HELLDIVERS™ 2

Review

You are a citizen of Super Earth, a prosperous planet that thrives on two fundamental pillars: liberty and democracy. Super Earth is the envy of most planets throughout the galaxy, especially those invaded by bugs and robots! You don't want this to happen to Super Earth, do you? No, of course, you don't. So join the Helldivers peacekeeping force and experience exhilarating missions from various worlds throughout the galaxy! Be a hero, a saviour and most importantly, a Helldiver. Sign here, thank you very much. Next, please.

Helldivers 2 is an online co-op third-person shooter game developed by Arrowhead Game Studios and Published by PlayStation PC LLC on the 8^th of February 2024 on the Steam platform. The game is also available on PlayStation 5 and provides a cross-play feature with Windows users.

Before I start, please let me mention the awkward launch this incredible game endured. For the life of me, I don’t understand how the developers and publishers underestimated how popular this title was going to be at launch. Not allocating enough servers to accommodate players for both platforms was a mind-blowing oversight. To the developer's credit, they solved the issue rather quickly and added the necessary additional servers .

Now onto the gameplay! Your first assignment will, of course, be the training. This tutorial is around 20 minutes or so, and will give you a good assessment of weapons and stratagems, as well as your first look at the nasty bugs called The Terminids! After choosing a name for your destroyer, you'll arrive in the command deck of the vessel, which is your base operation.  Here you’ll have access to weapons, stratagem upgrades and character customisations. The Galactical map will be at the front of the deck, from where you'll choose your next mission. When you click on it, it will first display a circular map divided into sectors with Super Earth in the middle of the map. On the left, you'll have the Automaton with the sectors they control; on the right, you'll have the Terminids with the sectors they control. Each sector will have between two and seven planets. You'll also see the Major order of the day and the weapon qualification of the day with their specific rewards. It's also where you choose the difficulty level (nine in total) for your next mission. Then, when you are on a specific planet map, you'll see all the displayed missions, including the ones you can join because they are missing players and are already being played. You can jump into one of them or launch your own mission to have other people can join you until all the remaining slots are filled. Then, make your way to the launching pods, select four stratagems, and buckle up for the start of the mission.

Missions have two main objectives to be completed before requesting the pick up at the extraction point. Be aware that all missions have second objectives and enemy outposts to destroy, which are not mentioned in the pre-mission briefing. 

As soon as you land, it’s game on! You and your fellow Helldrivers will be requesting weapons through the Stratagems setup before moving on foot to your first primary objective. I strongly recommend checking your map to locate where the enemy outposts and other areas of interest might be. They might not be visible immediately, but as you move through the map, you or your peers will find small shuttles with beaming yellow lights; they usually have medals, super coins or weapons. It could be an underground garage whose door you must break to reveal its contents. All these goods can be used to purchase new stratagems, equipment (armours, helmets, etc.) and weapons for your characters when you are back on your vessel. The other things to look for are the samples scattered around the map, and you'll need them to upgrade your destroyer ship modules.

It will be hectic fighting, let me tell you, and one thing you need to be good at is deploying your stratagems quickly and effectively while moving around. If you prefer to play with the mouse and keyboard, you'll have to continually press the CTRL key and match the sequences using the A, S, D and W keys to activate the wanted Stratagem, or the directional pad on your gamepad if you prefer using a controller. The other important point is to know where your peers are before deploying a stratagem. Requesting an airstrike where some of your peers are fighting might not be a good idea. It's all about anticipation. If, purely by accident, you kill three of your peers in one go, don't forget to call on reinforcements, and yes, you'll need to use the stratagem setup to do so.

Talking about the stratagems, you'll quickly figure out which are worth using: a couple of orbital ones, as most of them are useless, a few secondary weapons, and most sentries are good for defending an area such as the extraction point. That's about it!

As you finish a mission, you'll receive experience points for completing your objectives, which will go toward your character levelling up. If you choose the challenging difficulty, for example, you'll receive an extra 50% experience points at the end of the mission. To unlock the extreme difficulty level, you must finish a mission on the hard difficulty and, of course, finish a mission on the extreme to unlock the next and so forth. 

There are still many minor issues in this game; what bugs me most is the on-and-off flickering. There’s also an occasional issue where you can't destroy all the buildings on some of the secondary objectives, regardless of what you do, because you are not able to request a hell bomb which usually does the trick.

The graphics are good, as are the soundtrack, sound effects and voice-overs. The community is huge and friendly, which is always a good thing. And the developers are working frantically to release updates. Overall, it is a fantastic game.

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com

 Helldivers 2 Steam Store Page