LONDON: Fuse together “Starship Troopers” with elements of “Terminator” and “Aliens,” add a healthy dose of humor and combine with a core strong team engine of third-person gunplay and you have the new “Helldivers 2.”
Developed by Arrowhead Game Studios and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, and available on PC and PS5, the game has you take on the real-time battle between Super Earth, a quasi-fascist entity played with tongue in cheek, and its insect and robot enemies across the galaxy.
Dropping down from heavily armed spaceships, you and a squad of up to four helldivers take on a variety of missions against various foe of different difficulties. All generally involve intense firefights and adrenaline-soaked excitement.
The core logic is your soldier can equip with one primary weapon and one smaller secondary one; but the unique selling point of the game is the role of “stratagems.”
These are reinforcements from your orbiting ship above and can range from advanced weapons to airstrikes to supply backpacks. Your access to better stratagems improves as does your level, which you acquire through successful missions and side missions on the planets you visit.
“It’s time to take out the alien trash,” shouts your instructor after a cursory training course to earn your cape before deploying into the fight. The bugs (Terminds) and robots (Automatons) are found on a range of planets with missions ranging from simple search and destroy, to rescuing civilians or setting up mining operations. The terrain can slow you down and be dangerous with volcanoes spewing deadly rocks down on your squad.
The game is simply lots of fun. Whilst you technically can take on missions by yourself, the real fun is to be had in cooperative mode against the computer-controlled enemy. Teamwork is essential for success with more powerful guns taking time to be reloaded that can be deadly without cover from a friend. Yet, friendly fire is also a challenge, particularly when calling down huge bombs on the nests of your enemy.
The game has an addictive reward mechanic that sees you level up and acquire medals, credits and resources to personalize your weapons, ship and appearance. The real-time nature of it allows the developers to announce major offensives in a part of the galaxy or to update the story as if it were a real conflict.
Despite simple controls there is a depth to weapon and ammunition choice as well as the type of stratagems you take with you that affect your approach to each mission.
Cut scenes are somewhat long and repetitive after a while and the procedurally generated worlds do not always make sense. Yet these are minor quibbles with a game that has already proven so successful that servers have buckled due to the weight of interest.
