For the second time this year, a game has come out of nowhere to take the gaming world by storm. Helldivers 2 didn’t have a giant marketing push and is only selling for $40. It’s pretty obvious that it wasn’t expected to be a massive success. Like many, Helldivers 2 was not on my radar, but the hype got me in. After five hours with the game, I still have a lot to learn, but I do feel like I have a pretty good grasp on what elements I like, and a few that I don’t like. I’ll save a full review for when I’ve had more time with it. Which as things stand, might not be possible for a bit.
Server is Full
I’ve owned Helldivers 2 for about 5 days now. Generally, if I’ve only played a new game for five hours by this point, it probably isn’t a game I’m that into. The reality is, I am a dad, and I have to be selective about when I play a game that I can not pause. In those precious few times where I have had the ability to play, I have increasingly come across “server is full” messages each time I try and log in. As I said before, it is pretty obvious that they were not ready for the audience they were about to get. As the game currently stands, as good as it is, I think almost anyone interested in buying it should wait and get it once these issues get cleared up. There is no guarantee you can play whenever you want, and if you are a parent of a small child like me, it’s very disappointing when you can’t play in one of those limited windows.
Other than the servers, I’ve also had occasional issues with matchmaking. This is a big deal because Helldivers 2 is just not the same gane when you play it alone. A lot of the fun in the game is in coordination with teammates. Playing alone can be a bit of a slog, so when there are matchmaking issues, it is almost as devastating as when there are server issues.
War is Chaos (And Kind of Funny?)
I’ve played more first and third person shooters than I can count over the past few decades. Even in the games where you play as a “normal” grunt, you inevitably start to feel like a supersoldier as you mow down countless enemies with even the most basic of equipment.
Helldivers 2 is one of the first games I’ve played that truly makes you feel like a grunt in a brutal war. Once you unlock the medium difficulty (the game smartly makes you beat missions on a few easier difficulties first to ease you in), it is absolutely intense and chaotic from start to finish. Bugs (or robots) come at you from all angles. And if you let them get close, they will start to overwhelm you. You do not feel special in the slightest as you play. You are always on the precipice of death, and that is one of the best elements of it.
When you die, and you will, you don’t “respawn”, someone on your team has to call in reinforcements, and a brand new soldier gets airdropped in. This is a smart system that adds to the credibility of feeling like a grunt in a war. The brilliant sound design with gunfire and explosions in particular also greatly helps the immersion.
You can also get support from command with strategems. These let you call in better weapons, more ammo, turrets, airstrikes, and a few other things. These also do an incredible job of adding to the intensity of the experience. You don’t simply select an airstrike on a quickwheel and call it in. You have to enter a whole combination on the d-pad. There is nothing more heart-pounding and hilarious than running away from four giant alien bugs while desperately trying to press a five button combination to call in an airstrike. Whenever I die a violent death because I screwed up a combination, it always makes me laugh.
Friendly fire also adds to both the intensity and hilarity. Arrowhead wisely put this in, which forces you to be very careful and smart with your airstrikes and even the angles you choose to attack the enemy from with your gun. Friendly fire is one of the main reasons why it feels very important to talk to your team, and it can weirdly be a bonding experience if you are with a good crew. Nothing brings people together like telling them you are sorry for killing them and explaining that you are stupid and bad at the game.
Fun Exploration
When I think of a co-op mission based shooter, I generally think it is going to be a very tight and linear experience. Especially when each mission is timed. Helldivers 2 goes in a different direction. Its missions take place it procedurally generated worlds that are open enough to be able to explore a bit. There are main missions in each world, and then optional objectives and upgrade materials you can find.
At first, this seemed like a weird decision, but it quickly grew on me. The smart call seems to be to complete the main mission first, which there is usually more than enough time for. Then, it becomes a race against the clock to clear as much as the map as you can before heading for the extraction point. I ended up really liking this, as it kind of lets you control your own difficulty. You have limited respawns in the game, so once those respawns get low, you can make the call to go ahead and extract early. If you are doing well, you can keep going as long as you still have time to get to your extraction point.
Extraction ends up being the highlight of the game for me so far as well. Once you call for your ship to get you out of the mission, you have to hold off enemies for two minutes, who, of course, start spawning. This can get chaotic, and shooting an increasingly large amount of robots or bugs as they slowly converge on you, only for your shuttle to show up so you can jump aboard and get away is an absolute blast. This is one of those things you see in the movies all the time that not a lot of video games replicate well, but Helldivers 2 pulls it off perfectly.
I do have some small nitpicks, but I’ve slowly started getting used to some of the things that I didn’t love at first, like the reload mechanic (more on that in the review down the road). In the end, Helldivers 2 is a unique and thrilling co-op experience that any shooter fan should give a try. But not yet. You really need a team to get the most out of it, and you also need to actually be able to play the game to get the most out of it. So, I would give it some time before purchasing. Hopefully, in a few weeks, Helldivers 2 will fix its server issues, and more troops can join this fun, stupid, and hilarious fight for democracy.
Big Nerd Gaming 
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