Helldivers 2

A large-scale cooperative third-person extraction shooter Helldivers 2 continues the theme of humans fighting alien invaders on the frontlines across the galaxy. Malicious enemies, regrouping after their defeat in the finale of Helldivers, have once again attacked the human world. And once again, the "Hell Divers" — elite soldiers capable of fighting for freedom and democracy using the biggest, coolest, and most explosive weapons in the galaxy — were called upon. Despite the lack of a serious storyline and a unique protagonist, the game gained a huge fan base thanks to its dynamic and chaotic gameplay, fun friendly fire mechanics, high difficulty, and well-tuned cooperative systems.

The Helldivers series transports players to a hypothetical sci-fi future where the Human Federation has conquered the galaxy under the wise leadership of Super-Earth. Humanity thrives through participation in military campaigns aimed at destroying any life forms threatening their values and freedom. These include giant bugs, communist robots, and mysterious Illuminati.

In the sequel Helldivers 2, the focus is on satirizing authoritarian regimes, rampant propaganda, and the military-industrial complex. For example, Super-Earth, which appears to symbolize freedom and liberalism, is actually an ultra-authoritarian regime. Sarcasm and mockery are evident in the style of the game environment, posters and videos shown to players, character design, and in-battle lines. The genuine enthusiasm of soldiers who "live for 20 minutes," talking about freedom, liberalism, and shared values, resembles a meme from the 1997 film "Starship Troopers," but the creators of Helldivers 2 have expanded the parody element, sometimes to absurdity.

The events of the sequel continue the original, but understanding their background is not necessary. In Helldivers 2, there is simply no script, no multitude of characters, or staging. Developers direct the events, and each player and the entire community, actively participating, steer the story in different directions.

A galaxy map with sectors, subsectors, and planets is available, and the fight is over these. Players' task is to liberate a planet from various enemies. Developers ensure that the process of democratization is costly, through bonuses or penalties given to the team in the form of hordes of minions.

New enemy types have been added — and humanity has shifted to defense. Dropping weapons or powerful equipment onto the map has sped up the process of galaxy liberation. Suddenly, a new faction of aliens attacks — and the community suffers on all fronts. It is precisely the direct influence of developers on gameplay that sets Helldivers 2 apart from other service games.

Based on successes on the galactic war fronts, developers release news updates about another victory of democratization or its sudden failure, scripting the story on the fly.By doing so, maintaining engagement in what is happening.

Each planet in Helldivers 2 receives a unique terrain-ecosystem pair from a set of main terrains (sand, rocks, hills, tundra, ice, jungles, meadows) and environmental conditions (sandstorms, thick fog, rains, heat, etc., up to volcanic eruptions, meteor bombardments, and fiery tornadoes). This combination is permanently assigned to the planet.

And the locations where players land are generated randomly, based on its terrain and environmental conditions, considering the difficulty chosen by players. This creates a unique environment with its own features and challenges, making each landing exciting. The environment actively influences gameplay, and the day-night cycle enhances the variety of experiences.

Adapting to the environment is an important part of success. For example, the deep snow of the icy world slows movement, but the cold gives an advantage to energy weapons due to better cooling. An ion storm during democratization will disable communication with space support. Or a sandy world — it doesn’t hinder movement until the wind kicks up the sand, but high temperatures limit weapon choices to firearms. And all this is under the threat of a scorching fire tornado.

Players "move" between planets on spaceships — full-fledged hub locations. Like a command base, it allows customizing gear and ship, unlocking new equipment, weapons, armor, and ship capabilities, and buying cosmetics. The hub also handles social functions: players gather into groups, analyze reconnaissance data, and prepare for landing.

Each landing includes a set of main and optional missions, regardless of the chosen difficulty. Most main missions last about 40 minutes and involve protecting objects or territories; searching for resources; evacuating civilians; locating data sources and transmitting them to the base; simply raising a flag. A smaller portion of missions last 10-15 minutes and include destroying a certain number of enemies; eliminating enemy bases or nests.

Optional missions are side quests that especially eager and experienced players can complete without distracting from the main landing tasks. For example, activating a radar station, loading data into a rescue capsule, destroying a specific target, destroying a research station, activating artillery, destroying an anti-aircraft gun, and others. They can be marked on the map from the start or discovered independently.

As is standard for game services, players of Helldivers 2 receive personal daily missions. There are also community-wide orders from command — for example, conquer or hold a planet.

Core gameplay is simple:complete the landing objectives and evacuate, ending up in an open field, while enemies rushing from all sides will try to prevent this. The situation quickly descends into chaos, as players are forced to overcome obstacles, complete tasks, and constantly make strategic decisions, experiencing shortages of everything, all while keeping their finger on the trigger. Adding fuel to the fire is a touch of realism in the form of friendly fire and limb injury considerations.

You can crush enemies using an arsenal that includes revolvers, submachine guns, assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles, grenade launchers, rocket launchers, hand grenades, and mines. Each has its own characteristics (damage, rate of fire, recoil, and penetration ability), affecting effectiveness against specific enemies. Armor is divided into three types: light, medium, and heavy, each providing a unique playstyle and passive bonuses to character parameters.

Strategems — a unique feature of Helldivers 2. They are dropped from the ship at a designated point upon player request from the ground and are limited only by a cooldown timer. Strategems provide players with supplies, medkits, and other gear bonuses, or offer powerful combat options — air and orbital strikes. This adds variety to tactical gameplay.

Progression in Helldivers 2 is multi-faceted; completing missions grants samples (resources of three rarity levels), medals, requisitions, super-credits , and experience. The amount of rewards depends on the difficulty of the landing, tasks completed during it, found caches, and a bit of luck. The difficulty itself is a reward; the more successful the landings, the more challenging tasks the game will throw at you.

Each reward has its own upgrade area. Experience accumulates to levels that determine the player's rank, permissible landing difficulty, and allow the purchase of new strategems. Medals earned after each landing enable players to buy better weapons and gear in the shop. Samples unlock new modules for the ship. Super-credits — similar to real money, which can also be found in the game — unlock cosmetic items.