, and meaning from a developer who has grown into one of the great elder statesmen of the games industry. That sentimentality is woven into every pixel, whether through sly glances at the camera or offhand lines loaded with deeper meaning. It's also a faster-paced experience, ditching the slow burn of the original's prologue. If you never played the original, the gist of it is that our weary protagonist has shut himself off from the world after the loss of a loved one, and he eventually embarks on a journey across the Australian continent to heal. Naturally, things get more complicated — this is a Kojima game, after all — and Sam's journey is fraught with peril and ghosts from the past. On that front, Death Stranding 2 is a major leap forward, building on the 2021 Death Stranding Director's Cut and layering in even more gameplay depth. At its core, this is still a hiking simulator mixed with puzzle elements, where plotting your path from Point A to B while carrying precious cargo takes planning, patience, and a good pair of boots. That extends to combat and stealth as well, as these two facets of the game have been significantly improved. While they felt like an afterthought in the original game, the action-packed side of Death Stranding 2 plays like a spiritual successor to Kojima's Metal Gear Solid series, resulting in snappier throwdowns with brigands from the land Down Under, or tense moments when you're holding your breath and sneaking into position so that you can take out BTs with a well-aimed blood-grenade. Yet the game's finest moments are often its quietest: scenes of Sam alone with the world, pushing forward one determined step at a time. These stretches of solitude, set to a hauntingly beautiful soundtrack by Ludvig Forssell and Woodkid, reinforce the game's themes with subtle power. If the first Death Stranding was about connection, this sequel deepens that message while exploring grief, isolation, and healing. These themes are thoroughly explored through an emotional storyline anchored by stellar performances from Kojima's cast of celebrity buddies. Norman Reedus is once again the world-weary Sam, and while he's as laconic as ever, the returning Fragile — played by the amazing Lea Seydoux — is a ray of sunshine and a perfect counterpart to him. The cast has also expanded, with even more characters brought to life through a combination of famous faces and voice actors helping to propel the story along by rattling off some of the most absurd yet delightful lines you've ever heard. Special mention has to go to Troy Baker as the villainous Higgs. As Sam's nemesis, he's a scene-stealing force of nature looking to bring about the downfall of humanity once and for all. Rocking a new Crow-inspired look — and a battle-axe guitar — Baker steals the show with a gleefully over-the-top performance and gripping moments of nuanced pain. Visually, Death Stranding 2 is staggering. There are moments so surreal and breathtaking that you'll instinctively pause just to absorb them. It's a triumph of design and artistic ambition: brilliantly weird, deeply earnest, and utterly unforgettable. This is a game that urges you to go outside and touch some grass, then dares you to dream about what might lie beyond it. DM
Engadget
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Engadget
Video Games Weekly: Who put all these videos in my games?
Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday or Tuesday, broken into two parts. The first is a space for short essays and ramblings about video game trends and related topics from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who's covered the industry for more than 13 years. The second contains the video game stories from the past week that you need to know about, including some headlines from outside of Engadget. Please enjoy — and I'll see you next week. If I end up reading one more story about how fantastic Death Stranding 2 is so long as you skip the cutscenes , I'm gonna hurl. At what point during 10 hours of cinematic interstitials do we collectively put the controller down and say, actually, this isn't a great game? Not because the game parts aren't any good — they're pretty fabulous, in fact — but because a significant portion of the experience isn't actually interactive at all. When does it become more accurate to describe a Hideo Kojima project as a CGI movie with moments of interactivity, rather than as a video game first? I'm not actually attempting to solve the 'video game of Theseus' riddle right now, but it's a conversation that's been on my mind, given recent headlines. Death Stranding 2 reviews are in, Neil Druckmann is out at HBO and returning to Naughty Dog full-time, and Emmy nominations arrived with 18 nods for video game adaptations. Meanwhile, layoffs are rocking the gaming industry yet again, with thousands fired at Xbox this month, alongside multiple studio closures and game cancellations. One of the most surprising titles to get the ax was Project Blackbird, a promising-sounding MMO from Elder Scrolls studio ZeniMax Online. Blackbird was reportedly canceled in favor of allocating resources to the development of Fallout 5 , a series with mainstream clout following the success of Amazon's Fallout TV show in 2024. The convergence of video games and Hollywood is not a new talking point — even for me — but it's only grown more relevant with time. Sony in particular is leaning hard into a