I went into this game through a lot of word of mouth, when the trailers first dropped I thought nothing of it. When it was announced as an online co-op third person shooter, I was extremely skeptical. I heard a lot of good things about the first Helldivers, but I feared that the transition from top down to third person would be extremely awkward. Upon it also being dubbed a "live service" game, I also feared that it would suffer the same fate as many others of its kind - A lot of live service games garner a small but serviceable player base for a few months, then quickly die out when they rely too heavily on microtransactions.
I've never been happier to be wrong.
The business model here is genuinely perfect. When hearing that there would be microtransactions in the game I was beyond skeptical, but I paid the $40 at launch (I never buy games at launch!), earned a lot of credits in-game and through the free battle pass (which never expires and nothing is time gated!), even managed to get a few armors I liked, got the premium pass, just by playing the game. I've never felt less inclined to buy anything, but weirdly enough, I still might, just because I genuinely love playing the game.
Enough about that though. The gameplay itself is honestly a dream come true for me, as a veteran Halo and Gears of War enthusiast. The mechanics behind the stratagems are used to their absolute fullest, with tons of variety available across different loadouts. Want to fight the enemies yourself? Cool! Grab a machine gun, flamethrower, or grenade launcher and go to town! Want to focus more on a defensive play? Also cool! Get some land mine emplacements or sentry guns! Want to focus on enemy strongholds? Still cool! Grab some orbital barrages or air strikes that cover a big area!
There's a lot of ways to tackle every mission, from taking out enemy outposts through boots on the ground tactics and circling large groups of enemies to just making the F in F-15 stand for Freedom and chucking in 10 air strikes on a base. It's really up to you. Every strategy has its merits and downsides. There's a lot of unique modifiers and objective types that work great for the concept, such as towers that jam your stratagems, evacuation missions, fixing radar towers, fueling missile silos, lots of variety in what you need to do.
The enemy variety is great too. There's certain types of Terminids you don't see on every planet under their control, and when selecting higher difficulties, the enemies don't just become bullet sponges. Instead, the enemies become more varied in types, with smarter and more powerful types of enemies requiring different strategies and abilities to kill.
One unfortunate consequence of higher difficulties is that it becomes pretty unbalanced, though. The enemies for each mode are about perfect, I'd say, but there's times where levels on Impossible are easier than levels on Challenging. It does also depend on who you're playing with, but I swear it does still feel a bit luck based.
The Terminids can also feel extremely annoying on certain missions. The stalkers, hunters, etc, the enemies that just jump right at you, are some of the most obnoxious enemies I've ever fought in a video game. I don't know why some people think the Automatons are more difficult, the robots have much clearer patterns. The chargers and bile titans can also just seemingly spawn in randomly. I've gone through missions on the second and third highest difficulties with just a few coming in, and I've also ended missions with 5 bile titans and 10 chargers swarming the evacuation ship.
Perhaps this is by design and is a point that shouldn't be used against the game. I will say it certainly makes things a bit more interesting. Whether or not it's a criticism depends on what a player enjoys from a co-op shooter overall. If you prefer a bit more random generation through in-game events, this is absolutely the game for you. If you prefer more concise structure, you may struggle quite a bit more.
That said, the levels are all very interesting in their design. The mission structure for each planet is heavily dependent on where your team lands, and given how many different types of missions are available, and the randomness of enemy spawns, it makes every session feel just that little bit more interesting.
I love the planets themselves. They all feel very alien, but just grounded enough. The aesthetic takes inspiration from every type of sci-fi title, with the Automatons clearly being inspired by battle droids and Skynet, the Terminids being HEAVILY inspired by Starship Troopers and a little bit of Alien, and the Helldivers themselves being clearly reminiscent of ODSTs.
It's clear the team at Arrowhead has an extreme passion for sci-fi media. Admittedly, I've never played the first game, so I've never seen the Illuminate, but it makes me very curious what they'll be like in this game compared to the current enemy lineup.
The game isn't perfect. There's a few issues, primarily with quickplay matchmaking, invites not working sometimes, and some of the balancing. I can tell that a few stratagems could use some buffs, but, these are all factors which I'm pretty positive will be ironed out.
Overall? Game is fantastic. It's extremely intense and makes for some absolutely hilarious co-op shenanigans. The premise is extremely satirical, but has the perfect mix of cool tossed into the mix which keeps the lore rolling. It's a rare time where people actually playing the game themselves makes them demand that more friends get involved for more shenanigans, instead of corporate marketing being the main driving factor.
Every moment feels like something out of a movie. It can be a comedy, or it can be a drama. It all depends how you play against what the game throws at you, and that can change on a dime in just a matter of minutes.
This game genuinely restored some of my faith in the online gaming scene. And there's a conclusion I've come to:
Live service will not kill the gaming industry.
Only bad games and bad business practice can kill the gaming industry.
EDIT: With the updates that followed my initial review, it's only improved certain quality of life aspects, become more varied, and become even more fun.
