WE DIVE TOGETHER


----


Warning: This game will completely take over your life.
Not because it has nasty psychological hooks to try and get you addicted, but because it's just that good of a game.

I'm an old Helldivers 1 vet, and I was definitely curious about Helldivers 2, but I was worried that they wouldn't be able to catch the same lightning twice.
BOY WAS I WRONG.

== The Things I Love ==

- Graphics & Sound
From when you first get into your pod and dive through the atmosphere of a planet the game hits you with a wonderful wall of sound. The soundtrack is excellent, and you can hear the howl of the hellpod ripping through the atmosphere.
The game is gorgeous, but also carries over the original aesthetics of Helldivers 1 perfectly. The guns look, sound, and feel like they're something that's actually suitable for fighting bugs and robots twice as big as you are. Even the pistol sounds meaty. The lanscapes you fight in are excellent, and range from something you might see on Earth to strange, alien places.

- Core Gameplay Loop
The core gameplay of Helldivers is extremely simple: You drop in, you blow stuff up, you leave. But that definitely doesn't mean it's not fun. Exploring the map for extra loot, secondary objectives, or hunting down enemy outposts keeps the game fresh, and the landscape can provide interesting barriers and offer new approaches to moving around and fighting enemies.
The move to a 3rd person perspective as opposed to a top-down one has definitely changed they way you play. Without the locked camera perspective, you're free to explore around the map, and there's a verticality that isn't present in Helldivers 1.

- The Community
Is excellent and I highly recommend getting involved, even if only a little bit. Yes, you'l get the people who maybe take it a little bit too seriously and complain that everyone's not focusing on their pet project of a world, but they're in the minority and easily ignorable.
Even something as simple as friendly fire is laughed off, which is admittedly helped by the hilarious ragdoll physics an overall campy tone of the game. There's not much of a penalty for a single death and as long as someone doesn't steal all your stuff getting killed by a teammate is at worst a mild interruption.

- All The Little Details
The game has a huge number of little details and mechanics that both immerse you into the game and make it very enjoyable to play. Staged reloads, for example, not only a a huge amount of immersion to gunplay, but also make things like heavy weapons a little more manageable. The way that team weapons work and encourage cooperation, the fun of finding out how different mechanics interact with each other.
I could write an entire page on the little details of this game and why they make the game better and I'd only cover half of it, so for brevity I'll leave it here.

== The Thing I Don't Hate ==

I was originally going to title this section "The Things I Hate", but thinking on it I don't think there's a single thing I hate about this game.

- Live Service
Coming from Hellivers 1, I didn't initially think of Hellivers 2 as a 'live service' game. I was expecting a slowly unfolding story, driven by the community as we fight on different planets against the emerging menaces of the Terminids, the Automatons, and whoever the Illuminate's successors end up being.
But it has a battlepass, and a real-money-shop, an the developers intend on adding more content to the game throughout its lifetime, so I suppose it fits the definition. Doesn't feel like it though. I've spent about 70 hours in the game and at time of writing I've unlocked 80% of the free battlepass, earned enough real-money-currency in the game to buy the premium battlepass, and still have enough left over to buy something from the real-money-shop.
You can earn premium currency from the battlepass, but I've earned more simply playing the game and finding hidden loot. It doesn't feel grindy at all, and doesn't fall into the trap of "well TECHNICALLY you can get premium currency by playing" and instead it's a tiny trickle that's so insignificant. Somehow, Arrowhead have made fining premium currency in a treasure chest fun, and consistently fun to the point you're actively saying "Oh cool, Medals / Super Credits" when you find it, and thinking of the new stuff you're going to get with it.

So yeah, I don't hate the Live Service thing. I don't like it, and you don't have to either, but I don't hate it.

- The Connectivity Elephant In The Room
Yep, spotty launch. Others have said it better than me, 400,000 players, more than twenty times the numbers of the first game, AA company, yadda yadda yadda.
Good news is the server login cap has gone up to 700k now, the connection is more stable, and there's an inactivity timeout. There are still problems, and the inactivity kick can be defeated with a stopwatch, but I no longer have qualms about recommending people buy the game.

