Helldivers 2
PlayStation 5
Helldivers 2 delivers a streamlined, premium experience, features some of the most satisfying space marine-style combat I’ve ever played.
I enjoyed my time with the original Helldivers years ago. Featuring an engaging top-down twin stick shooter gameplay experience, I loved the strategic (and incredibly lethal) approach to a game in the style and tone of 1997’sStarship Troopers. I didn’t quite obsess over Helldivers or anything, but I loved it as an action-packed co-op experience to play with my friend and share a few laughs. Now, almost nine years later,Helldivers 2has released, and it’s more than a simple refinement of the first game’s mechanics — it’s almost an entirely different game.
Helldivers 2 Has Killed Me In So Many Hilarious Ways, And I Love It
Stratagems? More like comedy gems!
Gone is the tactical top-down view, replaced with an intimate and intentionally limiting 3rd-person perspective that makes every chitinous mandible and Automaton explosive feel that much more dangerous. What started out as a ‘wow, I hope that works well’ has now become a full-blown obsession for me. I’m thrilled to say that Helldivers 2’s move to the 3rd-person shooter genre is not only a wild success — it’s an unmitigated success, server capacity issues and all.
Take A Dive For Democracy!
The setup and basic game flow is deceptively simple. You are a Helldiver, one of Super Earth’s elite fighting force against the ‘forces of tyranny’ to deliver ‘Managed Democracy’ tothe enemies of freedom. With conflicts raging across the galaxy, you’ll take part in battles against two (currently) major fronts: the insectoid Terminid swarm, or the mechanical Automaton menace. You select a mission from the War Table, climb into a Hellpod, and blast down to the planet’s surface with epic orchestral music blaring throughout your descent. After landing, you’re tasked with one or several primary objectives, some secondary objectives, and you’ll stumble across multiple enemy bases and small outposts throughout the map. After completing your main objectives, you’ll need to reach the Extraction Point, then hold the line against waves of enemies until your rescue ship arrives.
This mission structure ensures you’re always quick into the action, which is great, because that’s the whole focus of the game. Outside of your missions, you’ll bounce back to your ship to check for upgrades, tweak your loadout (weapons, armor, and Stratagems), and choose your next destination from across the warfronts. After that, it’s back into a hellpod and blasting down to the next hostile battleground. The boots-on-the-ground intensity of a typical Helldivers 2 mission keeps the game feeling so fresh, and it’s all due to sheer randomness of what might happen down on the surface.
…it’s the Stratagems that bring the true overwhelming firepower — and it’s the Stratagems that lead to the most ridiculous accidental deaths Helldivers 2 has to offer.
Each mission — and the enemies you’ll encounter — are lethal to the extreme. Getting swarmed by a sudden Terminid Bug Breach behind you (bugs crawling up from the ground) — or Dropships suddenly dumping out squads of murderous Automatons — can overwhelm you in a matter of seconds. Luckily, you’re armed with some ridiculous firepower. Your standard primary/secondary weapons are effective in their own right, with each shot feeling appropriately crunchy in tearing off chunks of bug flesh or Automaton limbs, but it’s the Stratagems that bring the true overwhelming firepower — and it’s the Stratagems that lead to the most ridiculous accidental deaths Helldivers 2 has to offer. During the heat of combat, you’ll punch in a short sequence of directional inputs to then summon down hell on your enemies — and maybe your allies if you aren’t careful.
And you’ll need the kind ofoverwhelming firepowerof an Orbital Strike or a 500kg Bomb, because some of the enemies in this game are absolutely massive. The first time I encountered aBile Titan, I won’t deny it — panic welled up. How the hell was I supposed to take that thing down? But then three Stratagem beacons flew out from my teammates, and the area soon became a crater as a wall of explosives lit up the night. The shock and awe is truly breathtaking in this game, and that pure destructive joy has only grown with my time in the game. With everydifficulty setting, the number of enemies, and the quality of enemies, continues to escalate, requiring some real coordination and precision to come out on top.
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Frenetic & Unpredictable Action
During one of the more intense Automaton missions, I was rolling in a simple two-person squad with my friend, and we were systematically clearing the map. We were surgical. We moved from objective to objective, outpost to outpost, bombing the hell out of each location and gunning down any stragglers to keep them from shooting up flares to summon reinforcements. We ambushed every patrol, we found tons of valuable resources around the map, and we were… well, we were feeling cocky. In delirious hubris, I literally said to my friend, “We are just steamrolling these bots.”
It was as if the Automatons had hacked our comms and took immediate offense. Moments later, a random patrol spotted us. Then another. Then a flare went up. Then two more, summoning three separate Dropships packed with troops. My friend and I each took turns dying to stray fire. Next, my own Mortar Sentry blew a hole through his stomach, sending parts of him flying every which way. More patrols heard that racket and joined in on the fun. Rockets peppered us from every direction, taking us out in turns. More flares; more dropships. What had been a cakewalk of a mission had suddenly gone so badly, and we just couldn’t regain our footing. We had been on our way to clear out the final enemy base on the map. Now we just wanted to extract and get the hell out of here. But setback after setback pushed us up onto a bluff that gave us a solid defensive position, but we had no clear escape routes.
