Renting a PS5 from GEO
14 nights, 15 days: ¥1,780 https://geo-online.co.jp/campaign/special/game/g_PlayStation5_rental.html
So, if you rent on a Sunday, you can keep the PS5 until 10:00 AM on the Monday two weeks later. You can't extend beyond that. If you want to rent it again, you'll need to return it and rent a different unit. Fair enough.
After bringing it home, I had it up and running and logged into my PlayStation Network account in just five minutes.
DEATH STRANDING 2
What really got me interested in the PS5 was DEATH STRANDING 2. I had such a great experience playing the first DEATH STRANDING...
Sadly, it doesn’t look like it’ll be released on Switch 2, which is why I was keeping an eye on the PS5.
Since I had to finish it within two weeks, I set the game difficulty to Casual.
And Midori-san, who had grown used to the colorful and polished graphics of Splatoon 3 and Gakuen IDOLM\@STER, was completely overwhelmed by the realism of this one.
Summary
- After the previous game, Sam has been living in Mexico with his partner BB (Bridge Baby), Lou.
- Sam receives a request from an old acquaintance, Fragile, to reconnect the Chiral Network.
- He entrusts Lou to Fragile and sets out to complete the task. Meanwhile, a total jerk named Higgs attacks Fragile and Lou.
- During the attack, Lou ends up drifting into the "Beach" (a kind of afterlife world). Lou survives there, but Sam doesn’t know that and grieves.
- Sam’s companions encourage him to travel again. They believe reconnecting the Chiral Network would benefit the world and help heal him.
- Sam joins Fragile’s group, the "Drawbridge Team," and connects Mexico and Australia to the Chiral Network.
- Higgs keeps attacking at every turn—it’s seriously annoying. Since his real body is on the Beach and only his soul possesses machines, there’s no way to actually beat him!
- But in the end, thanks to help from his friends, Sam warps to the Beach and defeats Higgs.
- Also, the baby Lou, thought to be lost, had actually grown up on the Beach and had been traveling with Sam all along. For Sam, it was like, “It was you?!” And Lou, now Louise, regains her memory and says, “So you were the Sam who’s been traveling with me all this time.” Happy ending.
Thoughts
- I think it was a great "Part 2"! It really felt like a sequel that stayed true to what made the first game special.
- That said, it was a bit annoying to always have people around. The first game had such a sense of lonely adventure—that’s what made the bond with BB so strong. But in this one, you're constantly with the Drawbridge Team, so that vibe is gone. Still, that’s the result of Sam’s efforts in the last game to reconnect America, so it’s not a bad thing for him personally.
- Also, I spent almost the whole game riding vehicles. I kind of missed the sense of exploring uncharted land on foot from the first game.
- The backstories of characters like Fragile, Rainy, Tomorrow, Tar Man, and Doll Man were really well done.
- Louise's line, "I was always with you," really hit me hard. As a player, you know how much Sam has suffered from losing Lou throughout the game. So when she says that, it really gets you.
- Higgs was seriously annoying!
- That flaming Chiral substance Higgs uses? Totally insane! Felt like a parody of Fire Punch by Tatsuki Fujimoto.
- The relationship between Sam, Lucy, and Neil Bana was painful but compelling... Sam and Lucy are married. Lucy and Neil have a deep bond due to burn scars. Very dramatic.
- Playing this on a rented PS5 was a mistake. DEATH STRANDING is a game to be immersed in, slowly building infrastructure across its open world. Rushing through it in two weeks just to finish isn’t the way to play.
- That said, buying a PS5 just to play DEATH STRANDING 2 wouldn’t have been a wise move either, so I was stuck no matter what.
