GameCentral takes an early look at Sony’s new co-op shooter, where your fellow teammates are often more dangerous than the alien enemies.
The original Helldivers came out on PlayStation 3 and PS Vita almost nine years ago now and in all that time we don’t think we’ve ever heard a single person mention it. That’s not to take anything away from the game, which was very good at the time, but we’d completely forgotten it existed and we’re sure many were wondering what exactly this was a sequel to, when it was first announced last year.
We can only assume Helldivers fans like to keep themselves to themselves, although they’ve seemed quite chatty in the matchmaking we’ve experienced over the last few hours of playtesting. We’ve had a rash of online-only games in the last few days – with this, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, and Foamstars – and none of them have provided copies early enough to have a scored review at launch.
That’s not that unusual, since servers often only come online a few days before, although publishers can provide alternatives if they want – but in these three cases they haven’t. For the other two games we suspect they were worried what people would say but Helldivers 2 has little to be embarrassed about, other than technical problems on the PC. In our experience, though, the PlayStation 5 is relatively problem free.
The original Helldivers was a top-down shooter not dissimilar to Housemarque’s Alienation, but then there were a lot of similar games around at the time, including Alienation’s predecessor Dead Nation. Helldivers’ distinguishing feature was that it was a four-player co-op game, heavily inspired – to the point where we’re surprised they didn’t get sued – by Paul Verhoven’s Starship Troopers.
That alone was novel, but it also had a neat line in deployable strategems, that allowed you to do everything from call in a new weapon, turret, or other gadget, from an overhead spaceship, to having it perform an orbital strike. The other unusual feature is that friendly fire is always on and you’re just as likely to die thanks to your own teammates as you are giant bugs and 80s looking robots.
Helldivers 2 is almost exactly the same game but in third person.
We don’t mean that as a negative but apart from an improvement in graphics it almost feels like it could be literally the same game but with a change of camera perspective. That change does make a big difference though and as a third person shooter the gunplay is very good. (There is a first person view but we don’t advise using it for anything other than distance aiming, as peripheral vision is very important in this game.) The controls are fluid and precise and all the sound effects, including the guns, are suitably chunky.
However, the core appeal is the same as the original, in that while this is technically a PvE game the AI of the enemies is very predictable but whatever nonsense your teammates get up to is not. The procedurally-generated missions are all relatively simple, and usually involve things like clearing out a particular area, blowing up a building or activating a device at a specified location. This all happens in an open world area, which rewards explorations with lots of hidden weapons and enemy locations.
This is a live service game, where acquiring loot and experience is all-important, and so that means the rush to be the first to get to a terminal, blow up a bug nest, or simply kill the most number of enemies is strong. That drastically increases the likelihood of wandering into someone else’s line of fire or not realising they were about to throw a grenade or use a special weapon.
How amusing you find this will depend on your temperament but there’s a reason one of the game’s default audio messages is ‘Sorry!’ We’re sure the friendly fire feature will be abused by some more sociopathic players but on launch day most of the incidents did seem to be genuine accidents and if you don’t like the idea, you can just play with friends, so you know exactly who to blame (you can also play on your own but it’s a joyless and overly difficult experience).
Helldivers 2’s mechanics aren’t doing anything new but with just enough unique features we’ve had a lot of fun with it in the last half a day. It’s difficult to say how long that will last though and we’re already not all that enamoured with the watered down Warhammer 40,000 aesthetic the art design has gone for, with lots of very similar looking armour offered as reward for your hard work.
The enemy bug designs are equally weak, and not a patch on Starship Troopers, despite their similarity. In fact, all the steals from Starship Troopers fall flat, with some embarrassingly poor attempts at satire that are absolutely shameless in how closely they copy the movie. There’s also not enough variety in the bugs actions and AI so far, with all of them just tending to run straight at you, so in that the sense, at least, the robots are more interesting.
On the positive side, there’s a steady supply of new weapons and strategems, with the latter beginning to add an almost real-time strategy element to proceedings, with all the turrets and cooldown meters, and the ability to call them down anywhere you can point to. Whether that’s going to be pushed further in the endgame we don’t know but there’s definitely an incentive to see what you can kit yourself out with next.
What’s also interesting is that the game features a perpetual in-game strategy level map, where all the missions you, and the thousands of other players, carry out add up to an overall war effort that slowly allows you to take over each of the various planets from the bugs and robots (there was a third race in the first game, which we assume is also in this, but we haven’t got to them yet).
Although it’s undoubtedly fun, the biggest question for Helldivers 2 is its longevity and variety. We haven’t played enough to judge that yet but then longevity is always difficult to discuss with a live service game, whose future plans are always in a state of flux. However, especially with its sensible price tag, this is definitely the best of the month’s online-only shooters, even if much of the appeal comes from shooting the wrong targets.
Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed) and PC
Price: £34.99
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Developer: Arrowhead
Release Date: 8th February 2024
Age Rating: 18
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