Servers the bane of Live Service games
As I type this review on a cold February evening, I am unable to play Helldivers 2. Becoming a victim of its own success has seen the servers over at Arrowhead Studios hammered mercilessly basically since release. The team has tried to keep up with demand, but this launch has been tainted by bugs, crashes, lost XP progression and more and this is usually where I would get off the crazy train, but my friends Helldivers is a hell of a lot of fun when it works…and Ken isn’t killing the team.
Helldivers 2 is a 3rd person extraction shooter that is high action and even higher intensity during each run. The premise is one that anyone who has seen Starship Troopers should be familiar with, humanity on Super Earth is having their peace and democracy threatened by bugs and other galactic menaces. With an opening cutscene that could’ve been directed by Mr. Verhoeven as its dripping with all the satire and gory violence that only he could make compelling as a man watches his family murdered by bugs. Its all a recruitment ad for the Helldivers, the defenders of democracy and freedom for Super Earth.
MSRP: $39.99
Platforms: PC (reviewed), PlayStation
Price I’d Pay: $39.99
Once players finish up the brief tutorial where they will learn about the all important ‘stratagems’ they will be tasked with naming their own battlecruiser. Helldivers can be played solo but it can about as hard as Chinese arithmetic for an average American student and as such isn’t the preferred way to find success. 4 players can play in total and the game has a quickplay function in case you don’t have 3 friends. Sadly, that function hasn’t functioned since launch and as of this writing is still down but the developers are working to correct the problem. Once you’ve settled on a team players will use the main console to find an ever-changing theater of war with multiple fronts to fight on. So far, the Terminids (bugs) and the Automatons (cyBORG) are the two invaded factions at launch and while the bugs are difficult but squishable; the automatons are just awful. Picture a cyborg version of Vietnam and you are pretty much there, I have yet to complete a mission versus the machines.
Gameplay is a great deal of fun when the servers are actually working. Before each ‘dive’ players will choose their loadouts, which consist of a primary and secondary weapon as well as stratagems. These vary in form and function, there is the bombardment variety which sees some sort of ordnance fired down from the battleship unto the enemies on the surface. This is probably a good place to let you know that this game has friendly fire, something that our fearless leader decided to illustrate to us on multiple occasions. (Love ya homie lol) There are also support stratagems that can give one member a backpack with extra ammo or deploy a shield that can protect an area and allow the team to fire from underneath its safety. OH, this is HUGE, so ammo is EXTREMLY important in Helldivers 2. DO NOT RELOAD AFTER EVERY KILL. We gamers, especially those of us that play shooters are used to unlimited ammo so after dispatching a foe that cost any amount of bullets we tend to reload right away. Not only will you lose ammo that way in Helldivers but the game doesn’t automatically reload for you when the mag is empty; players will HAVE to press the reload themselves.
Trust me when I tell you that this leads to the franticness of the gameplay when players are surrounded by bugs and hear *click*. While I like this level of immersion for this type of game it also leads into some of my biggest issues. For starters it can be difficult to tell how many bullets are left in a clip, maybe this was by design but its still a game and I shouldn’t have to count each shot for real. Another issue is the game doesn’t always make it clear about options and things available to the Helldivers. Our team ended up finding out things by way for the quick hints that scroll the screen while the game is loading.
Things like if you hold the reload button a sub menu will come up for most weapons where players can choose between a burst or full auto and even turn on a flashlight on some weapons. I’m all for immersion in games but having to look at these tips or just discover something isn’t fun, just feels like a bad design. I already mentioned the fact that I can’t even play right now even after the team uncapped the server to 450k. Again, this is a blessing and a curse because the game is obviously resonating but its growing faster than the developers were ready for. What’s really odd here is that this is a Sony published title, you would think that they would have the means to not have a little issue like servers in the year of our Lord 2024. But what do I know, I’m just a black guy who writes about video games.
If this review reads odd, I apologize; I always try to be real with y’all so I want to be upfront about the state of things with Helldivers 2. Yep, it sucks we can’t play right now due to stressed servers, the good thing is that the game is obviously hot but the bad is that it could lose the player base if this isn’t fixed quickly. Y’all know me, I am an optimist, I have high hopes for Skull & Bones and I am sure that Sony will step in and get this resolved and we can all get back to fighting for freedom and democracy together. But in the meantime, if you don’t mind maybe not being able to play when you want, or having random crashes and missing rewards then dive into Helldivers 2. These are all growing pains and can be resolved, at the end of the day this game is blast, made more so when you are playing with friends which is evident if you watch any of our gameplay videos. If you all pick this up and happen to be teamed with ZeroTolerance, just watch ya back because he is all about completing the mission, teammates be damned. LOL.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
