My experience with HELLDIVERS 2 can be summed up in two distinct moments. First was when I was joined by three random players. We communicated solely through waypoints, pings and awkwardly staring at each other, until we came to launching an ICBM. Without any hesitation, all four of us lined up and saluted the missile as it launched. Inspirational. It was a nice climax to a very intense run and highlights how exciting HELLDIVERS 2 can be.
The other moment was when I was in a game with a couple of friends. We’d just blown apart a bug nest; a process that resulted in one of us dying. Me and the surviving friend climbed out of the hole, dusted ourselves off and opened our maps to figure out where to strike next. At that moment, a hellpod containing our deceased soldier landed on my friend, completely obliterating him. One moment he was there, another he was gone. Less inspirational, but undeniably hilarious. This highlights the best part of HELLDIVERS 2. Its core loop is so wonderfully simple, that it allows for both tense excitement and absolute hilarity.
Doing My Part
Every game of HELLDIVERS 2 starts the same way. You start aboard your Super Destroyer, where you can upgrade your gear or, for some reason, play DDR. When you’re bored of that, you and up to three chums head to the map and pick a planet to liberate. They’re generally split between two types of enemy: bugs or robots. Then you pick a specific mission, like uploading data or firing a nuke. Next pick your gear, landing point and strategems (we’ll get to these in a mo’) and blast down to the planet in a tiny Hellpod, accompanied by some lovely patriotic music. Once there, you need to explore and blast your way through the alien bugs or murderous robots to activate the main objective. That’s sort of it, really.
That means the one thing that HELLDIVERS 2 needed to 100% nail was the shooting. It’s ninety percent of the game after all. I’m pleased to say that HELLDIVERS 2 delivers. All of the guns I’ve tried feel and sound great, even an SMG. Hell, even the sidearms have a satisfying pop to them. What’s more, enemies react appropriately when hit. I’m rolling with an explosive assault rifle at the moment and it staggers enemies with each hit, making it feel very powerful. Wielding a machine gun and holding down the trigger until everything in front of you is just a twitching mass of buggy gore is a feeling that doesn’t get old. Even when you do die (which will be often), you blast back down to the planet not long after, keeping up the frantic pace.
There are other tricks to the combat too. The main one is the ‘strategems’, which are called through a little DDR work. These are helping hands from your ship. They can either be support weapons, turrets or just a big load of explosions. Four people throwing these down all at once can turn a simple firefight into absolute, glorious chaos. The need to hit the right key combo to call them in makes timing them essential and adds a little note of challenge. It’s easy to panic and fluff it up. They’re targeted by throwing ‘balls’, so make sure your throwing arm is solid, otherwise your mates might be a bit ticked off. Once they’ve sewn themselves back together, at least.
Forceful Democracy
I also like how you need to wait for extraction at the end of each mission, adding a perfect crescendo of tension. It’s not all serious stuff though. HELLDIVERS 2 has a good sense of humour. Part of that is the general premise. I mean, Earth is now called ‘Super Earth’, which I can’t type without smirking. It also takes Starship Trooper‘s general satire and ramps it up, making it more blunt than ever. So we’re shooting bugs and robots for ‘democracy’. It’s also naturally hilarious thanks to gameplay mechanics like the dive, that sends you all but ragdolling away from enemies. This – and the over the top voice lines – stopped it from becoming too serious for me. I wasn’t mad when I died, just entertained.
I have little in the way of complaints, really. It’s such a simple game with a thoroughly polished core loop. The shooting is good and the enemies are varied and challenging. I met a giant, armoured stag beetle-like enemy on my last run. It obliterated me, which was nice. I can rustle up some small niggles though. I find the planets to be a little uninspired for one. We’re on the fringes of known space here; I want some bizarre alien flora. Instead, the planets I landed on were either rocky, sandy or a jungle that’s had a coat of paint. What else? Well the AI is a little dumb – frequently caught in a perfect row staring at me – and a little glitchy at the moment; especially the bugs. The jumping’s a little rough too. These are minor complaints, not really worth of knocking a point off for.
My only major gripe with HELLDIVERS 2 is largely ideological. It’s an always online game; if your connection drops or the servers are full, you’re locked out. Your purchase is essentially just access to HELLDIVERS 2. So whether you can keep playing it in future is determined only by how long the servers stay running. At time of writing, server issues are ongoing. These are forgivable – server space is ultimately a monetary gamble after all. But HELLDIVERS 2 is perfectly playable solo – it’s enjoyable, even. The server issues might have gone down better if people could just do a little solo-levelling. Hell, if they could just play the DDR mini-game. Something other than staring at a ‘server full’ screen, as their empty wallets sit heavy in their pockets.
Entomological Genocide
I’ve a feeling that HELLDIVERS 2 is going to earn itself a long-term, loyal fanbase. It’s a straightforward gameplay loop with a lot of potential for new weapons and enemies. Hell, I can see myself blasting in now and then when I want to switch the brain off and shoot some squishy bugs. I will say that it’s probably a game best played with friends. No slight on the community – who were all rather pleasant to play with – but good communication helps, especially as how you tackle each mission is very much up to you. Another note that keeps things fresh. Plus, friends make the silly moments that much funnier.
HELLDIVERS 2‘s sillier moments help it straddle the line between a tense shooter and a comedy romp. The excellent shooting and strategem mechanics help keep the missions fresh and the array of different main and side objectives means that single runs can last for quite some time. I don’t think I had a moment where I was bored – or even frustrated. HELLDIVERS 2 is ridiculous, over-the-top and thoroughly hilarious fun from start to finish.
