KitGuru Games: Helldivers 2 is co-op fun at its absolute best

Over the weekend, I made the bold decision to enlist with the helldivers and join the fight for freedom, liberty, and democracy. It has been quite a journey so far and despite some server issues brought about by the sheer unexpected popularity of the game, I can't recommend this game highly enough.

Helldivers 2 is technically a sequel, but you do not need to have played the first game. The original Helldivers was a top-down twin-stick shooter. Meanwhile, Helldivers 2 has completely revamped the game, with a new third-person perspective. Some mechanics return from the original, such as using directional combos to call down supplies, weapons and bombs from your ship floating above the planet, so if you did play the original, you will get to grips with things a bit quicker but it is by no means a necessity. Logging into the game for the first time will immediately put you in a quick 10 minute tutorial anyway, which will teach you the controls.

Now I will say the game is frenetic. If you are used to cutting down massive hordes of enemies with ease in a game like Destiny, then you will feel a bit pressed to start off with. The game is very hectic and you'll encounter a lot of different enemy types in quick succession, many of which will be armoured. The weak points aren't as obvious as they are in a game like Destiny and you'll really want to pay attention to which weapons you are using in specific scenarios.

At first, I really struggled against Bile Spewers and Chargers, but after unlocking my support weapon sniper rifle, I can now blow through their armour with a few shots, before swapping back to a smaller weapon to tackle scavengers and warriors. Now that I'm more geared up, I can take on more challenging missions against the Terminids.

I did attempt an Automaton mission at around level 5, which features an entirely different class of enemies, swapping out swarms of bug creatures for an army of terminator robots with energy weapons and heavier artillery. Me and my squadmate did not know what we were going up against and watched helplessly as we were surrounded, with our bullets bouncing off of the Automatons due to lack of armour penetration. This is the type of fight you may want to hold off on until you have a few levels under your belt and some new gear unlocks and strategems.

Strategems add a whole new dimension to the game. You aren't just going to drop in with the gear you have on hand and expect to come out of the mission alive. You will regularly want to take advantage of Strategems to call down ammo resupplies, powerful explosives and support weapons (like the sniper I mentioned earlier), or if you prefer, you can use a massive machine gun to tear enemies to shreds before they reach you. The list of strategems you can unlock is absolutely massive, so you'll want to think about which ones you are bringing depending on the mission you are planning on going on.

Some Strategems do have particularly long combos required to call them in, but the Reinforcement (squadmate revive), Resupply and Precision Missile strategems are the first ones you unlock and do have simpler combos to activate, so if you can memorise those combos, you should be good to go. I like to start off any mission by calling in my first resupply to start the cooldown and stock up on ammo and health stims. Then I call down my support weapon so I have it handy before getting surprised by a Charger or Bile Spewer.

I also suggest constantly be looking around and shifting positions. While there are some spots on the map where you can climb to a high point and avoid enemies, for the most part, you are going to be on the ground and in constant danger. The enemies in this game are incredibly sneaky, unexpectedly fast and will often start flanking you. Watch your squad's backs and they should do the same for you. Also, remember that if you dive backwards to the ground, you can continue shooting what's in front of you. The real trick here is to be shooting as much as possible, but try to avoid lobbing a grenade in your squadmate's direction or accidentally shooting them as there is full friendly-fire at all times.

While other games have had a ‘community progression' system in place, I feel like Helldivers 2 does it incredibly well. Your missions are selected from a Mass Effect style galaxy war map and you can see the progress of the community at large as the entire player base completes missions to liberate planets. This process then unlocks new parts of the galaxy to explore, creating a true sense of community in our fight against the aliens.

Based on this breakdown of the game so far, you might be fooled into thinking this is a serious-tone game, like many other big shooters. However, Helldivers 2 carries forward the Starship Troopers style of parody, the game is simply designed to be fun from the ground up. The gameplay is constantly engaging thanks to an incredibly well thought-out control scheme, especially on mouse/keyboard, and when accidents do happen, such as dropping a precision missile on a teammate, or taking their legs out with a misplaced grenade, it usually results in hilarious moments and you'll quickly be able to call them back in, so while the gameplay is challenging and hectic, it is also just a lot of fun and the developers have gone out of their way to ensure it isn't frustrating. You can always get a mission back on track after a run of bad luck and you are never out of the game for very long either.

