2024 isn’t off to a great start where the gaming industry is concerned. The mass layoffs from the previous year are not slowing down, but ramping up, controversies are arising from the Culture War via Gamer Gate 2, and corporate bullshit in the form of live service games releasing dead on arrival continues. Looking at you Suicide Squad and Skull and Bones. In the bleak first few months of the year, one game in particular arose from humble beginnings to become a fan favorite and instant classic. It was time for the gaming community to join the Helldivers!

Helldivers 2 is a third person PVE shooter developed by Arrowhead Game Studios and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The game has the player join the elite military of Super Earth as the last line of offense, the Helldivers, in the government’s fight against alien forces in the form of the Terminid bugs and the Automaton menace. The game utilizes an atmosphere akin to the cult classic film Starship Troopers to straddle the line between propaganda and satire to craft a unique world and gaming experience that is focused on the game’s community coming together to overcome challenges. I have so far logged 33 hours into the game on PC and have reached level 21, or the rank of Chief. I have heavily enjoyed the game and it has quickly become a stable of my multiplayer rotation. This review has been cooking for quite a while and I am finally ready to deliver my thoughts.

Game reviews done in my style are organized into five categories, with each being graded on a scale from one to five. At the end of the review, all the categories will be summed up to determine the game’s letter grade. The five review categories include: gameplay, story and characters, visuals, soundtrack and sound design, and quality of life. Gameplay is game and level design, the quality of the combat, traversal mechanics and skill tress. Story and characters judge the narrative and character development. Visuals discusses the quality of the graphics and art direction. Soundtrack and sound design looks at the original score, sounds, and ambient music that fills the world with sound. Finally, quality of life grades the game on user interface and game stability.

Gameplay

In a gaming industry that is oversaturated with first-person shooters, Helldivers offers a breath of fresh air with its third-person perspective. Allowing the player to pan the camera to take in their surroundings makes targeting enemies easier. Having more visibility of the environment forces players to be aware of their surroundings and track movements of enemies for efficient elimination. At the same time, shooting accuracy in third person is a bit inaccurate, but luckily the game offers the ability to zoom in with first-person for higher accuracy at the cost of vision. Can’t tell you how many times I was zooming in with an anti-material rifle only to have a Terminid charger ram me from the side.

Enemy variety is well split and balanced between the game’s two enemy factions: the Terminids and Automaton. Going forward I’ll be referring to them as bugs and bots respectively. The bugs are admittedly the easier opponents as they lack major ranged attacks. However, what they lack in firepower, they make up for with armor and mobility. Leapers, bile spewers, chargers, and stalkers haunt the minds of players when they fight on the bug front. The AI of the bugs favor horde tactics, swarming the players in attempts to separate them. The bugs are at their strongest when they isolate players or when they separate willingly. The bugs’ design for many of their classes demand co-operation. The charger in particular is a dangerous opponent solo with its nigh impregnable frontal armor with the only weak spot being in the rear. In contrast, the bots, the harder enemy type, prefer to harass the player from range with rifles, rockets, and tanks. The bots do have berserkers, enemies with high health and chainsaw arms designed to flush out the player from firing lines, but otherwise the bulk of the bots attack from range. Like the bugs though, the bots are best taken down with teamwork, the scout striders, tanks, and hulks all have clear weak points that can be exploited for a quick kill. Though admittedly the bots are a tougher opponent mainly because their bonus objectives and bases are more harmful to the player with machineguns, stratagem jammers, and big freaking laser cannons. But overall Helldivers’ enemy variety is a major strength for the game as the different combinations between the classes offer unique and evolving challenges for the player base to overcome.

One of the core mechanics of the game’s combat are the stratagems. Stratagems are reusable resources that can be called in by the player to aid them in battle. These range from additional weapons like machineguns, grenade launchers, and railguns, to bombing runs, orbital strikes, sentry guns, and even mechs. Now these stratagems aren’t called in with the press of a button, oh no, they require the player to stop in place and input a correct series of buttons in order to be called in. Need to move or made a mistake in the combination? Sorry; your stratagem won’t be called in. This forces the player to weigh the risks and rewards of calling in stratagems with enemies barring down on you and dead allies asking for a revive; the stress of war is really present with this mechanic. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that calling back in dead allies and even some mission equipment also requires the player to input a stratagem. Just be careful with your stratagems and gunfire because friendly fire is heavily present in the game. You will be killed by your teammates in this game, there is no getting around it.