WE DIVE TOGETHER ---- Warning: This game will completely take over your life. Not because it has nasty psychological hooks to try and get you addicted, but because it's just that good of a game. I'm an old Helldivers 1 vet, and I was definitely curious about Helldivers 2, but I was worried that they wouldn't be able to catch the same lightning twice. BOY WAS I WRONG. == The Things I Love == - Graphics & Sound From when you first get into your pod and dive through the atmosphere of a planet the game hits you with a wonderful wall of sound. The soundtrack is excellent, and you can hear the howl of the hellpod ripping through the atmosphere. The game is gorgeous, but also carries over the original aesthetics of Helldivers 1 perfectly. The guns look, sound, and feel like they're something that's actually suitable for fighting bugs and robots twice as big as you are. Even the pistol sounds meaty. The lanscapes you fight in are excellent, and range from something you might see on Earth to strange, alien places. - Core Gameplay Loop The core gameplay of Helldivers is extremely simple: You drop in, you blow stuff up, you leave. But that definitely doesn't mean it's not fun. Exploring the map for extra loot, secondary objectives, or hunting down enemy outposts keeps the game fresh, and the landscape can provide interesting barriers and offer new approaches to moving around and fighting enemies. The move to a 3rd person perspective as opposed to a top-down one has definitely changed they way you play. Without the locked camera perspective, you're free to explore around the map, and there's a verticality that isn't present in Helldivers 1. - The Community Is excellent and I highly recommend getting involved, even if only a little bit. Yes, you'l get the people who maybe take it a little bit too seriously and complain that everyone's not focusing on their pet project of a world, but they're in the minority and easily ignorable. Even something as simple as friendly fire is laughed off, which is admittedly helped by the hilarious ragdoll physics an overall campy tone of the game. There's not much of a penalty for a single death and as long as someone doesn't steal all your stuff getting killed by a teammate is at worst a mild interruption. - All The Little Details The game has a huge number of little details and mechanics that both immerse you into the game and make it very enjoyable to play. Staged reloads, for example, not only a a huge amount of immersion to gunplay, but also make things like heavy weapons a little more manageable. The way that team weapons work and encourage cooperation, the fun of finding out how different mechanics interact with each other. I could write an entire page on the little details of this game and why they make the game better and I'd only cover half of it, so for brevity I'll leave it here. == The Thing I Don't Hate == I was originally going to title this section "The Things I Hate", but thinking on it I don't think there's a single thing I hate about this game. - Live Service Coming from Hellivers 1, I didn't initially think of Hellivers 2 as a 'live service' game. I was expecting a slowly unfolding story, driven by the community as we fight on different planets against the emerging menaces of the Terminids, the Automatons, and whoever the Illuminate's successors end up being. But it has a battlepass, and a real-money-shop, an the developers intend on adding more content to the game throughout its lifetime, so I suppose it fits the definition. Doesn't feel like it though. I've spent about 70 hours in the game and at time of writing I've unlocked 80% of the free battlepass, earned enough real-money-currency in the game to buy the premium battlepass, and still have enough left over to buy something from the real-money-shop. You can earn premium currency from the battlepass, but I've earned more simply playing the game and finding hidden loot. It doesn't feel grindy at all, and doesn't fall into the trap of "well TECHNICALLY you can get premium currency by playing" and instead it's a tiny trickle that's so insignificant. Somehow, Arrowhead have made fining premium currency in a treasure chest fun, and consistently fun to the point you're actively saying "Oh cool, Medals / Super Credits" when you find it, and thinking of the new stuff you're going to get with it. So yeah, I don't hate the Live Service thing. I don't like it, and you don't have to either, but I don't hate it. - The Connectivity Elephant In The Room Yep, spotty launch. Others have said it better than me, 400,000 players, more than twenty times the numbers of the first game, AA company, yadda yadda yadda. Good news is the server login cap has gone up to 700k now, the connection is more stable, and there's an inactivity timeout. There are still problems, and the inactivity kick can be defeated with a stopwatch, but I no longer have qualms about recommending people buy the game.