This is my third ever five star review, and I can't think of a game more deserving. They've already fixed basically every issue I've had, and constantly improve it in every way. The new weapons, new stratagems, new abilities, all fun as hell and the armor always looks cool to boot.
I've never been happier to be wrong.
The business model here is genuinely perfect. When hearing that there would be microtransactions in the game I was beyond skeptical, but I paid the $40 at launch (I never buy games at launch!), earned a lot of credits in-game and through the free battle pass (which never expires and nothing is time gated!), even managed to get a few armors I liked, got the premium pass, just by playing the game. I've never felt less inclined to buy anything, but weirdly enough, I still might, just because I genuinely love playing the game.
Enough about that though. The gameplay itself is honestly a dream come true for me, as a veteran Halo and Gears of War enthusiast. The mechanics behind the stratagems are used to their absolute fullest, with tons of variety available across different loadouts. Want to fight the enemies yourself? Cool! Grab a machine gun, flamethrower, or grenade launcher and go to town! Want to focus more on a defensive play? Also cool! Get some land mine emplacements or sentry guns! Want to focus on enemy strongholds? Still cool! Grab some orbital barrages or air strikes that cover a big area!
There's a lot of ways to tackle every mission, from taking out enemy outposts through boots on the ground tactics and circling large groups of enemies to just making the F in F-15 stand for Freedom and chucking in 10 air strikes on a base. It's really up to you. Every strategy has its merits and downsides. There's a lot of unique modifiers and objective types that work great for the concept, such as towers that jam your stratagems, evacuation missions, fixing radar towers, fueling missile silos, lots of variety in what you need to do.
The enemy variety is great too. There's certain types of Terminids you don't see on every planet under their control, and when selecting higher difficulties, the enemies don't just become bullet sponges. Instead, the enemies become more varied in types, with smarter and more powerful types of enemies requiring different strategies and abilities to kill.
One unfortunate consequence of higher difficulties is that it becomes pretty unbalanced, though. The enemies for each mode are about perfect, I'd say, but there's times where levels on Impossible are easier than levels on Challenging. It does also depend on who you're playing with, but I swear it does still feel a bit luck based.
The Terminids can also feel extremely annoying on certain missions. The stalkers, hunters, etc, the enemies that just jump right at you, are some of the most obnoxious enemies I've ever fought in a video game. I don't know why some people think the Automatons are more difficult, the robots have much clearer patterns. The chargers and bile titans can also just seemingly spawn in randomly. I've gone through missions on the second and third highest difficulties with just a few coming in, and I've also ended missions with 5 bile titans and 10 chargers swarming the evacuation ship.
Perhaps this is by design and is a point that shouldn't be used against the game. I will say it certainly makes things a bit more interesting. Whether or not it's a criticism depends on what a player enjoys from a co-op shooter overall. If you prefer a bit more random generation through in-game events, this is absolutely the game for you. If you prefer more concise structure, you may struggle quite a bit more.
That said, the levels are all very interesting in their design. The mission structure for each planet is heavily dependent on where your team lands, and given how many different types of missions are available, and the randomness of enemy spawns, it makes every session feel just that little bit more interesting.
I love the planets themselves. They all feel very alien, but just grounded enough. The aesthetic takes inspiration from every type of sci-fi title, with the Automatons clearly being inspired by battle droids and Skynet, the Terminids being HEAVILY inspired by Starship Troopers and a little bit of Alien, and the Helldivers themselves being clearly reminiscent of ODSTs.
It's clear the team at Arrowhead has an extreme passion for sci-fi media. Admittedly, I've never played the first game, so I've never seen the Illuminate, but it makes me very curious what they'll be like in this game compared to the current enemy lineup.
The game isn't perfect. There's a few issues, primarily with quickplay matchmaking, invites not working sometimes, and some of the balancing. I can tell that a few stratagems could use some buffs, but, these are all factors which I'm pretty positive will be ironed out.
Overall? Game is fantastic. It's extremely intense and makes for some absolutely hilarious co-op shenanigans. The premise is extremely satirical, but has the perfect mix of cool tossed into the mix which keeps the lore rolling. It's a rare time where people actually playing the game themselves makes them demand that more friends get involved for more shenanigans, instead of corporate marketing being the main driving factor.
Every moment feels like something out of a movie. It can be a comedy, or it can be a drama. It all depends how you play against what the game throws at you, and that can change on a dime in just a matter of minutes.
This game genuinely restored some of my faith in the online gaming scene. And there's a conclusion I've come to:
Live service will not kill the gaming industry.
Only bad games and bad business practice can kill the gaming industry.
EDIT: With the updates that followed my initial review, it's only improved certain quality of life aspects, become more varied, and become even more fun.
This is my third ever five star review, and I can't think of a game more deserving. They've already fixed basically every issue I've had, and constantly improve it in every way. The new weapons, new stratagems, new abilities, all fun as hell and the armor always looks cool to boot.