The gameplay loop of Helldivers is also a fun, ever-changing experience. Each time you drop, you land in a procedurally generated map with a series of sub-objectives strewed about the map. Stuff like destroying hives or factories, clearing spore towers, or clearing out ammo dumps are just some of these bonus objectives. Main objectives involve boss fights (bile titans), launching a nuke, or destroying bug eggs. All these objectives are simplistic, they either require going to a location and destroying everything in sight or inputting a stratagem combo and defending. Once the main objective is completed, you head for extraction and survive against the hordes of enemies until the shuttle arrives. Load the next mission and drop again. What makes this unique is that outside of the main mission, you don’t really know what you’ll find. It adds a dynamic to the game of surprise. For example, the bugs have a special enemy called a stalker, a bug that can cloak itself. These bugs will track you for the entire mission until you destroy their nest. I should also note that each mission has a time limit, once the time runs out, you lose access to your stratagems. Enemy intensity also increases the longer you are in the drop. Difficulty levels span from trivial to hell dive, which is nearly impossible. Challenging and hard are the most consistent difficulties that balances ‘man this is too easy’ to ‘I’m going to throw my keyboard across my room now’.

What about progression? While the main progression in this game surrounds a battlepass. Now hold on! Before you put this game on your ignore list, these battle passes are easy to progress. The main currency comes in the form of War Bonds that you get by completing missions, finding them on the map, and completing major orders. Major orders are basically community events where players are assigned certain planets to liberate. Inside these battlepasses are new guns, armor, and emotes. The best thing about these battlepasses is that Arrowhead has stated that they will never cycle out the passes, so you can complete them at your leisure. There is also a free pass that grants the exclusive currency and when you complete the free pass you will have gained enough to unlock the paid for pass. Beyond the battlepass, progression also involves collecting samples from the mission maps and applying them to ship upgrades. Ship upgrades are simple boosts including stratagem cooldown and more uses per mission.

Arrowhead Game Studios have crafted a fun gameplay loop with a simple and consumer friendly progression system. Though balance can be wonky at higher levels and some weapons and stratagems outclass others, the gameplay of this game is its strength.

Helldivers 2’s gameplay score is a 4/5.

Story

As a multiplayer game, Helldivers 2 doesn’t have a story that the player needs to complete. Instead, the game creates a universe and has the players develop the story through liberating the game’s planets. Helldivers 2 focuses on Super Earth, a militaristic fascist regime that has unified the planet. The forces of Super Earth, the Helldivers, protect the virtues of managed democracy against the forces of the bugs and bots. Through the Ministry of Information, you are recruited into the armed forces and sent out to be added to the meat grinder of war in a new conflict, the Second Galactic War, as Super Earth aims to rid the galaxy of the alien threat. And that’s about it. Of course, there are lore notes and messages scattered throughout the planets with easter eggs as well that add to the world building. Helldivers 2 is a direct sequel to the previous title that focused on the previous galactic conflict. But Helldivers 2 replaces a true storytelling experience with a themed sandbox. I should briefly note that the themes of Helldivers 2 are satirical in nature. Super Earth is supposed to be making fun of a hyper fascist regime and should not be supported in reality.

The community driven events that I mentioned earlier are the expanded story of the conflict taking place in the game. The Major Orders propel the ongoing campaign of Helldivers 2 forward. It has also become public knowledge that the developer known as Joel is managing the entire in game conflict by controlling what the bugs and bots do. The community has also come together to create incredible moments including the Battle of Malevelon Creek, the first loss the community experienced. Numerous pieces of art and calls for revenge sprouted across the internet inspired by this event. When the Creek was liberated, Arrowhead embraced it and created an in-game cosmetic. Though the community is starting to fragment due to outside political factors, when the game released the community was absolutely invested in the product.

With story taking a backseat in these types of games, I can’t give Helldivers 2 a high score here, however I will reward them for crafting a live service that is actually fun and dynamic based on player actions, allowing the so-called story to be controlled by the community.

Helldivers 2’s story score is a 3/5.

