14 hours ago
PETER HOSKIN: Death Stranding 2 elevates the humble postie to heroic status, and nothing - not bandits, ghosts or weird, oily tentacle-monsters - will stand in his way
Death Stranding 2 (PlayStation, £69.99)
Verdict: Out there and outstanding
Never has a game celebrated the good ol' postie as Death Stranding 2 does.
Here, the people who deliver our packages are considered so heroic that you even play as one, Sam Porter Bridges, trudging from place to place to ensure those deliveries happen.
It helps, though, that, in this case, the risks are greater than the occasional heel-snapping dog.
As anyone who's played the original Death Stranding (2019) will know, this series takes place in a future where the boundaries between this life and the afterlife have broken down in cataclysmic ways. Bandits, ghosts and weird, oily tentacle-monsters lie in Sam's path.
His job isn't just to pop things through letterboxes — it's to reconnect all human society.
If that makes Death Stranding sound weird, then good. It is.
Most of your time with DS2 will be spent planting one foot in front of the other, struggling across the unforgiving terrain of Australia, deploying ladders and ropes to progress. You'll do a lot of rearranging of your cargo. You'll try, often in vain, not to fall over. This is not a normal gaming experience.
But it is a stunning one. With DS2, series creator Hideo Kojima has delivered on the odd promise of its forerunner. There are more options, both in terms of skills and equipment, for turning Sam (voiced once again by The Walking Dead's Norman Reedus) into your Sam. The stealth and combat segments are exhilarating, almost the equal of Kojima's own Metal Gear Solid V (2015). The land- and skyscapes are among the most beautiful ever programmed.
And the story, as performed by digitised versions of big-time Hollywood actors and filmmakers, including Elle Fanning, Lea Seydoux and Guillermo Del Toro? All I'll say is that it goes to places no other game has gone before.
DS2 is ambitious, mad and more than a little self-indulgent. But much like its doughty protagonist, it delivers.
System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster (PC, £23.99)
Verdict: Still shockingly good
Rating:
Something has gone wrong aboard the Von Braun. In 2114, this faster-than-light spaceship was sent well beyond the constraints of our solar system and came across a distress signal on a distant planet.
Now most of the crew are ravening zombies thanks to alien eggs, mind parasites, malfunctioning computers... y'know, the usual.
Except now, in this year 2025, something has finally gone right aboard the Von Braun.
Twenty-six years after the game in which the spaceship's catastrophic story was first told — System Shock 2 — was first released, we now have a proper remastered edition. Prettier graphics, modern controller support, various ease-of-life enhancements... y'know, the usual.
Just playing System Shock 2 again is a total blast. Even though its gameplay has been repeated and refined in hundreds of subsequent releases (including the brilliant Bioshock series), this remains one of the greatest games of all time.
Its blend of first-person shooting and character-building mechanics is still extremely compelling.
The sense of dread it inspires is still overwhelming.
Its famous twist — let's just say it involves the malevolent AI, known as SHODAN, from the first game — is still, well, shocking.
As for the remastered edition itself, it's by one of the best game-preservation operations in the biz, Nightdive Studios, so it's all skilfully and lovingly done. This is System Shock 2 as you remember it looking — which is to say, much better than it actually looked, but nowhere near, say, a modern Call Of Duty game. It's the 1990s, given a heavy polish.
The only problem, if you can call it that, is that System Shock 2 had already been enhanced plenty in the years since its original release — by fans publishing homemade updates online.
So this new version isn't quite as revelatory as Nightdive's full remake of the original System Shock, which they put out in 2023.
Still, if you want to play the best version of one of history's best games, this is it.
