I think February 2024 is going to go down in history as the Battle of the Live-Service Games, a month in gaming history where some of the biggest names in the industry squared up and unleashed several long-in-development projects within weeks of each other. Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is admittedly not doing so well right out of the gate, Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones finally sailed into view, and Square Enix took a soapy shot at Nintendo’s Splatoon with its own colorful multiplayer-shooter Foamstars.

Big names, big games, and all of them have been thoroughly whipped by a title that has sneaked in to become one of the biggest hits of the month. Helldivers 2 is a bug-riddled–in the best way–masterpiece of tight teamwork, engaging gameplay, and thoughtful reward structures. It hits the ground running harder than an orbital bombardment strike, and it has a deliciously sharp sense of humor to savour.  A sequel to the 2015 top-down shooter game developed by Arrowhead Game Studios, Helldivers 2 is a rarity, a modern multiplayer game that comes out swinging and doesn’t feel like a half-baked platform for future content.

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Stylistically, there’s no getting away from the Starship Troopers tone of Helldivers 2, but the game has more in common with Warhammer 40K than Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 adaptation of Robert Heinlein’s book. The propaganda and constant reinforcement of just how important you are as the latest cog in the liberty engine help set a delightfully superliminal mood to the whole experience, but it is the zeal to take back planets from undemocratic Terminid bugs, and killer robots running on dastardly socialism-powered software, where the game finds its voice.

This is Warhammer meets GI Joe, a slick piece of in-universe propaganda where your only goal in life is to bring freedom to other planets or die trying. To do just that, you’ll jump from planet to planet, invade liberated worlds from the natives and raise the super-flag for Super-Earth, signaling the super-dawn of a super-era on that world. Each one of these locations features a variety of missions, most of which involve touching down and democratizing everything around you with freedom bullets while you pursue a wide variety of objectives.

Fortunately, you’re more than up to the task as you’re equipped with the latest in liberation-armaments, each tool well-suited to the job of introducing high-velocity full-metal jacket rounds into the communist carapaces of indigenous species. Pistols, shotguns, and rocket launchers all function brilliantly in this third-person shooter, but the marquee feature of Helldivers 2 are Stratagems, a feature inherited from the first game.

Thanks to the battleship hovering above in you in orbit, you can quickly punch in a request for fresh supplies, advanced weaponry, or a handy bombardment of the surface when you need an extra kick of explosive democracy. Even the traditional revival of teammates in other games has been replaced by a Reinforcement Stratagem with limited uses per mission. The genius of these Stratagems though is that they are done by frantically inputting pre-set directional arrow prompts like explosive Konami codes, which makes for some stressed out finger gymnastics in the heat of battle! There are cooldowns attached to this system, as you can’t just litter the battlefield with mobile turrets and call it a day before you face a Terminid army, but when playing in a team, a smart loadout and tactical deployment make the world of difference.

Speaking of teamwork, Helldivers 2 does a terrific job of making you feel like a team player. A squad of up to four Helldivers can explore a planet before the time limit is up, and it’s here where small design decisions yield some of the best moments of the game. For example, friendly fire is on and you cannot disable it. That results in expeditions where you’re more mindful of your surroundings–lest you accidentally inject some lead into a trooper’s skull–setting a tone for coordinated assaults and resource management. I’ve had a few matches where I’ve hilariously fallen victim to a gung-ho spread of machine-gun fire and I was accidentally flattened by an incoming supply drop, but overall, it has been astounding to play random matches without having to worry about griefers.

Kervyn has been playing on PC and is happy to also report that the cross-platform matchmaking experience has been silky smooth. You can easily jump in with a group of strangers (sorry, Mom!) or team up with mates on either PC or PS5 thanks to in-game generated friend codes.

While the ping system could use some more work, communication without a microphone has been more than sufficient, as my squads have touched down on alien worlds and have utilised our spare time to explore these varied locales for extra resources. When the going gets tough, some of the more exhilarating moments have seen me team up with my crew to deliver explosive retribution to enemies, as in one memorable instance I kept my fellow Helldiver’s rocket launcher prepped and loaded for a delivery of thermonuclear revenge. Teamwork! It makes the libertarian dream work!

