Helldivers 2 Review – Not Enough Patriotism

Helldivers 2 has been released, and it became an overnight success at just the right time. Players everywhere are meming the game’s wacky aspects while thousands of videos of funny moments have appeared left and right. It’s one of those games that has a lot of appeal from the premise alone, and it is a decent experience to have.

All of this makes it hard for me to find the words to even begin describing the gripes I have with the game. Helldivers 2 has been an exercise in frustration for me more than anything else. I’m thoroughly convinced that a lot of people are going to brush aside the game’s higher difficulties and continue getting crushed by their own stratagems, but I have to review the whole thing.

So, for transparency’s sake, I’ll mention that I have played up until Difficulty 8 (Impossible). My review is going to tackle the more intricate and technical aspects of Helldivers 2 rather than the early stages and honeymoon phase everyone else is going through. I believe that I gave the game more than enough of a chance, and my impressions of it are going to be as fair as they can be.

Helldivers 2 is a third-person shooter. Most of the action happens from an over-the-shoulder camera perspective. The game has you fight off several waves of enemies at a time while you dictate the resources you have available for you through Stratagems. The way the game is intended to work is by having players work together to beat impossible odds through strategic use of stratagems and hi-tech weaponry.

While this is a great concept, the reality is that Helldivers 2 has a lot of issues accomplishing this. From the memes you see on Twitter to the highest ranks of difficulty, you see a lot of problems in terms of lack of cooperation and strategy. That’s honestly what’s so fun about the Helldivers concept; seeing things go wrong due to friendly fire is always hilarious.

I am, however, more annoyed at the fact that you are faced with more than impossible odds on the game’s harder difficulties. This game’s idea of “difficulty” isn’t to deliver challenging content but rather to have the enemy density go through the roof and then have the strongest enemies ever be the only enemy type you’re forced to face off against.

Sure, it’s fun to see players killing themselves in the lower-difficulty settings. However, when getting to the higher ranks, the game becomes less of a fun Stormtrooper Simulator and more of an exercise in frustration that only exists to break friendships. A lot of players tended to quit on me because they just hated seeing the mission go to hell (hehe) instead of at least trying to get back into the fray and facing the enemies head-on.

I get it. The game’s supposed to be hard from the outset. But I find myself frustrated at the fact that it’s not the kind of difficulty that asks for the player’s skill. Rather, it just feels like a game in which you have to pray that you get the best outcome. The worst part is that this happens with both enemy races you fight against: Terminids and Automatons.

Honestly, when picking between the two, you have to decide whether you want to be swarmed with enemies that deal venom damage, which slows you down, or be peppered by bullets and missiles coming from every which way, the latter of which gets harder to dodge because the game has ragdolls that trigger on explosions and other circumstances. Meaning that you could very well be flung around and killed easily.

Why do I torture myself with the higher difficulties, you might ask? Because the higher-end part of the progression in the game is basically locked behind resources that you can only get on those difficulties. So, if I want to get anywhere in the game when it comes to its Warbonds and minor progression, I have to engage with the game’s more difficult sections by default. A damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.

Maybe I wouldn’t be complaining so much if this game actually functioned properly to begin with. This game is currently broken and not in a good way, at least on PC. The game has given me naught but multiple crashes, many of which happened while I was playing with randos. The game’s horrible stability is only rivaled by how it can’t even stay online long enough.

I’ve seen multiple players report that they can’t even get into the game itself, either because the servers are always at capacity (which is still an issue as of today) or because of another factor like login errors. The game just feels like it allows you in whenever it feels like it. Couple this with the crashes, and you can be in for a bad time trying to get in and stay in the game.

What’s worse is that Helldivers 2 is also technically broken in other areas. Right now, the developers issued a patch that fixes crashes and supposedly helps with matchmaking. Somehow, the patch also introduced a new bug that prevents armor values from working correctly. This basically makes one of the strategic parts of any mission pointless.

This even extends to how the game does enemy pools and spawn rates. Helldivers 2’s spawns are proven to be completely screwed up across many difficulties. You can have multiple drop ships throwing down hordes of enemies at you in the Trivial and Easy difficulty settings or have Stalkers pop up even when you deal with their nests.

I understand that the developers are currently hard at work fixing a lot of these issues. But it’s almost impressive how they are so tone-deaf with some of their balance choices. Like for example, prioritizing “fixing” the difficulty spikes on Tiers 7-9 missions while also introducing the aforementioned armor bug and still having the crashing issues and not addressing the spawn rates.

Forget the ragdolling, the unfair odds, and the “haha funny” memes. When the game doesn’t even function half of the time, especially for a live service game, then what is the point of playing it? It’s the exact same issue that plagued Payday 3 at launch, but in this case, it can be even worse when you consider that at least Payday 3’s actual game functioned just fine and didn’t have spawn rate issues or gear that didn’t function correctly.

I honestly feel like this game should’ve spent a little more time in development, as many of these issues shouldn’t be really a thing. I’ve seen stuff like upside-down tanks and bugs that run in circles. While I’m not declaring myself a master of game design, I believe a lot of these problems could’ve been ironed out before launch.

So, where does this leave us with Helldivers 2? To be quite honest, I don’t know. I’ve had incredibly high highs with the game, and I also had my fair share of memorable moments with the folks who usually help me review this kind of game. What’s more, there’s no other game in the market that offers the experience that Helldivers 2 does.

However, when it comes to its lows, they feel rather abysmal. The game’s presentation and progression system becomes extraneous when the gameplay is affected in almost every regard. I bet a lot of players don’t even know what is an actual bug and what is part of the game’s design. Honestly, I feel like this is a game that’s tough to recommend, at least for players looking for a challenge.

But, if you’re looking to waste your time and spend it watching your friends die due to some random circumstances, then this game is for you. The game is definitely not going to be fun when engaging in the harder difficulties but the jokes that you can make from how broken this game is are just too hard to ignore as well.

So, regardless of the rating I assign to the game, I suggest you be careful when threading into the unknown. Perhaps the helldiving experience isn’t for all of us, and you might get caught having a bad time. All the same, there’s still time for Arrowhead to fix the issues and deliver the Helldivers 2 experience fans would love to get.

Reviewed on PC (code provided by the publisher).

Helldivers 2

Helldivers 2 is broken at launch. That much is almost unquestionable. The game has many high highs and also abysmally low lows. While I can recommend it for players who are seeking a good time due to the physics and the wacky situations a group of players can find themselves in at lower difficulties, it also is a tough recommendation for players seeking thrills with challenging yet fair content. That may change in the future if the developers can fix all the bugs and connection problems.