Death Stranding 2: On the Beach was one of my favorite games of last year, providing a powerful message about connections, grief, and the impermanence of everything. It was also a lot of fun! While not as well designed as the original game's continental United States, connecting Austraila to the Chiral Network was a memorable journey. As what may be the final single-player PlayStation port to PC, now even more people can enjoy the ride. If this is the last of those ports as has been speculated, Nixxes is going out with an explosion as this may be their best effort yet.
David Flynn
Me being me, I cranked the game's setting up as high as they would go right off the bat, complete with max ray tracing and PICO upscaling targeting 170 frames per second. You strangely cannot turn off upscaling, but PICO is the newest kid on the block coming from the Horizon series. For my initial tests I did turn off frame generation, however, and ran the game at 1440p on an RTX 4070 Ti, a 12th Gen Intel Core i9-12900K (3.20 GHz) processor, 32 GB or RAM, and Windows 11. (I tried Linux with Fedora KDE, but the game would crash on boot pre-launch.) I also plugged in my new Resident Evil Requiem Switch 2 controller, because why not?
With frame gen off, I was getting around 60 fps in more intense areas, such as the Western Environmental Observatory, with tons of complex geometry and effects from a nearby road. It would fluctuate between 55 and 70 though, which felt a bit like a visual rollercoaster. Turning all the settings down to the Portable preset (below Low) would get me all the way up to 94 fps in the same area; not bad, and the game still looks pretty good. Cranking things back up and turning on frame gen as well as reflex + boost would hit that 94 fps and occasionally go beyond all the way up to 126 depending on where the camera was pointed. It seems like NVIDIA finally figured out how to make frame gen look clean too, as I only noticed the typical smearing in one cutscene where Sam is playing with Lou.
All those tests were done with the aforementioned PICO upscaling. Swapping over to DLSS in the same area with the highest settings would actually result in slightly lower fps, 118, though going back down to portable would reach all the way up to 180 fps. FSR 3.1.5 goes up to 110, but makes the image a bit fuzzier. XeSS can hit up to 116, but has the same fuzz while also feeling a bit pixelated. You can select upscaling and frame generation separately, and I'd say PICO upscaling alongside DLSS frame gen is the clear winner here, resulting in a gorgeous image at max settings and handily clearing 60 frames per second.
With the game looking as good as it does on even the lowest possible settings, that's unfortunately bad news for Steam Deck. Unlike my PC running Fedora KDE, the game will launch on the portable, but you're not going to want to actually play it there. It comes pre-configured for the Portable preset, but at best you're going to get 24 fps, which is hardly playable. If you're looking to play On the Beach, for example, on the beach, you're going to have to look to more powerful hardware.
Assuming that hardware can run the game properly, its settings are pretty scalable so you can get more frames at the slight expense of fidelity. You can adjust Texture Quality and Filtering, Shadow Quality and Resolution, toggle Screen Space Shadows, Adjust Ambient Occlusion and Reflections (with Ray Tracing options that look stunning), and change the Level of Detail, Terrain Quality, Cloud Quality, Volumetric Lighting Quality, Translucency Quality, and Depth of Field. You can also adjust Motion Blur strength, though I always turn it off.
If you'll recall earlier, I spent most of my time playing the game with a Nintendo Switch 2 controller, and I was delighted to find it worked perfectly, complete with the correct button prompts. The layout stays the same, so B is confirm, but my muscle memory is used to that in this game so I had no issues with that. The game uses Steam Input for this, so I was also able to set GL, GR, the Capture Button, and the C button to in-game actions; having scan on GR was especially handy. Just don't try and turn on gyro through Steam Input, you want the in-game settings for that, trust me.
In fact, I was surprised to find that DS2 handled just about every controller I threw at it, including an NSO GameCube controller. The only thing that didn't work was my original GameCube controller plugged in through the Smash Bros. USB Adapter, but you win some you lose some. The DualSense is obviously the highlight here, and while it is a bit weaker with the feedback overall than PS5, it does feel better than other PS PC ports. The experience is definitely enhanced by the DualSense, so if you haven't played the game with one yet I'd recommend it.
There's one more big change here that's arguably my favorite, a new difficulty mode called "to the wilder". This is the new hardest mode, supposedly requiring all your porter skills to complete. Enemies are tougher, Sam is weaker, and resources like your shoes or battery will degrade a lot faster. Frankly, I think this is the best way to play Death Stranding 2. I played the PS5 version on Hard and still had a very easy time, being able to drive everywhere and boss fights just taking longer instead of being harder. "to the wilder" strikes a perfect balance, forcing you to actually plan your route around your resources. Even just playing the opening section and reaching the first major way-station in Austrailia I replaced my shoes around 3 times, occasionally had to scavenge for weapons, and had to leave lost cargo behind because my load was already too heavy to move comfortably with. Enemies aren't bullet sponges like they are on Hard either, posing even more of a threat while not taking forever to go down. Put simply, it makes you engage with the game's mechanics much more, revealing the true depth of Death Stranding's unique gameplay.
If you can't tell, this is an amazing PC port of an amazing game, looking stunning no matter your settings so long as you have the hardware to run it. If you haven't already played Death Stranding 2 on PS5, the PC has all the bells and whistles you could even want.