cross-media strategy with notable investments in television, anime and film adaptations of its video game franchises, and it just published Kojima Productions' Death Stranding 2 , which serves as a lightning rod for this entire conversation. Kojima is easy to pick on because he's been so vocal about his desire to make movies, and fittingly, his games have only grown more cinematic over the years. Death Stranding and its sequel are stacked with mainstream Hollywood actors (and Kojima's favorite directors) across hours of drawn-out, non-interactive cutscenes. His next two projects, OD and Physint , are both described as having A-list casts and 'blurring the boundaries between film and games.' I'm a big fan of experimental horror games, and I deeply appreciate Kojima's eye for building tension and sneaky action sequences, but I'm hesitant to get excited about OD and Physint . The deeper Kojima dives into the world of Hollywood, the more he loses me. I don't download, install and boot up a video game to watch a movie instead, and I don't find it impressive when an interactive product is defined by cinematic terms. The constraints of filmmaking are vastly different than those of video game development, and it sucks to watch a talented creator try to force video games to conform to the boundaries of movies or TV, rather than exploring the mechanics that make interactive art so uniquely powerful. I feel like Kojima sees cinema as the goal, not video games specifically, and this perspective breaks my little pixelated heart. It's particularly painful in an era of raging instability for the video game industry. It's difficult to see so much money and creative talent being thrown at projects that end up feeling more like movies than games, at a time when it's increasingly difficult for fresh and original AAA projects to make it to market. Video games have not been maxed out as an art form — there's far more to discover in terms of mechanics, visuals, haptics and immersive interaction systems, and there are more stories that can only be told with these specific tools. Viewing game development through the lens of filmmaking diminishes everything that makes this medium so powerful. The only Hollywood trait the games industry should imitate is its powerful and functional unions. I enjoy things that exist in the gray space between definitions; in fact, I often prefer them. What I don't enjoy is misguided emulation that's sold to an audience as innovation. In the end, I guess what I'm really saying is… I'm still not over PT . One of the most eyebrow-raising details of Microsoft's sweeping layoffs earlier this month was the fact that King, the studio behind Candy Crush , was included in the firings. King is historically a money-printing machine with high per-employee returns, which tends to insulate it from layoffs, but this time around at least 200 people were let go from the studio. As it turns out, a number of fired developers spent the past few years training AI systems to do their jobs, which just adds a layer of shittiness to an already crappy situation. Has the FOMO gotten to you yet? After denying that you wanted a Switch 2 for a few noble and self-righteous weeks, have you cracked and admitted that you actually, really want one? Great — then get yourself to Best Buy on Thursday, July 17, when the company will restock its supply of Switch 2 consoles in all stores. This coincides with the release of Donkey Kong Banaza , too. I've had my eye on Judas , the BioShocky FPS from Ken Levine's Ghost Story Games, since it was revealed in 2022, and I lowkey love how little we still know about it today. That said, I'm happily devouring every bit of information about Judas , and the latest nugget comes from Levine himself in an interview with classic game publisher Nightdive Studios. With Judas , Ghost Story is focused on "telling the story and transporting the player somewhere," rather than building live-service or microtransaction features, Levine said. As he put it, 'You buy the game and you get the whole thing. There's no online component. There's no live service.' There's also no release date for Judas yet. The crazy kids at Summer Games Done Quick have done it once again and raised literal millions of dollars for Doctors Without Borders in a single weekend, simply by playing video games in silly ways without stopping. SGDQ 2025 wrapped up on Sunday with a total donation pool of $2,436,614. The organization's next event is another edition of Flame Fatales, a speedrunning showcase featuring women and femmes that runs from September 7 to 14. We'll see you there. The well of Subnautica 2 drama runs deep. Earlier in July the heads of Subnatica 2 studio Unknown Worlds Entertainment — Charlie Cleveland, Ted Gill and Max McGuire — were ousted by the team's parent company, Krafton, and the game's early access release was delayed to 2026. What's more, Bloomberg reported that the studio had been in line for a $250 million bonus if it had met certain financial goals by the end of the year, but those largely hinged on an early access release. Cleveland said on social media that Subnautica 2 was ready for early access, and Krafton responded to the whole shebang by accusing the fired developers of abandoning their responsibilities as studio heads. Cleveland and others are now apparently filing a lawsuit against Krafton. has a comprehensive timeline of the Subnautica 2 controversy right here.
