Helldivers II - Fighting the good fight, for Liberty and Freedom

Ten minutes left on the mission clock. After regaining control of a SEAF artillery emplacement, besieged on all sides by deadly alien bugs, I find the way to my mission blocked off by a massive hive of Terminids. Behind me, bugs chase me led by a gargantuan Bile Titan that I ran away from, giving me no time to call in a resupply. Carrying an objective on my right hand I’m only capable of defending myself with a powerful yet inadequate heavy revolver.

I’m ready to face my destiny. It is better to die for Freedom than to live in cowardice anyway, so I begin to call in a bombing run on my position. I will go down fighting for the sake of Super Earth. But then, all of a sudden, my actual in-game comms explode in a cacophony of cheering and support.

“Hey buddy! Hang in there!” says a rough voice on the other side of the world. Cheering, cursing, and praising for Liberty and Democracy rain down into the map, as a three-man squad chose to join my mission in its last minutes. One of the Hellpods lands right on top of the Bile Titan, killing it instantly, and moments after all three of these random soldiers burst out of their pods guns blazing, calling in orbital strikes, resupplies, heavy weapons, and a huge 500kg bomb, telling me to run for it.

Out in the distance, an eagle cries out. I shed a single tear as Justice is served and Democracy is delivered. Then a grenade kills all of us as we run to the extraction.

This is Helldivers II.

Helldivers II is simply on a tier of its own

There is no denying that what the people at Arrowhead Game Studios have managed to deliver with this game is fantastic. If it was anything less, then the internet wouldn’t be flooded with news about how their servers are bursting at the seams because of all of the players trying to get in, eager to join the galactic war that they have prepared for us.

It’s safe to say that the world of gaming was caught entirely by surprise by what many assumed was simply going to be a smaller title, not because of how it looked but because of its irreverent tone, its lower-than-standard price, and its simultaneous release on PS5 and Steam. Released barely over two weeks ago, Helldivers II has shaken the internet.

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If you somehow haven’t heard about it, this game puts you in the shoes of a titular Helldiver, a soldier of Super Earth sent to the edges of the galaxy to fight against alien forces in the name of Democracy. Yes, we know it seems heavy-handed, but that’s the entire point. Just as with their very obvious inspiration, Starship Troopers, this game is a satire of the military-industrial complex that still allows you to enjoy some awesome gameplay, while still hamming it up with over-the-top dialogue about protecting a tyrannical government in the name of patriotism.

Every single player in the game has taken this theme to heart, and in turn, has instantly tuned into the fantasy of extreme patriotism for a fictitious land. It is loud, bombastic, and bordering on propaganda, but as it’s not for anything real (nor does it try to hide how ridiculous it is) the setting helps to make players join the cause and find actual comradery in the least expected place: online.

Come on you apes! Do you want to live forever?!

Intensity is the name of the game in Helldivers II. Absolutely everything you do is bathed in intensity from the moment you boot up the game: a propaganda video for Super Earth hypes you to become a Helldiver with the bombastic main theme (titled “A Cup of Liber-Tea”) blasts from your speakers. You are immediately droppen into training and told to earn your cape, with guidance on the basics of combat and calling down stratagems from low orbit.

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When you fire any of your weapons, a heavy recoil urges you to control your aim. Hold down the trigger on a machine gun and your Helldiver will begin to yell, laughing at the Democracy being served at 1200 rounds per minute. Every shot booms and echoes through the planets you liberate, and every shot makes your hands rumble through the DualSense controller.

The developers put a lot of care into making sure that combat feels as exciting as possible, all while making you feel frail and afraid, and it shows. From the art direction to the sound design, weapons feel heavy and dangerous, teetering on being uncontrollable and causing you to slightly panic during every encounter with bug or automaton. And dangerous they are, as it doesn’t take much for you to accidentally kill a squadmate or two through friendly fire.

This same care goes beyond the feeling of the weapons and into everything else in the game, with an incredible variety of environments towards which you’ll launch yourself from your Destroyer Starship every mission. From tropical islands to arid wastelands, snowy fields in the middle of a heavy blizzard, or a dense jungle in the middle of the night that has layers calling it “Robot Vietnam”, everything is beautifully rendered during your missions with heavy weather effects like fog, rain, dust storms and more.

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When it comes to gameplay, audio, and visuals, Helldivers II makes good use of its hyper-focus on instanced missions to present a wonderfully realized galaxy at war, doing exactly what they need and leaving the action of hectic combat to speak for itself.

Through readiness and discipline, we are masters of our fate

Perhaps the most important part of Helldivers II’s success so far is the community that has gathered around it. The title is a live-service game with a real-time galactic war at the center of it: every mission performed by players, be it a failure or a success, contributes to the war-effort currently at two fronts: the galaxy is besieged by the Terminids (bugs) and the Automatons (robots), which means you get to choose what you fight and when. The goal of the devs is to be able to deliver a dynamic experience week after week, with new content coming to the game consistently and the warfronts responding to player actions as they happen.

And as mentioned above, players have responded to these mechanics extremely positively. Beyond falling into the role of superpatriotism, yelling propaganda nonsense about freedom and liberty and whatnot, a large part of the community has embraced the spirit of cooperation, even with random players. The game is exclusively PvE, which means that without confrontation or active competition between players, it is easier than ever to join other players and complete missions together.

The game itself is built to encourage cooperation, with certain weapons requiring two players to act in unison, like a heavy rocket launcher that requires one player to shoot while another reloads. Objectives often have players defending each other as they transport encumbering objectives throughout the map, or working together to realign satellites, all while juggling button combinations to complete objectives and call down the many offensive and defensive tools at their disposal.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the game isn’t without its griefers. But even in the rare occasion that you happen upon one of them, failures still help you progress in the game, still giving you rewards for contributing to the war effort.

For Democracy. For Super Earth!

At the time of writing this review, the game is still pushing through its initial woes. Hordes of players trying to get in have caused the devs to scramble and enter panic mode as they work to expand their server capacity, limiting the player count to “only” 450,000 players at a time. As such, many have been left out of the game during the first few weeks. The success of the title was a bigger surprise than anyone expected, but that is something that is sure to stabilize as time goes on.

From the live-service side of things, Helldivers II is also quite different than most. While you can buy a certain in-game currency with real money and there is a premium battlepass that unlocks certain items, the devs have promised that all of the upcoming content will be available to players for free. There is also a store that sells cosmetics, boosts, and items on a rotating lineup, but even that currency can be earned through regular play, which so far makes its presence quite innoffensive.

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Now everything depends on the attention that Arrowhead and Sony give to the game. This could very well be a long-lived game should it get consistent content drops and events, which is something that PlayStation has been clamoring for ever since the release of PlayStation 5. Should they fix all of their server issues and maintain a healthy framework for people to play in, we might still be talking about it in the years to come. There is no need for a boring open-world filled with chores to do, nor for causing players to feel like they’re missing out on limited time events or rewards. Everything here is clearly developed with player fun in mind, and it’s a sign that the industry should pay attention to.

Helldivers II is now available on PlayStation 5 and Steam. Join the fight. Deliver Democracy and Freedom to the galaxy.