Helldivers 2 is one of the funniest games I’ve played, but I must insist you to play it with three or four friends because otherwise it can be boring, or at least it was for me. It does get chaotic, so if you are someone that gets triggered easily I wouldn’t recommend it, but otherwise, please convince your friends to buy it and play it together.
The game is a multiplayer third person shooting game with tons of challenges, which makes completing the missions, also known as campaigns, the more rewarding. Upon first opening the game, you are shown a public–no, a patriotic service announcement from Super Earth, your home, and not paying attention to it will be considered treason.
I find the lore to be hilarious. With the announcement looking like an advertisement to motivate you to draft yourself into becoming a soldier, a Helldiver, your patriotism to Super Earth will push you to fight other galaxies to protect democracy by killing aliens who are against it and liberate the chosen planet. I love the dictatorship and fanaticism parody of it all.
The game has nine levels of difficulty, with the first level being the easiest, Trivial, and the last one being the Helldiver. The higher the level, the higher the number and types of enemies you will encounter. When the game starts, not only are you playing with your three, four friends, but also with all the other online players, regardless if they’re playing on PC or console, with one common goal: Liberating a planet from the types of enemies you will be facing at that moment.
What makes this challenge is how you have to liberate the planet; That is by successfully completing the given campaigns, but the higher the difficulty, of course, the harder it is to achieve it. It is not uncommon to complete the first two missions and fail on the last one, which leads to everyone starting from scratch. Only thing that remains with you are the rewards you received in the completed missions.
In terms of mechanics, I found them quite refreshing. You have your primary and secondary weapons, your medkit to heal yourself, grenades, and the best part, a support weapon. The latter weapon is used for specific combat situations and you can call it through the drop that you will be able to select whilst doing missions.
One detail I’ve noticed and loved was the way the weapon reload happens; Usually in games when you reload a half-empty chamber like in Escape from Tarkov, you lose those five, six bullets as well as the chamber. In Helldivers, it’s more realistic because they actually keep those bullets.
And then there’s the respawn where, yes, the character you use looks always the same, but when it comes to the lore, once the character dies, they’re actually gone forever and in that sense you are playing with a new human being. It is something that I found interesting since the game actually explains to you how strong and mortal you are.
Helldivers 2 is fun, exhilarating, chaotic, challenging, but worth every penny. Since it is multiplayer it can get repetitive, but if you’re playing with friends you will never get bored and the game is constant with their updates, so there is always something to look forward to.
Score: 5/5