Helldivers 2 Game Review – Not for the Faint-Hearted

Despite being a sequel to a successful game, Helldivers 2 is entirely different. The original, a top-down shooter, delivered an action-packed challenge for squads battling alienoid bugs. Switching up the approach for the sequel, Helldivers 2 is a third-person shooter. However, it doesn’t stray from the pace of the original, delivering insane levels of action from the get-go.

As with many games, it offers a quick tutorial to get players up to speed with the controls. Unlike most other games, where you can easily pass the tutorial and feel confident jumping into your first mission, you’re left unease. I thought I had familiarised myself with everything I needed to know, so I headed out on my first mission.

I was highly unprepared for the intense level of action I signed up for. Given 40 minutes to complete, I quickly killed a few bugs, re-aligned the required power cells and thought I was pretty much done. Easy. Or so it seemed. Instead, I must journey a few yards further using the map to the extraction point. On the way, however, I was swarmed by a horde of more giant bugs and then some. I was in over my head. Frantically trying to reload and shoot them down, I also needed to find additional supplies to keep up the fight, which I was slowly starting to lose. In all the rush, I forgot how to call down new supplies or reinforcements and almost everything else. What I thought would be an easy 5-minute mission to ease into the game turned into a 30-minute frenzy, where I spent most of it running around to evade the increasing number of bugs while simultaneously trying to find my bearings.

Having been successfully extracted and left in a bit of a sweat, I decided it may be wise to redo the opening tutorial, this time spending more time learning each of the controls and mechanisms I’d need from the offset. There is no easing into this – you’re here to defend the galaxy from alien threats—time to put on my big-boy pants.

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On that basis, the game is quite simple. You’ve joined an elite group of forces of the Helldivers as part of an intergalactic struggle. Your mission is to stop the threat of the rising alien threat to the population on various planets.

Players receive weapons to collect on their missions and unlock in the armoury back at base. You can select between pistols, machine guns, flamethrowers, sentry guns, grenades and more as part of your arsenal. Adding weight to your position as a Helldiver is the ability to use stratagems, which allows you to call down turrets, airstrikes and more to destroy a larger group of aliens when required. The stratagems can also be used to call down reinforcements in the form of another Helldiver.

While the storyline and motives are simple, Helldivers 2 relies more on its intricate gameplay and online multiplayer capabilities, which support cross-play between PS5 and PC (Steam) players. You start with the single-player campaign, but this isn’t where most of the fun lies. Instead, it serves as a more extensive tutorial campaign before heading into the ‘real world.’

Multiplayer squads can be up to four players. However, most of what I’ve played through and seen online has been the pairing of two players seeking to complete a single mission. These missions are presented as various tasks, ranging from activating certain features on a base left stranded, killing off a swarm of bugs plaguing an area, or going underground to destroy a bug nest – each with increased difficulty levels.

More often than not, the two-player teams split their roles in attack. While both players start blasting through the hordes, the strategy eventually needs to kick in as you constantly need to reload or call down resupplies or airstrikes. What I always found humorous throughout was that one of us was bound to play the role of martyr, the one who’d lead the bugs around the designated airstrike zone, sacrificing themselves for the sake of the mission. The other player can then choose to spend some time calling down reinforcements, which could revive the other player or rush to complete the mission before bugs reappear. These decisions must be made in a split second, which can mean the difference between successfully completing a mission.

The gameplay further adds realism to how you interact with the various aspects of the game. For example, firearms react to armoured targets like in the real world. When you’re battling Termanids, you won’t be able to penetrate its armour simply using a pistol. However, the larger guns often have limited ammunition restocking, so using them sparingly is crucial for more minor bugs. And then, there’s the insane Bile Titan, which you won’t be able to take down without an airstrike and crafty strategy.

The environments and interactions are also very well-crafted. There’s plenty of gore as you spray the bugs with bullets, resulting in blood and dismemberment you don’t often see in many games. Added to this, the camera shakes and after-effects of explosions and bug damage, not to mention possible friendly fire, you’re constantly surrounded by chaos.

As already mentioned, the controls are straightforward and need some adjusting to coming from other FPS and third-person shooters. Things become much more enjoyable as changing weapons, calling airstrikes, and the like become second nature. However, until you’ve crossed that hurdle, you’ll be in for some nervy fights.

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Initially, there were plenty of bugs related to in-game issues, which you can’t blast through. These bugs often result in the game closing suddenly, leaving your partner stranded in-game without you to battle alone. There have been several updates, almost weekly, since the release in February, which have stabilised these issues.

Helldivers 2 is not for the faint-hearted. It’s a thrill-a-minute ride that doesn’t allow you to take even a breath once deployed. Despite the somewhat challenging hurdle of getting used to the controls and gameplay, the payoff in the end is excellent. Even if you’re a fan of the original top-down approach, the co-op mechanics of the original shine through with the sequel.