Helldivers 2 welcomes you and your friends to be the last line of defense in the ultra-intensive Galactic Warfare.
Helldivers 2 is here, and after almost a decade, we finally get our sequel. Plus, if you’re a fan of the 1997 iconic Star Troopers movie, you’ll definitely love this game, as elements from the movie are similar to the game, such as the weaponry, attires, and obviously the horrid and relentless creatures and droids that are in your way.
Take them on, rank up, upgrade, and grind your way to becoming an elite Helldiver, as you are the galaxy’s last line of defense. And yes, crossplay is included. Therefore, protect the galaxy with other players from different available platforms. Another great thing for PlayStation 5 and PC players is that it’s only £34.99/$39.99. That’s what you have to pay to enjoy this immensely action-packed goodness.
Before you start your Helldivers 2 experience, you’re required to undertake an enthusiastic and very informative training mode to help you get attached to the basic buttons, mechanics, and weapons. The training is in the form of military-type drills, and it shouldn’t take you more than 15 minutes to finish.
After completing the training, you’re ready to partake in the thrilling and exciting missions. And after completing the missions, you get that constant adrenaline rush and rewarding feelings when you feel you must take on another mission. You’ll unlock difficulties as you progress; the higher the difficulty, the more intense and ruthless the enemies become. This is why it’s imperative to strategize but, more importantly, work together as a team.
Now, to get into Helldivers 2’s galactic war, when you hover over a sector, it’ll display how much the Super Earth has been liberated. All operations will contribute to forcing the Super Earth’s enemies back. You must pick a sector and acknowledge which planets are available.
When you’re picking a planet, different planets will be available. All you need to do is pick a plant and look at the operations that are currently active on it. Also, look at the orders, the deadlines, the rewards you claim from completing all the missions, and more.
When it comes to operations, these are the collection of missions for you and your teammates to undertake within a certain time limit. Again, all missions must be completed with an operation to obtain bonus rewards. If you fail one mission, you’ll fail again the entire operation. After picking an operation, the last thing to do is enter a hellpod, and the mission begins.
It’s not so often when a franchise makes heavy gameplay changes. The predecessor was a top-down shooter, but Helldivers 2 is a third-person shooter and will entice third-person perspective fans to join the fun. But that doesn’t mean that features from the last game don’t enter the sequel. You’re still able to do things like select Strategems.
If you’re new to the Helldivers franchise, you probably don’t know what they are. Strategems are perks that benefit you the most, especially during the most intense battles. Strategems contain weaponry, such as heavy machine guns and air strikes.
A couple of examples are the MG-44 Machine Gun, a high-powered light machine gun that brings to you much more devastating shooting that eliminates enemies much quicker than the more standardized weapons, and it was created for stationary use. And the Orbital precision strikes, which unleashes air strikes on a large number of enemies on close. The stratagem requires you to signal a specific location where you want it to land.
This is incredibly useful and powerful for when you’re feeling like you’re about to get cornered. Keep in mind that this is one of the stratagems you get at the start of your experience. The biggest downside is that its effectiveness heavily depends on the enemies staying still. If they’re moving, it’s much more difficult for them to receive the strike.
Each stratagem provides its strengths, and to activate them, their respective codes need to be successfully inputted with the use of the directional button. This is followed by entering cooldowns after each use; depending on the stratagem, you would have to wait longer to reactivate and reuse them. Like the aforementioned Orbital strike, you must wait 100 seconds after each use. You can store a maximum of four every mission and unlock more as you rank up.
Sadly, you can’t go recklessly with your weapons, especially near your teammates, as friendly fire is active, and you must be careful not to cause any casualties to them because, eventually, this can come back to bite you on the backside, especially during more challenging boss battles.
It would be best to reduce the shooting frequency with your weapon while moving, as it impacts your aiming accuracy. Therefore, staying in one position at a time is ideal for the best shooting performance. There’s another way to improve your aim. Even though Helldivers 2 is in the third person, you can aim and shoot in the first-person view.
If you’re not on the battlefield, you can do other cool things in Helldivers 2, such as the acquisition center, where you can buy new gear, weapons, throwables, super credits to access premium content, and so on. Visit the armory for you to customize your weaponry, armory, and character, equip a booster to increase your chances of a successful liberation, and view your career stats.
There’s also a ship management department for you to customize the ship’s name and view its progression. It is also a place to unlock and equip new stratagems for your ship to deploy. Moreover, you can upgrade your ship to provide much more support on the battlefield. And, of course, upgrading the modules will improve your stratagem’s performance. Plus, many other things to do while you’re not on a mission.
Despite Helldivers 2’s great experience, there are a few more issues that one simply can’t ignore, no matter how hard you try. One is the occasional frame rate issues that feature flickering of the visuals and characters or enemies surpassing each other or surfaces. This isn’t a deal breaker, but it’s still bothersome at times, which is quite ironic because the likes of the character, object, and environmental designs are gorgeous.
And the other and more important problem is the number of bugs that occur. Whether it’s players surpassing each other like ghosts, troublesome matchmaking capacity issues, and so on, you’re virtually guaranteed to experience at least some type of bug or glitch during sessions or even in the lobbies.
Now, Helldivers 2 has received some patches, but there are still some bugs lurking around, and in some cases, the experience has gotten worse. Although the game is still delightful, unfortunately, these remaining issues affect the gameplay. And it’s a shame that a great game like this is plagued with these issues. Thankfully, more will be arriving soon to sort out more of them.
Helldivers 2 is a highly intense and immersive cooperative multiplayer with much more content than one can count. Of course, you can fight the creatures and droids going solo, but the ultimate experience you’ll receive is with peers. If you’re hoping for a story mode to get on, you won’t be getting much of that here. However, what you’re getting, including the enthralling missions and objectives, won’t matter much. And this game should give you hope for the future of online-based video games.