What had been a cakewalk of a mission had suddenly gone so badly, and we just couldn’t regain our footing.
And then suddenly, we were out of reinforcements (no more revives), and then… a few lobbed grenades and laser-accurate rocket fire, and it was over. We still got our Mission Success screen — as long as you complete the primary objective(s), you’ll get credit for a successful mission — but we lost all of those precious resources.
While that failure stung in the moment, it’s really just emblematic of how incredibly varied each mission can be. No matter how familiar I’ve grown with certain planets, mission objectives, or enemy types, I can never predict what’s going to happen after boots hit the ground.
Community Is The Heart & Soul Of The Game
Another major highlight of Helldivers 2 is the community-driven progress. The War Table on your ship allows you to check the progress of the different warfronts. You can see when the Automatons have been pushed back to the outer rim, and you can see when a Terminid surge leads to them swarming over the neighboring sectors, bringing them ever-closer to Super Earth at the center of the galaxy. Each planet has a ‘Liberated’ meter, with every Helldiver’s contributions leading toward either sweet victory or bitter defeat.
This community-driven objective system leads to a thriving and welcoming online community. You’ll encounter your griefers here and there, like any online game, but by and large, the community fully embraces the tone and vibe of Helldivers 2. Theartwork,memes, andharrowing footagethat came out of the Automaton offensive at Malevelon Creek were so great.
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Currently, the game has a Defend Campaign that started with a major Automaton push into settled systems, resulting in some absolutely BRUTAL missions. These small ‘story’ arcs, set up by developers and furthered by the community, make for a living online ecosystem, one that so many AAA developers only dream of. With this level of investment from the community, paired with the developers' plans for future content (new weapons, enemies, stratagems, hints toward at least one new faction, etc), Helldivers 2 really feels like the kind of game that will be evolving and entertaining for years to come.
Suffering From Success (Ow, My Servers!)
So much of Helldivers 2 is just fantastic. Gameplay is fun and varied, combat is crunchy and feels great, and even the cosmetic “live service” side of the game is extremely wallet-friendly, offering inexpensive cosmetic options (with currency also found on missions). But the elephant in the room in the days since launch has to be mentioned, and that’s the server capacity issues.
The first Helldivers game was something of a cult classic. It had its die-hard fans, and it was definitely a success, but it never quite took off in a majorly noticeable way. Arrowhead was prepared for Helldivers 2 to make a splash, being partnered with PlayStation, but no one could have predicted just how unprecedented its success would be. Launching simultaneously on PlayStation 5 and Steam, this game quickly rocketed to the tops of the sales charts on both platforms, beating out other familiar juggernauts like Call of Duty, Fortnite, and Counter-Strike. Last I checked, Helldiver 2’sSteam Chartshowed a peak of a little over 450,000 concurrent sessions. Considering that the developers have had to cap the total concurrent players to 450,000 across both PC and PS5 to keep the game running, there is some understandable frustration from the player base. Arrowhead’s CEO has even recommended interested players maybewait to purchaseuntil after things are more under control.
Arrowhead had backup plans to handle some extra server load, but they were in no way prepared to deal with the game’s wild popularity (the first gamepeaked at just shy of 7k current players on Steam). The developers should, of course, be thrilled — the game is incredible — but that success is a double-edged sword. If you only have time for a mission or two in the evening, and you end up stuck in a login queue for that entire time, your experience with the game is terrible.Some players have stopped logging off Helldivers 2 entirelyin fear of not being able to get back on, instead opting simply to leave the game running, which of course is exacerbating the issues further. The developers are alreadyworking on implementing an AFK kick timer.
A patch addressing idling players went live the morning this review was scheduled. They work fast!
Aside from those issues, the Helldivers 2 experience is largely bug free (well, except for the swarms of Democracy-hating Terminids). I have zero regrets grabbing this game day one, and despite running into those server issues occasionally, I’ve been having an absolute blast dropping onto bug-infested planets or bot-controlled battlefields and doing my part to defend Super Earth. But that experience has definitely been colored a bit by these server issues. Fortunately, the developers have been extremely up-front with their struggles, providing regular updates on Twitter and on their official Discord channel. With how smoothly the game runs when I am actually playing, combined with just howcommunicative the developers have beenthrough the entire process, I have full confidence that these issues will subside in the near future, leaving nothing left but an incredible video game absolutely worth the $40 price tag.
Did I forget to mention it’s only $40!?
Wait a few days or weeks to buy the game if you may resist for now. There are frustrations to be had, but they’re entirely due to the fact that this is such an amazingly fun and smooth co-op experience that too many people are all trying to play at once! Helldivers 2 offers endless opportunity for wild action, hilarious friendly fire deaths, and explosions as far as the eye can see. Its simple yet addicting gameplay loop, combined with an incredible level of polish, makes this one of the must-play games of 2024. I know this initial launch fervor will eventually die down to some degree, but I’m in it for the long haul. I can’t wait to see what Arrowhead adds to the game next.
