I’m giving Helldivers 2 a solid 9.5/10 and in this review I’m going to talk about why that is and touch on why this game compared to its predecessor’s very low peak of less than 10,000 players is popping off so hard now with almost half a million players waiting in long queues as the game propells past games like Destiny 2, Starfield and Counterstrike on the charts. A lot of the former has to do with the first game actually being a top down shooter with little marketing done for it when it released back in the year 2015.
In addition, the comparatively low price of $40 in a landscape filled by $60 or $70 AAA games is of course enticing but the cinematic and above all else engaging gameplay with friends, strangers or even by yourself at times makes Helldivers 2 worth checking out as it continues to produce a remarkable cultural impact on the gaming world at least in social media while spurring big discussions of some of its inspirations like Starship Troopers outside of the game’s bubble for better or worse.
It’s a bit tragic really to also find out that Halo developers had pitched an ODST game like Helldiver 2 but were turned down by their management.
However the absence of said idea adds contextual sense when I’m looking at the attractive qualities of Helldivers 2 in which a lot of those same qualities feel like the best parts of not just Halo but also Gears of War, Left 4 Dead, Star Wars Battlefront 2, Warhammer and a couple other co-op games.
Accessibility and Settings
First, I want to talk about the settings and accessibility options for Helldivers 2. The game comes with support for both mouse and keyboard and controller. It feels a bit easier to spam helldive or dive for the ground on a mouse and keyboard compared to the PS5 controller but in the end it doesn’t seem like a big impediment to your gameplay. The accessibility is pretty barebones in the game, while it’s nice you can adjust both your reticle color and outline there’s no colorblind mode, the text to speech isn’t very accurate and there’s not even a preview of how large large subtitle text is and so on. I am hoping as this live service game continues to steamroll the charts, the developers can find breathing room after they permanently improve the server capacity to also consider improvements to the accessibility aspect of the game such as UI element placements.
With that being said, the other basic settings for Helldivers 2 is what we’ve come to expect from your typical shooter, we can adjust language, text, graphics, sound, keybindings and so on although when I explore the settings and other things in the game something felt off as I first got into it which leads to our discussion of the User Experience or UX.
UX, UI and HUD
The UX of the game is really straightforward when it comes to the actual combat play, the game has no secrets when it comes to what you can or should do in various scenarios or how you access basic tools like the map or stratagems. The game isn’t afraid of letting you figure things out whether it’s the most efficient materials farm or the most efficient build for the Terminids or Automatons. The game likes to poke fun at not just the ridiculousness of the premise of helldivers but also itself with loading screen tips telling you to simply not die. However when it comes to the social aspect, it’s initially a little weird how unintuitive the friends list or even the selection of missions or quickplay are when double clicking or navigating.
Of course, again this is just a very minor thing to quip about as you get used to navigating these specific menus eventually. The User Interface or UI and the HUD or Heads Up Display just like the gameplay is straightforward, you have your Stamina bar in the middle of the screen, your approximate ammo counter on the lower left conveniently located to the status of your squadmates.
Pulling up the map isn’t too much of a hassle, your character actually taking the time to read or pausing for certain actions like pressing the Dance Dance Revolution-esque buttons makes sense as much as you being able to clearly read the screen of a terminal objective. Overall I don’t have any issues with Helldivers 2 in these departments as they don’t try to reinvent the wheel in any way although I feel like the option to adjust where or how big or small some of the HUD or UI elements could be would be great for all players.
Audio and Music
The entire OST of Helldivers 2 is of course not as big as some other games out there totaling to about an hour and 12 minutes of music. The main theme is particularly catchy and it will probably get stuck in your head if you ever think about playing the game at work while the more ambient soundtracks or intense ones help immerse or pump you up as you play.
When certain music is played is crucial in any game and I think Helldivers 2 does that extraordinarily well whether it’s the music that triggers when you aggro patrols or the music that starts playing when you and your buddies drop feet first into hell. Every other sound effect or example of audio work in Helldivers 2 is really well done. The sounds are clean at least when they’re not bugging out if there’s too many things going on during Automaton missions. The explosions, the gunfire, the footsteps, the characters grunting as they dive towards the ground, it all just adds up perfectly and it’s quite the tactile experience especially when it comes to the weapons and explosions. I think the audio engineers and sound designers should be proud of themselves with Helldivers 2 because every little bit helps you feel connected to the gameplay and doesn’t take you out of the experience.
Graphics, Art and Environment
The graphics and art particularly when it comes to the glorious flowing capes and the creature models are fantastic. I have nothing bad to say about any of it and I just love the lighting in Helldivers 2 which I feel like not a lot of people have commented on. Yes the game looks great but man the lighting of the skies, the environment, everything is so well done and there are moments where you just kind of feel like you need to just stop for a moment and admire things around you even when things are getting blown to hell.
The environments are well done, although they sometimes run the risk of being repetitive depending on how much you’ve played this game, the destructible assets like the dormant bombs, buildings or objects and natural structures like boulders being destructible definitely helps make the environment less repetitive to play through even on long walks.