Sure, you can play the game on your own, but that’s a quick way to suffer when the odds are against you. Helldivers 2 is by design best played with other people, as in a race against time, four expendable heads are better than one on the more challenging difficulty levels. These ideas are compounded by your Helldiver having a squishy body that can be hampered by injuries–you can’t sprint on a shredded leg no matter what Michael Bay might say–realistic ammo conservation, and weapon accuracy which can be affected by your stance. Those extra touches of realism give the game a small but sharp edge, adding to its well-balanced sense of challenge.

As a live-service title, there’s a natural resistance from players who feel besieged by games aiming to devour as much of their time as possible in a market where only a handful of releases can realistically succeed in this department. Fortunately, Helldivers 2 is quite generous with its rewards, as your average loadout can be upgraded with new purchases and upgrades. You’ll start off each round with a standard pistol and assault rifle, but spend a little bit of time ridding worlds of liberty-hating bugs and you’ll soon add machine guns, laser cannons, and sniper rifles loaded with small nuclear rounds to your arsenal.

Your ship benefits from upgrades as well, as you’re able to spend resources on new Stratagems for your loadout. Orbital bombardments are great, but I’m a big fan of calling in strafing runs, chemical warfare, and enhancing my weapon drops with more powerful variants of my favorite death-dealers. All of which will leave you with a pyromaniac’s grin plastered on your face as Helldivers 2’s stunning visuals, using moody lighting and particle effects, combines with pitch-perfect wartime sound design, to give you one of the most cinematic gaming experiences around today.

As you’d expect, there’s a lot for you to unlock through the battle pass and in the microtransactions store. The battle pass is broken up into the usual free and premium tiers, but earning war bonds to spend on weapons, armor, cosmetics, and boosters isn’t too difficult. You can unlock the gear that you want instead of having to needlessly grind through levels on the battle pass, although you will need to spend a required number of war bonds on a page before you’re allowed to purchase fresh goodies off the next one.

The free tier of the battle pass offers an impressive amount of value with powerful weapons, cool capes, and the in-game currency of Super Credits, while the paid tier is more focused on cooler-looking unlocks amidst some other high-power unlocks. Either way, you won’t feel left out if you choose to only focus on the freebie battle pass while your comrades flaunt their shiny new armor around you. On higher levels, progression also throws more options your way, to the point where it can be possibly overwhelming to choose what to spend your various currencies on. The best kind of problem, one might say.

It all comes down to what you want from the experience, as personally I shoved my space-bucks into self-defense turrets and minefields so that I could set up a personal sniping nest with my beloved anti-everything sniper rifle. Builds like this tie in well with the sheer variety on offer in Helldivers 2, as the enemies of Super-Earth are many and plentiful. It’s a thrilling power fantasy when you mow down small mobs of homicidal cockroaches, but as you explore more dangerous planets, you’ll face greater and more titanic threats. These may leave you with Vietnam War flashbacks when you return to your spaceship.

At the moment, Helldivers 2 is also a victim of its own success. The game has regularly seen literal hundreds of thousands of players simultaneously flock to its servers during peak moments of traffic, and while Arrowhead has opened up more server capacity to meet demand, don’t be too surprised if you run into matchmaking issues or a few other glitches along the way. These should be solved in time, and with Arrowhead on a hiring spree to make the game the best it can be, I’m confident that Helldivers 2 has a bright future ahead of it once these lingering issues are ironed out.

You can play Helldivers 2 right now on PS5 and PC.


Helldivers 2 review

Helldivers 2 is a fantastic surprise, consistently fun and funny the moment you drop in to play. It’s a rarity in the modern gold rush age of live-service games, a blast of action-packed intent that knows exactly what it wants to be right out of the gate. And it offers a rewarding sense of progress with each campaign. It’s Freedom-o-clock and I feel the need… the need for liberty!

 9
Helldivers 2 was reviewed on PS5 and PC