Japan Today
7 days ago
- Japan Today
23 years sought for 'Luffy' crime group member over aiding robberies
Prosecutors on Tuesday asked a Tokyo court to sentence a senior member of a crime ring to 23 years in prison for allegedly helping the group orchestrate robberies in Japan from the Philippines. Tomonobu Kojima, 47, is accused of assisting robberies resulting in injury and other crimes directed remotely by the group, whose members used monikers such as "Luffy," after the name of a popular manga character, and recruited individuals through social media to carry out the crimes. Kojima played a "key role" in the robberies, a prosecutor said at the Tokyo District Court. His defense counsel called for 11 years in prison, saying his involvement in the group's crimes was limited. The court is scheduled to hand down a ruling on July 23. In his first hearing earlier this month, Kojima admitted to the charges but denied being a senior member, describing himself as a "handyman" instead. The defendant is among four senior members indicted for allegedly giving instructions to their subordinates in eight main robbery cases. The crime ring is suspected of being involved in more than 50 cases of robbery, theft and other crimes across 14 prefectures. According to the indictment, Kojima introduced people who were recruited to carry out robberies to Toshiya Fujita, 41, another senior member of the group, in cases between October and December of 2022. Kojima is also accused of conspiring with Kiyoto Imamura, 41, who is believed to have used the pseudonym "Luffy" personally, to pose as a Financial Services Agency official in 2019 to steal cash cards and withdraw money, the indictment said. The fourth senior member, Yuki Watanabe, 41, has also been indicted along with Imamura and Fujita for a robbery in the Tokyo suburbs in January 2023 that resulted in the murder of a 90-year-old woman. All four men were deported from the Philippines in February 2023. They are suspected of issuing instructions for the eight robberies on the encrypted messaging app Telegram while being held at a Manila immigration facility before their deportation. © KYODO
The Mainichi
15-07-2025
- The Mainichi
23 years sought for 'Luffy' crime group member over aiding robberies in Japan
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Prosecutors on Tuesday asked a Tokyo court to sentence a senior member of a crime ring to 23 years in prison for allegedly helping the group orchestrate robberies in Japan from the Philippines. Tomonobu Kojima, 47, is accused of assisting robberies resulting in injury and other crimes directed remotely by the group, whose members used monikers such as "Luffy," after the name of a popular manga character, and recruited individuals through social media to carry out the crimes. Kojima played a "key role" in the robberies, a prosecutor said at the Tokyo District Court. His defense counsel called for 11 years in prison, saying his involvement in the group's crimes was limited. The court is scheduled to hand down a ruling on July 23. In his first hearing earlier this month, Kojima admitted to the charges but denied being a senior member, describing himself as a "handyman" instead. The defendant is among four senior members indicted for allegedly giving instructions to their subordinates in eight main robbery cases. The crime ring is suspected of being involved in more than 50 cases of robbery, theft and other crimes across 14 prefectures. According to the indictment, Kojima introduced people who were recruited to carry out robberies to Toshiya Fujita, 41, another senior member of the group, in cases between October and December of 2022. Kojima is also accused of conspiring with Kiyoto Imamura, 41, who is believed to have used the pseudonym "Luffy" personally, to pose as a Financial Services Agency official in 2019 to steal cash cards and withdraw money, the indictment said. The fourth senior member, Yuki Watanabe, 41, has also been indicted along with Imamura and Fujita for a robbery in the Tokyo suburbs in January 2023 that resulted in the death of a 90-year-old woman. All four men were deported from the Philippines in February 2023. They are suspected of issuing instructions for the eight robberies on the encrypted messaging app Telegram while being held at a Manila immigration facility before their deportation.
15-07-2025
23-Year Sentence Sought for Senior Member of 'Luffy' Crime Ring
News from Japan Society Jul 15, 2025 14:59 (JST) Tokyo, July 15 (Jiji Press)--Japanese public prosecutors on Tuesday sought a 23-year prison term for Tomonobu Kojima, a senior member of a Philippines-based Japanese crime ring that allegedly masterminded a series of robbery and fraud cases across wide areas of Japan. In their closing argument in a lay-judge trial at Tokyo District Court, the prosecutors said that the cases in which Kojima, 47, was involved by recruiting perpetrators served as the origin of a series of 'tokuryu' crimes committed by loosely organized groups of anonymous members. 'The cases have led to many copycat crimes, and the defendant should be punished severely,' the prosecutors stressed. The defense said that 11 years in prison would be appropriate for Kojima. The court is scheduled to hand down a ruling on July 23. At the first hearing of his trial on July 1, Kojima, who belonged to the group whose members called themselves 'Luffy,' pleaded guilty to all charges that he faced, including aiding robberies resulting in injury and committing fraud. [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.] Jiji Press