In all, Helldivers 2 is the most refreshing ‘service' style game I have ever played. A lot of co-op games like this tend to forget about making the game fun. The Division suffered from bullet-sponge enemies, a concept that didn't necessarily land given the humans v humans set up of that game, along with your arsenal of weapons firing at relatively low-armoured enemies. Destiny suffers from being overly bloated and inaccessible to new players, while also being an incredibly expensive title to keep up with.

Helldivers 2 does away with all of this. They've set the price of the game at £34.99 and that's basically it, you can jump in and play. There is a small cosmetics store, where you can spend ‘Super Credits' in low amounts, and it would seem the developers at Arrowhead really took the term ‘microtransaction' literally. There is no insane £100 currency pack, the most expensive pack gets you a little over 2000 credits for £16. That would be enough to buy all of the cosmetics currently in the store. The most expensive ‘Super Store' armour costs 400 credits. Better yet, you don't have to buy the credits at all, you'll be able to unlock plenty of credits yourself just through playing the game.

There is technically a battle pass, but it has no expiration date and it is essentially an unlock tree, rather than FOMO-bait. You'll earn tokens completing missions and then spend those tokens to acquire new weapons and armour styles, as well as other cosmetics like victory poses. The more tokens you spend, the further down the list you can go, until you start acquiring the most powerful gear in the game. The free version has the most unlocks, while the premium version is primarily intended for invested players, as the token cost to unlock new weapons and gear in the premium tree is much higher, but there are also significantly fewer things to unlock overall.

The game's monetisation scheme really gives the impression that these developers care. There is no nickel and diming to be found here. In a world where monetisation practices are often in your face and greedy, this is a breath of fresh air and I can see why so many people have been impressed with the game. It just seems so clear to me that the developers really wanted to make this an accessible experience that can be enjoyed by many, without getting led astray by dollar-eyed executives looking to up their end of year bonus.

While I have only had good things to say about this game so far, there are some improvements that can be made. Currently, the game uses AMD's FSR 1.0 for upscaling, so an upgrade to FSR 2 or 3, and the addition of DLSS and Intel XeSS would not go amiss.

Additionally, the launch weekend saw many players locked out of the game for periods of time due to lack of server space. The developers clearly didn't expect the game to blow up as quickly as it has, but I also want to point out that despite seeing server complaints all across the web, I only ever had to wait two minutes to log into the game and I personally was never in a position where I simply couldn't play. Once you are in, the experience is rock solid and I never encountered any kind of disconnect, rubber banding or any other online-related issue. The developers have capped the maximum player count for now as they work to increase server capacity to let more players in. As Arrowhead is a small studio, I feel like we can cut them some slack there. The game is fantastic and lines of communication were open all weekend as the tech team tried to smooth things over. You can't ask for much more than that.

In future updates, I would like to see the return of vehicles and mechs from the first game, and I think Arrowhead would do well to keep writing in-game dialogue lines so we can cycle new ones in and keep things fresh. As much as I love all the jokes about democracy and liberTEA, they do start to get tiresome pretty quickly, so maybe once in a while, it would be a good idea to cycle in some new jokes.

Another thing that I am confident will improve over time are the cosmetics. Right now at launch, there are a lot of variations available for armour, but many of them do exhibit minor changes, which is great for getting an exact style down, but I would also like to see more unique armour sets over time and I'm sure Arrowhead will deliver on that.

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KitGuru Says: Enlist with the Helldivers and aid in the fight. I promise you it is a fun time. Go in expecting to die, laugh at the chaos as it unfolds and take in everything the game has to offer. As you keep making your way through missions, you will begin to see more enemy variety and new mission types. I've put in about 10 hours so far and I'm still learning and discovering new things, so there is no shortage of content.

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