DEATH STRANDING 2: ON THE BEACH is now available on PC

As potentially one of the last Sony PlayStation published releases on PC, DEATH STRANDING 2: ON THE BEACH is officially out now from KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS. This is a day I have been waiting for!

The PC release comes with a bunch of new features too including the "to the wilder" mode that makes everything a little bit more difficult with harsher environments and more enemies. You also get some new bandanas unlockable via a "VR" training area and even a little Chiral Feline in your private room.

You can also expect the usual assortment of PC features like NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, Intel XeSS, frame generation, ultra-wide monitor support, keybind mapping, Ray Tracing and much more is configurable.

See the PC release trailer below:

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Since it has only just released, I've barely had any time to play since no codes were available to GamingOnLinux before the PC release dropped. I don't plan to rush through it either, I'm just going to enjoy my time with this one like I did with the first which was quite an experience.

For people who haven't played the original, or have a fuzzy memory, there is a recap option you can pick first to get a little refresher. It also gives you a brief bit of backstory when you first start a new game too.

Initial testing with Proton 10-4 (the latest stable Proton) on my Ryzen 5800x and Radeon 6800 XT (Mesa 25.3.6) and the experience was not great. The recap noted above worked, but the actual game froze on the Kojima logo screen and just refused to continue. A second launch, and it then ran a bit further into the intro and froze again. Thinking perhaps it needed Proton Experimental - that seemed to run for a fair bit longer, but still eventually froze completely again.

Trying to track down the cause of the freezing, enabling Proton logging (PROTON_LOG=1 %command% as a launch option) to grab a debug log file to send to Valve - and the crashes stopped while it's making a log. Bit of a nuisance. The log file it makes is also massive (multiple GB).

Picture above is on the default High settings preset, with PICO upscaling at 2560x1440.

The same scene below with AMD FSR Frame Generation turned on:

And a few more quick shots below of it running on Linux:

Aside from the freezing, the performance seems somewhat okay bearing in mind my resolution and High settings preset but on my system even the early part of the game is dipping well below 60FPS without frame generation. But much smoother usually at over 90FPS with AMD Frame Generation, but that comes with a drawback where some cut-scenes have some screen distortion where it looks like part of the scene is split into frames, like there's a crack going through it. XeSS Frame Generation seems just as good for performance.

Happy Death Stranding 2 PC day to all those celebrating. That's me sorted for the next 50 hours or so.

Will you be picking it up? If you already have it do leave a comment on your experience with it.