When the offer to review the PC version of Death Stranding 2: On The Beach came across my desk, I initially joked, “Well…I could review it again, but I don’t know what else I could say.” My review of Kojima Studio’s seminal sequel is both spirited and lengthy, but so deep is my love for the series that I’ll never miss an opportunity to talk more about it.
Although this time around, I’m afforded another chance to do something I don’t often get to do. Much like my Resident Evil: Requiem Nintendo Switch 2, this will be a purely technical review of Death Stranding 2: On The Beach’s PC Port. As someone who usually leans more towards console experiences, I don’t typically go in for PC Ports of “exclusive” titles, but seeing DS2 run on PC was quite an interesting experience.
Now, I may have mentioned this before, but my current PC Gaming setup is that of an Alienware M16 R1—equipped with an i9-13900HX, 2200 MHz 24-core processor, 32GB of RAM and an NVIDIA RTX 4060. So while it’s not exactly on the cutting edge, it’s certainly no slouch either—generally capable of handling most modern games at High settings. In this regard, it was interesting to me that, when booting up the PC version of Death Stranding 2: On The Beach, there were just a few adjustable video settings.
Now I’m not saying this as if it were a negative. Generally, it can be a bit of a pain to have to go into the video settings every time you start a new game to turn off perfunctory things like motion blur and chromatic aberration. It seems to me that Kojima Productions and Sony Interactive essentially kept Death Stranding 2: On The Beach intact in terms of visuals, since its overall aesthetic and graphic style were perfectly tailored to the PlayStation 5, and there was little need to adjust.
However, where the PC version of Death Stranding 2: On The Beach does allow some adjustment is in more technical visual features, such as frame generation, dynamic resolution scaling and latency reduction. These minor changes can have a pretty significant impact on your game’s visual performance and actually feel like they matter a lot more than the draconian choices of “Performance” or “Quality” on the PlayStation 5.
Now, whether or not it was solely the fault of my laptop, I did notice a fair amount of stuttering while playing Death Stranding 2: On The Beach, which was made even more noticeable by turning on the frame generation that would “correct” the stutter by suddenly running the game in 10x speed to catch up. By default, the game’s Upscaling method is set to PICO, which is meant to emulate the algorithm used in the PlayStation 5 version, but even when switching to DLSS, there was some persistent stuttering.
“Death Stranding 2: On The Beach includes Gyro Aiming, which is a feature the PlayStation 5 STILL doesn’t have, which was kind of infuriating to learn.”
Again, this may vary depending on your PC setup, and it usually clears up pretty quickly. On the whole, the game ran quite competently on my laptop at 2560 × 1600 and 120 fps, but it remained present even after lowering the frame rate to 60 fps. As I said, it was not exactly a deal breaker, but it did highlight the difference between an experience tailored to a specific system and one that might vary based on your PC specs, which, again, mine well exceed the “recommended” settings.
Something else I was not expecting to enjoy was just how well the game controls with a mouse and keyboard setup. Controlling Sam is easy with WASD, camera control is fluid and smooth with a mouse, the Grip for Balance buttons are mapped to left and right click for easy access, and the overall button layout is convenient for your fingers. It genuinely makes setting structures or aiming weapons a breeze compared to the DualSense 5 control stick defaults.
However, if PC players want a more authentic experience, they can use a DualSense controller with all the functionality of the PlayStation 5 experience. Actually, with MORE functionality, as the PC version of Death Stranding 2: On The Beach includes Gyro Aiming, which is a feature the PlayStation 5 STILL doesn’t have, which was kind of infuriating to learn.
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach is the same superb experience it was on the PlayStation 5, now made more accessible for gamers who either don’t own or can’t afford more than one dedicated gaming platform—and depending on your setup, it can be even better. If you missed it when it launched last year, you should definitely check it out now.
