Helldivers 2

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Fast Facts

Are you ready to defend SuperEarth? 

Will you help us spread managed Democracy?

Do you believe in Freedom?

Helldivers 2 is a third person shooter that brings together a mix of live cooperative play and support functions called stratagems (artillery, sentries, bombing runs, supplies) to be used against alien bugs (Starship Troopers) and killer robots (Terminator). 

When I first heard about Helldivers 2 and being live-service, I remembered the disappointing Anthem. Although Anthem had many good qualities, it just didn’t have the “it” factor this game does and fell short of expectations and ultimately developers dropped support for it. However, all the videos and content posted by everyday people across platforms like Reddit and TikTok around Helldivers 2 made me download it, and I’m so glad I did. (and Mike here raving about it at RapidReviews)

Helldiving

As you play each mission of this live service game and successfully complete those missions, your impact helps move the percentage of liberated territory further to 100%. Some planets have already been liberated and some have been lost in the war effort. It’s very much a get out what you put in game. However if you fail, then we also negatively impact the overall performance of the war.

As you prepare to fire down to the planet in your pod, you get to chose your load-out and stratagems. One thing that’s good to do here is work with your team and choose appropriate stratagems to work together and support each other.

Defending an outpost? Mortars, Gatling Guns and Grenade Launchers 

Destroying nests of eggs? Orbital bombardments and Airstrikes. 

Rescuing scientists? Railguns, Shield Generators (and Prayers)

Just want to make a big mess? Grab an Eagle 500kg Bomb or an Orbital Laser

Each mission has a Primary objective and usually a secondary (or three) and optional waypoints to discover as you traverse the land. The missions consist of blowing up factories, destroying nests, “liberating” research centres, escorting scientists, aligning radar dishes and my favourite the ICBM launch, mainly because of the visual spectacle of it launching up over and into another part of the planet where you can experience the fallout.

Each mission rewards you with experience, requisition slips (in-game credits), Medals (cosmetics, victory poses, weapons and armour) and Super Credits (premium currency). During these missions, and dependent on difficulty you will also collect varying levels of samples which help unlock ship modules.

The overall end-game of Helldivers 2, is for us as a community to liberate planets that have been overrun by Terminids (bugs) and the Automatons (Terminators). 

Helldiving Together

Helldivers 2 has many functions where you can feel really immersed in the game, for me one of the best is when you fly to a planet and see all the other Helldivers spaceships in orbit and watch the bombardments fly down. Being a live service game, you can jump into a random game, or drop a reinforcement beacon of your own. Alternatively load in with three other friends and experience the carnage and chaos and side splitting laughter that comes with it. A microphone and headset are highly recommended.

One of the games last night, all three other players were on the Galactic War map, and even though I wasn’t “engaged” in that I could see the map moving and the selections being made from outside.

Helldivers2 has brought so many people together unlike I’ve seen in a long time.

Having friends you can play with, really makes this game. I’ve never seen so many people where I work purchase this so quickly after we shared some of our in-game clips with them.

The social media response has also been incredible. There are TikTok accounts spreading Galactic War Updates as if direct from Super Earth itself.

Currently Helldivers 2 servers are capped at 700,000 players, and with the response to this game being strong the servers are still trying to keep up with the demand. Arrowhead have been working tirelessly and relentlessly to address these issue and certain glitches in game.

They’ve even asked people to wait to buy the game, because the response has been so overwhelming they’re struggling to keep up with the servers and don’t want people stuck in server queues. 

Something I believe they’ve almost fixed at time of writing.

Operation Freedom

Now what does the future hold for Helldivers 2?

Currently we don’t know much. Looking at Helldivers 1 with nearly 7,000 concurrent players on Steam nine years later is impressive, it shows longevity and developer support is still there. We do know that they plan on improving server capacities and that the game itself will change in real-time depending on how successful we are in our journey of liberation and spreading democracy. I’m also sure there is a roadmap but we don’t know exactly what that looks like, because it’s live service the future is ever changing. One thing we have seen, is that Mechs are coming, and I can’t wait.

One thing I would like

I (we) want this game to go cross-platform to XBOX, because lord knows us Helldivers need all the help we can get and I’m sure there are plenty of Halo and Gears veterans ready to spread managed democracy. This could be the game that also ends the console wars. Imagine that.

5 out of 5

5