Super Democracy! You might call it a lie, you might call it filthy propaganda, you might suggest its striking similarity to fascism. If that’s the case, the firing line’s this way – let the bullets hit you on your way out.
For all my fellow loyal citizens, I congratulate you: together ,we have done much to defeat the threats that surround our very own Super Earth. We’ve gassed bugs (without any negative consequences such as giving them wings due to a thorough lack of understanding of what the hell we’re doing to their biology); we’ve reclaimed lost worlds from the automaton threat to the point where, at the time of writing, we are deployed on Major Orders to expel them from Super Earth’s furthest client planets; we’ve even saved a bunch of nerds from turning into bugfeed or being prodded by an electrical outlet. (I don’t know what automatons do to people, okay?)
The point is, I’ve played over thirty hours of Helldivers II during a period that is incredibly busy for me, and that’s saying something. Arrowhead Game Studios have done remarkable work creating a co-operative live-service game that does not feel predatory the way so many of the games in its genre do. The developer has tapped into a font of goodwill that shows just how starved an audience there is for a game in the live-service space that is head and shoulders above mediocre. I don’t actively engage with online fan communities–I don’t have the strength of conviction or presence of mind to do so, but even from the lines reserved for the passive observer, the way the Helldivers II fan community has congregated, the way many have willingly and in good faith played into the satirical spirit of the game’s play-driven meta-narrative, it has made such a strong impression on me.
The endless memes the community has produced, the common Starship Trooper-derived vocabulary used in discussing this game and the role-playing notes across tweets and reddit threads, all of these elements have helped create a better sense of community than most. That goes double for the antagonism and vitriol that arise around new live-service releases. The latest example, Suicide Squad, speaks ably to that end. That game’s first season released recently, and the disappointment and the outrage that it was met with by the most faithful fans of Rocksteady Studios’ latest – it speaks more loudly than I ever could. Just go to its subreddit, no more needs to be said. Sadly, Suicide Squad is far from the only one; from several underwhelming Destiny 2 expansions and seasons to the famed failures that were Bioware’s Anthem and Crystal Dynamics’s Marvel’s Discount Avengers, live-service games have become a bitter lesson in corporate greed and misappropriation of development talent.
How lucky we are that Helldivers 2 has bucked that trend. It released, playable and fun, and nowhere near as greedy as those others. Sure, it had server capacity troubles – but those were fixed quickly enough. They were communicated openly through the proper channels, and they were ultimately a result of Arrowhead becoming victims to their own success…for a very short while. What Arrowhead has shown they are excellent at is the sprinkling of various events in the shape of mechs, new types of objectives connected to Major Orders (kind of weeklies that have an actual, visible effect on the game’s meta-narrative). These have convinced this growing community that Arrowhead has things well in hand; more, that Arrowhead has a plan. I’m convinced.
I’m even excited.
But this is all big picture stuff. What’s Helldivers II like, to play? The answer, in a word: fun. Explosive, delirious, hilarious fun. When you play well, and everything is going your way, you have a lot of time to enjoy the feel of the guns, of which you’ll find a large variety. Once you sink enough hours, you’ll have a veritable arsenal on your hands. Your loadout allows you to only have one primary and one secondary weapon, so experimentation with those requires you to engage with the game continuously, takes place over many matches. The weapons you have access to do not end at just this initial loadout. Beyond what you can purchase with medals from Warbonds, you also have some of the coolest and most powerful weapons unlocked and called down from dreadnoughts through stratagems. These include the arc thrower, the railgun, an autocannon, an anti-material sniper rifle, and my current favourite, the flamethrower, which just makes everyone’s day so much worse. If you think setting bugs on fire is fun, just imagine how great it is when you do it to your teammates. The stratagems–the term is shorthand for orbital support–don’t end there. Lasers and bombs and cluster ammunitions, deadly devices of all kind, offensive and defensive packs; the variety of explosive horrors you can unleash on your enemies but which will much more likely end up falling atop your fellow squad-members…there’s no end to the horrors. But like all good soldiers of Super Earth, though the horrors persist–so do I.
Playing with friends and killing each other in endless, entertaining fashion never gets old. A stray burst of laser fire from a Guard Dog drone cut me to tiny pieces twice, at which point I incidentally landed on the Guard Dog’s owner’s head with a reinforcement pod, took the guard dog pack from his corpse, and was promptly squished in turn. Ah, the glory of Super Democracy…
There’s a good variety of missions to select from, challenging in different ways. Various maps–offensive and defensive. The offensive ones are usually large–but not always–while the defensive ones are tightly packed and see throngs of foes doing their best to make your life miserable while you’re leading scientists or civilians from bunkers to extraction points. The biggest fun is in the open-world-ish maps, with their many resources to collect and various secondary and tertiary objectives. Always, always you will be shooting at bugs or automatons, of various and varying sizes, but of single determination to harm the one thing no Helldiver can live without: Super Democracy. Well, that and the soft fleshy bits which do things like pump blood or let you control your fingers to pull the trigger with.
Collecting different types of samples lets you gather enough to unlock upgrades to your stratagems, while requisition slips unlock the stratagems themselves; and warbonds, the premium ones, get unlocked by super credits. These, you can also unlock through play – though it would take you a while. Small sums of super credits are available to unlock with medals from warbonds – which helps you along the way. Is it really a grind if you enjoy the process enough? I can see arguments going both ways. Either way, the truth is, super credits don’t cost all that much. If you liken them to seasons, the premium warbonds cost $10 or your regional equivalent. Sure seems better than the Diablo 4 seasons Blizzard has released so far, and getting those items on the warbonds involves a lot less grind. The value, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. A live-service game has this idea set at its foundation that new content will, at some point, come with a price tag. It’s neat that Arrowhead gives you an opportunity to collect its premium resource through enough play–not all live-service games do so, and even those that do are rarely quite so generous.
Me, for now I’m still making my way through the latter half of the free Warbond. Once I’ve done that, I’ll see how I’m feeling about those energy weapons and futuristic helmets in March’s Warbond; a few days from the date of writing, an April Warbond is also releasing, and it looks to have a sick crossbow weapon, as well as a variety of other nasty toys. One of Arrowhead’s decisions that I appreciate the most is, they’ve said they aren’t sundowning content. When a warbond is released, it’s always going to be out there–bucking the trend of live-service games playing with content FOMO to try and make you stick around. And you can’t ignore the fact that Destiny 2 sundowned some of its best content years ago – to the chagrin of both its community and everyone else.
The point is, good on Arrowhead Game Studios.
This is a good game. A fun game, one that doesn’t cost an obscene amount of money during a cost-of-living crisis. Its community is vibrant and its players are more likely to offer a hug or a shake than a slur. I never cared for emojis in games this much before. Are good things ahead for Helldivers 2, a future bright with promise? I cannot say, but I sure hope so!
The Grimoire Reliquary 
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