Visuals

The art of Helldivers is as dynamic as the gameplay. The different planets that inhabit the world of Helldivers feature different biome types ranging from empty moons to jungles to volcanic islands to polar ice caps. The environmental art and graphics are surprisingly beautiful. In a game where I believed that graphics and art would be an afterthought, I always enjoy dropping into dynamic environments to further enhance the experience. Lighting for the maps is also a factor. The game is never so dark that the player struggles to see, instead different tints and intensities are used to indicate to the player if it’s day or night. Enemy designs are interesting, particularly for the bugs. You can actually see an evolution line from the small larva level bugs to the much larger bugs. The differences between the leaper and the stalker in particular are very telling as their attack animations are very similar. As for the bots, their designs are very systematic and functional, which makes sense, but their designs indicate clear weak spots for the player to spot and eliminate. The designs of the enemies add a new level to the forces attacking the player to help enhance the world. Even damage to the enemy is crafted strongly; there are no health bars so the player has to play based off visual damage to each enemy to indicate if that bug or bot needs another clip. And these aren’t minor differences, but actual limbs flying off and the animations of the enemies changing based off the damage. By the way, the same damage is applied to the Helldivers and you can be blown apart by your teammate’s mortar sentry.

Models for the Helldivers are also well designed, even though they aren’t that diverse in body type. Players can choose from a lean build or a more bulky build only. The different armors and capes are the main cosmetic for players to flirt with. Although some armors are hit or miss for me, all the armors for the most part look realistic and metallic. The Helldivers do not look like they are made of plastic. Throughout the mission your Helldiver collects blood from allies and enemies that coats their armor and the capes you wear get shredded. When you extract and return to your ship, you wear the battle on your model and it looks amazing.

My only real critique on the graphics and art is that at times the lighting and the render distances clash to create blocky environments, but that is to be expected from a generated map. Plus, some of the armors you unlock from the battlepasses are quite ugly and pale in comparison to the paid for passes.

Helldivers 2’s visual score is a 4/5.

Sound Design

This will be short and simple. I love Helldivers 2’s sound design. I love the music. The drop theme is an ear infestation that is still in my mind. I find myself humming it wherever I go, driving to work, writing this article, in the shower. I’m always dropping. The guns sound great and unique from each other. The sound delay from explosions and sound waves is realistic. Enemy sounds help indicate moves and dangers that help alert the player. I forever fear the sound of a coming bug breach. I love the over the top generic voice lines that the Helldivers yell out when unloading clips into enemies. There really isn’t more to say here. The sound design slaps and the drop theme is incredible. I hope it makes an appearance at the Game Awards, preferably in the Game of the Year Medley.

Helldivers 2’s sound design score is a 5/5.

Quality of Life

Helldivers 2, with all of its merits, isn’t a perfect game. In fact, there are plenty of bugs, glitches, and balance issues. Enemies glitch into the ground and their bodies form an impassable obstacle, your Helldiver when joining up with a match can find themselves in a closet and unable to explore the ship, the ragdolling of your Helldiver upon death is awful. These are the most common glitches that I’ve encountered in my 33 hours of playing the game. These aren’t game breaking. In fact, these bugs are more comical than anything else. The biggest problem that Helldivers had at launch was server size and stability. The game witnessed such an influx of players that servers filled up quickly to the point where the CEO of Arrowhead asked prospective players to hold off buying the game so that the company could get more server space. The game has since gotten its servers under control. Weapon balances are a problem for some as some weapons have become ‘essential’ for higher difficulties, but since this is a PVE game this doesn’t really matter in my opinion. There have been bugs on weapon and stratagem performance. The mech that was introduced down the line in the game’s lifespan in particular has a storied glitch history, but Arrowhead is quick to address these issues. Where the UI is concerned, I have only one thing I want to change, I’d rather have a bullet count on my magazines instead of the visual feedback that is implemented. This isn’t a big need of mine as I often find myself firing like crazy anyways, but just a small preference from my time in arena and tactical shooters. Like all multiplayer shooters, Helldivers will be in a constant cycle of introducing new items, them glitching, and soon after patches fixing what’s broken. It’s the norm for a live service. But given the price range of $40 for the default edition plus $10 for each exclusive battlepass, if you want to splurge on the game, Helldivers 2 is a strong bang for your buck and easily the best horde PVE shooter on the market, joining the ranks of Left 4 Dead and Deep Rock Galactic. My only take aways from this category is the servers at launch and the non-game breaking bugs I mentioned earlier.

Helldivers 2’s quality of life score is a 4/5.

Final Verdict

It is hard to say if Helldivers 2 is game of the year quality given how early in the year we are, but it certainly has a strong case. In a gaming environment where terrible live service games are everywhere, it is nice to see that there are companies in the genre that actually still want to make good games. Helldivers 2 isn’t perfect, but is great at its core. I usually hate live service games, but this is one I can get behind. I am going to keep on adding up the hours in this galactic war simulation and continue the fight for managed democracy!

The final score for Helldivers 2 is a 20/25 or a solid B-. I highly recommend the game and I’ll see you in the next drop!