In an age of live service games and online battle passes, Helldivers 2 drops into 2024 with some much desired ammunition for the argument against the grind and complexity that publishers keep trying to push onto players. The game recruits players into an intergalactic fighting force in a never-ending campaign for “managed democracy” and “the rule of freedom,” and while they’ll die, die, die again, they’ll have a blast doing so.
But instead of chasing higher gear scores and grinding for randomized rewards packed into crates, packs, boxes or whatever the heck we’re putting ‘loot’ into, playing Helldivers 2 is its own reward. Between a finely tuned set of tools for destructive peacekeeping and recombinant mission variables, every session of Helldivers 2 follows a reliable pattern of objectives and opponents tweaked by randomization and planetary conditions.
A hilarious tutorial not only introduces you to the core of Helldivers 2, which is to say, familiar mechanics for anyone who has played a shooter or a team action game in the past decade, but it also sets the mood with a mocking caricature of military jingo-ism with tongue planted so firmly in cheek, it threatens to tear into the other side. Between the unironic link the in-game propaganda makes between civic duty and outer space conflict, it’s a satire proudly stolen from the Starship Troopers playbook.
There is no single-player story mode in Helldivers 2. Strictly speaking this is a completely online co-op affair devoid of the trappings you’d expect from most big budget experiences published by PlayStation Studios. If you’re hoping to pick this up and get it in and out of your gamer craw over a weekend or so, you’re not going to. Not only is the game multiplayer, but difficulty is designed around having a full squad that can coordinate and support one another.
But you won’t regret pestering your friends to play with you, nor should you write off matching with random strangers, because Helldivers 2 is a blast and a barrel of laughs, too. Gunplay is, to put a tired game review adjective to it, “visceral.” The bug-like Terminids burst and pop with joyous satisfaction and every bullet, explosion and inferno feels exhilarating and dangerous, and partly because the game’s friendly fire makes every one a danger to those around them.
The chaos of every session of Helldivers 2 is also a boundless source of comedy. While the game sets you up to be part of an elite fighting force, the reality is that you have a life expectancy that can be measured in minutes (though in some more intense fights, that expectancy goes down to mere seconds.) Your soldier’s adrenaline fueled bellows of freedom contrast against the many deaths you’ll experience due to carpet bombings, out of control fires and projectile bug vomit.
I could list the various details and minutiae that make Helldivers 2 special, like the way you can leap into the air and block incoming fire for your allies. The way you’ll swing your firearm towards your foe, only to watch as your firing line struggles to find its place. The way you can request for weapons and supplies from orbit and the not entirely improbable chance that the request sends a high-velocity drop pod right through an ally or enemy, killing them instantly.
But ultimately what makes Helldivers 2 truly special is the way it commits to doing everything gamers say they don’t want – an online-only experience, devoid of a single-player story mode, with various tools and cosmetics unlocked through in-game currency. But with an intriguing theater of war, the excellent setting of tone and mood and the well-balanced weapons that strip it of any notion of pay to win, Helldives 2 emerges as a game that puts the player experience first.
Currently, the game is a victim of its own popularity. With a dual release on PlayStation 5 and on PC via Steam, Helldivers 2 has jetpacked to the top of the charts with as many as over 400,000 players in-game at any given time throughout the week that this article was written. Right now as I put the finishing touches to this piece, I find myself on server queue, hoping for a chance to get back into the fight.
