Double Jump Gaming News

Helldivers 2: A Cinematic Grunt Fantasy

Article by: Roy Buri

Helldivers 2 has been out for well over 2 years now, but given the live service format combined with the emergent, player-driven nature of the game’s story, I would argue that now has never been a better time to discuss it.

I first played the game back sometime around the same time as the release. After a quick run through basic training where I received an inspiring personal message from General Brasch who described me as “fearless, invulnerable, and 7 feet tall” I spawned on the bridge of my personal star destroyer. I had no idea what was going on and simply hit quickplay.

This dropped me on a dark, disorienting world called “Malevelon Creek” (a name any veteran helldiver will immediately recognize with dread) with three other players and was told to protect some civilians as they ran to an evacuation shuttle. I was immediately handed a malfunctioning railgun by one of my teammates, before all three promptly left the server, and I was left to face an unyielding horde of skull headed robots with glowing red eyes charging out of the darkness.

The mission after that went about as well as you can predict, but one thing I could recognize almost immediately, was how cinematic it all was. Running around in the dark, the dense jungle sporadically lit up by the harsh red glow of laser blasts, frantically shooting at the glowing red eyes moving through the underbrush, only to turn around and see a hulking machine with a buzzsaw for one hand and a flamethrower for another charging at me. It’s unsurprising that Malevelon Creek would earn the nickname “space vietnam” from the community.

Helldivers 2 is, on paper, a simple format. A classic extraction shooter where teams of 1-4 players hop in a drop pod, choose their loadout, and land on a planet, where they run around and complete missions. The most unique mechanic is the stratigems, a tool where players use a button prompt minigame to call in help from their star destroyer. This can come in many forms, from a sniper rifle or a jetpack sent down in their own drop pods, to an orbital laser cannon or an airstrike that drops a 500 kg bomb.

The missions themselves are pretty repetitive, but the different enemy factions, procedurally generated terrain, and random bonus objectives scattered around the map serve to shake things up pretty well.

What really sets Helldivers 2 apart, however, is the community driven story. The game map is made up of over 200 planets, each with their own environments and hazards. Every week the community is given a major order, one it can succeed or fail, and usually consists of ordering the helldivers to take a planet, kill a certain number of a certain type of enemy, or something along those lines. As players do missions on a planet that is occupied or under attack, they contribute to an overall score that determines if the invasion of the planet succeeds or fails. As a result the community literally has control over the progress of the war effort.

The constantly changing and community generated story means that there's always something new and interesting going on. I remember I randomly decided to hop on one day, after not playing for a while, only to find out that earth itself was currently under invasion, and the community was engaged in a frantic fight to protect its last two remaining cities from being completely taken over by the Illuminate, one of the enemy factions. For those who are wondering, the community did manage to hold on, no small part due to a legendary last stand by the Chinese playerbase that managed to hold Liberty On Sea for the duration of the entire event.

While the heroic last stands, cinematic moments and inspirational propaganda the studio uses as marketing can make you feel like the greatest heroes the galaxy has ever seen, the game is just as likely to make you feel like the 19 year old goober just out of basic training you really are, which, to be clear, can be just as fun.

For every heroic stand I have made, holding the objective against impossible odds, I can recount several times where I was shot by my own friend's drone, dropped my grenade and had my dismembered torso subsequently launched 20 feet in the air.

Even the vehicles seem designed with these humorous moments in mind, as the in game jeep is a manual, driving is especially difficult, and given that seatbelts were apparently considered prohibitively expensive, you’d better make sure that one friend doesn't get behind the wheel, or you'll find yourself crashing into a ditch at 45 mph, sending your entire team flying out of the vehicle.

All in all, Helldivers 2 is a charming game that can at times be both hilarious, and inspiring, generating some of the highest hype moments, and the dumbest fails I’ve seen in any game, if your looking for a game to generate memorable moments with your friends while still feeling like your contributing to something greater than yourself, I’d certainly take a look at Helldivers 2.

Final Score: 8/10