I also really appreciate that even while you’re in the lobby or on your ship’s deck you still feel like the world outside is moving even if you know in the back of your mind everything you’re seeing is essentially is a disguised loading screen. The hell pods dropping, other ships bombarding the planet or your ship “moving” to other planets or different parts of the planet you’re at really help add to the quality of Helldivers 2.
Movement, Gameplay and Combat
Apart from some potential balancing issues when it comes to certain enemies on certain difficulties during certain missions, I don’t really have anything bad to say about the combat or gameplay of Helldivers 2. It’s meant to be ridiculous, chaotic things happening even on the slimmest chance like your friend’s hellpod landing on you or the thing chasing you are meant to happen, your dead body is supposed to be dismembered by your team’s explosive stratagems. It’s genuinely a fun and funny game.
The movement feels nice, the diving feels great, the shooting is great, the optional ADS in first person can be nice on some weapons, throwing grenades feels good and I can go on and on. The progression path with difficulties and the incentives to keep playing Helldivers 2 is well done for the most part particularly when it comes to collecting Medals for your standard progression through the free Warbond and also the shiny new Stratagems people can play with once they accumulate enough credits.
The only thing I didn’t like about maybe the movement in Helldivers 2 is perhaps the incosnsitency of climbing over things like certain objects such as walls, rocks and ledges. It feels like there are objects your character should be able to clear over for example, instead of going to the left or right on a rock that’s maybe 2 inches lower on either side why not just have the character climb over that same rock? And it feels depending on elevation especially with fences, your character can climb the barbed wire but sometimes not? So the inconsistency of the climbing can definitely add to potential frustration when you need to kite patrols or a Bile Titan.
Microtransactions, Bugs and Performance
As this is a live service game and Sony – much like any other gaming industry titan – has set its eyes on bolstering live-service games due to the profitability of them, there are microtransactions in Helldivers 2.
However, the microtransactions in Helldivers 2 are extremely light when compared to other games and surprisingly the paid Warbond or season pass isn’t pay to win or even that great, it seems to be more so an option to financially support the game and the developers should you want to. Additionally, it definitely is not hard to gather Super Credits aka the cash shop currency through ingame activities or the free battle pass that’s acting as the standard progression tree.
I am desperately hoping that Helldivers 2 doesn’t get in on the more shady monetization practices like making its players feel FOMO or feeling of missing out in the future or locking certain features or types of weapons from the original Helldivers like mechs or bayonets behind paywalls.
I’m not taking any points away here but you as a consumer should still be aware of the bugs that can occur during your time in Helldivers 2.
Granted, these are not egregious bugs or glitches like being stuck behind a cryo-pod in a lobby you’re joining as this can be circumvented by simply starting a game or even your game crashing because you’re stuck during a mission under an object or the game just crashing sometimes. Or maybe your evac pilot is bugging the hell out which is admittedly hilarious. The biggest issue with Helldivers 2 right now apart from these is its server capacity and server performance.
Again, the first Helldivers game only got a little over 6,000 players at peak at least on Steam when it launched in 2015. I don’t think the developers over at Arrowhead Game Studios themselves expected the sequel to blow up as much as it has where even in the middle of the week, there’s hundreds of thousands of players trying to get into the game. I appreciate the developers, particularly their server team, being all hands on deck as it’s no easy feat ratcheting the servers up to handle this load contrary to what many gamers may assume to be as easy as pressing a button. Hopefully once the server issues are handled, the game will both run a bit better and be available for more consistent playtimes for everybody.
Content, Replayability and the Future
Many people have asked me during my streams of Helldivers 2 if it’s a good game. Hell yes it’s a good game. The content alone offers a solid challenge with difficulty levels actually being accurate for the most part. No run of the mission is usually carried out the same especially if you play with random people and you encounter new things all the time in the form of how you and your fellow helldivers die for Super Earth. There’s a ton of replayability when taking into account achievements, score runs and different loadouts apart from the human factor. And considering the first Helldivers had another enemy faction for humanity and the possibility of mechs or exo-suits being added to Helldivers 2 seems pretty real according to a developer comment in the official Helldivers Discord, there’s a lot more content like different game types and potential lore coming in the future although it seems there won’t be PvP in the game as confirmed by the developer.
There’s also endless potential as demonstrated with the Master Chief reference with the 117 Twitch Drop armor set in Helldivers 2 to bring in collabs with other franchises just as Cult of the Lamb or Fortnite have done which could help propel playerbase numbers once the initial group of players dwindles down inevitably as 2024 marches with more exciting gaming opportunities like Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC or even Alpha 2 for the Ashes of Creation MMORPG.
Personally for me, I intend on playing Helldivers 2 quite heavily when it comes to strictly co-op gaming. It feels like this is the co-op game that could fill the hole in my heart where Back for Blood or Warhammer: Darktide couldn’t after many years of playing Left 4 Dead 2 and desiring something like it.