The game that filled the gaping hole Left 4 Dead 2 left in me after its prime time.

Countless L4D2 clones with big promises over a decade, only for the sequel to a seemingly underrated franchise to shatter through and bring the Blow Shit Up™️ genre back to mainstream.

Helldivers 2 is a game that made my 9-5 working ass with overtime duties somehow put 200+ hours into it in 2 months, and even participate in a tournament for it. We placed 2nd!

When you take the 4 player co-op blow shit up formula and put it on a big ass map that allows so much creativity in how you tackle your objectives and spice it up with badass tools for the players, you get a fucking masterpiece of a video game.

I'm sitting at Level 92 at the time of writing this, the level cap is now 150, in the 200 hours I've put into this game, I've improvised and come up with unusual ways of doing things that turned into a party trick whenever I'm playing with friends who are at lower levels, it's just really funny.

Setting the freedom and creativity the game lets you have aside, this is a live service game done right. Now, I'm not delusional enough to think this won't change going forward, after all, it's published by Sony and they like money just as much as the next guy waiting in line to abuse your wallets.

However, today, Helldivers 2 is a prime example of how you monetize your game post launch in a GOOD way that boosts your game's retention.

Start off with a free battle pass that lets you earn the premium currency by playing the game alongside equipment that is just needed for progression, no expiry on this bad boy, finish it up whenever you want, put that into comparison with any mainstream game with a battlepass today and you see the difference between SOUL SUCKING WEEKLY MISSIONS that make you feel TRAPPED and FORCED to make the most out of the money you paid for that battle pass and what Helldivers 2 is offering you.

Paid battle passes are shorter, if you play the game enough, you'll probably have enough Super Credits to buy the next premium battle pass by the time it releases because you can find Super Credits IN GAME TOO. Literally, they are LOOTABLE items on the map and they are SHARED across your TEAM if any one of you picks one up.

Battle passes aren't BLOATED with low effort skins for your guns, there are no skins, you're playing as the bottom of the barrel soldier, expandable, expected to DIE and be REPLACED. You don't need in depth customization and $20 per skin. Arrowhead understands that and nails it.

Furthermore, this game only gives you the ground level lore, the setting, the rest is written as we go, because the entire game and its future is determined by the players alongside the devs.

Devs set an objective for the playerbase, the game enters a path of events if the objective is completed by the entire playerbase collectively, and another if it isn't completed.

Each planet has a LIBERATION percentage, which depletes if there aren't enough Helldivers on it completing missions successfully, the enemy advances. Devs can also shift the balances around by increasing or decreasing the rates that percentage moves at.

This approach to the GAAS formula alone:
- Boosts PLAYER RETENTION
- Provides ORGANIC and ACTIVE free marketing on socials
- Gives players the feeling of ACHIEVEMENT and FAILURE for their collective actions as a community

And those points pretty much ensure its lifespan going forward. This is it, they cracked the live service formula and proved it to WORK.

Now, all the praising aside, let's talk about the downs of this game.

The game is developed on a discontinued engine, the decision to discontinue it happened when they were already too deep into Helldivers 2's development. So, Arrowhead decided to keep going rather than switching to a different engine and requiring training for everyone involved in the development for that engine. Which is probably the best call you can make in a situation like that honestly.

While the game is a huge hit, it is falling apart technically in many areas. Glitches, crashes, mistakenly shipped unfinished things, new updates introducing even more crashes, so on so forth.

There are at least 1-2 pings about a known issue that's making the game unplayable on the Helldivers 2 Discord seemingly every 1-2 weeks. While I didn't face too much of the known issues, I still get the occasional random crash, which can mark "enough for today" for that play session.

All the aforementioned positives are what's keeping this game kicking right now, and I hope the technical stuff can be figured out as soon as possible.

Massive thanks and congratulations to Arrowhead for this absolute delight of a game.

The fight for democracy rages on.