Recent reviews by RubySnoot

Always knew about the original game, but never got a chance to play it! Having now spent a good amount of time in this sequel makes me wish I had during its prime!

Delightfully tongue in cheek setting that happily takes every liberty that it's given, Helldivers 2 really does embody the trope that most folks know of through Starship Troopers!

Play in third person over the shoulder of an endlessly expendable soldier, fighting back enemies of Super Earth in a way that manages to capture the feeling of being a genuine part of an ever evolving war! Planets are lost or gained based on community action, and playing either with friends or with randoms will always offer a little something new each time!

Mini season passes, or "warbonds", can be purchased through currency gained in game or with real money, though their contents are entirely earned through in-game objectives, which makes it feel like you're never directly buying power.

To properly review the game and all of its intricacies would take far longer than I have the patience to lay down here, so I'd just like to offer the thought that this game sits nicely into the horde shooter genre like Left 4 Dead, Warhammer Vermintide and Darktide, and others! If that's in your wheelhouse, then I genuinely suggest giving this a try!

Pulled this up after catching a glimpse of it in an unrelated review of PC hardware, and I'm a little mixed on whether or not to recommend this.

I haven't played as far into the game as I'd like to at the moment to give the most comprehensive review, though after an evening thumbing through the early game, I can at least offer a few thoughts on what may or may not matter to you at a glance.

Gameplay wise you'll find there's a bit more emphasis on the gathering aspects of the game when it comes to making most of your income and pleasing other folks in the setting. I think it's a terribly fun way to tie yourself to the world and the resources it has to offer, and the brewing minigame is plenty fun to keep you occupied while you're grounded! Ingredients are collected through various methods involving your plane, from shooting fruits from trees, to running your plane through fields of wheat; all methods have a nice balance of risk to reward, more or less. Plenty of players have pointed out the tedium of water bombing ingredients, and it's something I've noticed as well. Apparently the devs are quite active on improving the game over time, so I expect some balancing to be done at some point in the future.

UI/UX is a little clunky as well, as others have noted. It works well enough, but I've found myself getting the cursor "caught" on certain buttons and elements of the UI, and sometimes it's difficult to tell where your cursor will end up if you're using a controller. Mouse and Keyboard cursor inputs through the UI can also be a hassle, and I've found it generally easier to just default to a controller. Again, this is something many are suggesting will be addressed by the dev team as they're bolstered by the initial sales and feedback. Outside of these quibbles, though, I feel like the piloting controls respond as I'd expect they would from an arcade flying game, so it gets a pass where it matters the most!

The note of Generative AI is a bit of a sticky subject in this game. Overall, I'm not going to snub my nose at the concept of AI being used to create at least the voice acting and the character portraits as far as I'm aware. This isn't a big budget game, and the devs have expressed their reasonings behind opting for a voice acted game rather than a silent or "mumble"-like chatter system (one of which is that there are some players who were not able to process both text and flying the plane at the same time, which is certainly an accessibility issue). As it's implemented here, it's fairly inoffensive and can be easily overlooked. The issue is simply with Generative AI as a whole and the distrust I have that its dataset that it used to make these assets was scraped without permission from existing artists, voice actors, and other creators. That's not something I take lightly, and despite understanding how the devs came to their decision, it becomes hard to ignore the nagging curiosity in the back of my mind of "What else was AI generated for the sake of time and budget?" and "Is the content on display here made with datasets that have taken the work of other creators without permission?" It's ultimately a more personal beef than an objective one, but one you may still want to be aware of before purchasing.

Overall, I think the product on display here is a complete package, blemishes and all! I want to love the game more than I do, as there really is a niche here that is tugging at my enjoyment of flight sims/arcades and that vibe of Ghibli sea planes and flying fortresses, but I'm held back currently by a bit of a clunky UI/UX, and the uneasy feeling that assets have been made from sources that were scraped without permission (not that the devs intended this specifically). If I would've known it used Generative AI ahead of time, I would've held off on buying it until actual assets could be substituted into the game.

If I could give it a "Mixed" I would, I really would, but since Steam only allows a Yes or No, I'm just giving a No for now until I would say that I would've bought it having known all about it before diving in.

In its current state? I want to recommend the game, but I can't.

Its gameplay loop is terribly fun as far as I'm concerned, and its gunplay model (I've only played veteran so far) has been fantastic! Honestly it's something I really hope I can see replicated in some other games as well! Feels very much like Left 4 Dead in a way, and the most novel feature, to me, is how your crosshair "walks" when firing in full auto on certain weapons. It's not the same as a usual recoil pattern, and it's something you'll just have to try out!

The game looks lovely, and at least from an outsider's perspective, the gameplay loop and overall presentation is great!

Where I fail to be able to recommend it to anyone is its performance. I have noticed no shortage of people advertising the amount of mid-mission crashes, and I thought I had manged to slip through those cracks for the first day of playing it. Even when it runs well, it's still a pretty hard game to run overall. I use a Ryzen 7 5800X with an RX 6750XT, and even at 1080p I was getting reported averages of 50fps. This is absolutely the exception for my PC, not the rule, as plenty other higher-end games like this run at least at 60fps and above at 1440p.

Currently I am unable to boot the game up after a single mission-start crash. Every attempt to start the game immediately crashes, and no adjustment of settings has alleviated the issue. I'm running the latest drivers for my GPU, I'm not using Raytracing, I've bumped it down to lower settings, anything I can think to do, and it still won't boot. I'll be uninstalling it and reinstalling it soon, but even then, this is a performance that I just can't recommend to anyone.

It's a damn shame, as I really do think this is a fun game and has some great potential, especially since I really enjoyed Vermintide 2 but prefer SciFi to High Fantasy!

Maybe wait for this game to go on sale, and also wait a week before spending any more money on in-game cash, just to make sure you can actually play with whatever you decide to purchase.

Just really bummed out overall.

Honestly I had no idea this game had come out until recently when seeing some passing comments and reviews, which is a shame since I've really come to love this game almost overnight!

Combat is mobile and doesn't feel restricting or too powerful either; you definitely need to work with your team and mind your surroundings on later levels! The levels aren't terribly long and take about 20 minutes on average, though there aren't a whole lot of them to start with. I assume this is something that will expand over time, but I've never felt bored of them either when going back through earlier missions! This is also one of the few games that has a useful and enjoyable "overwatch" NPC that can call out enemy movements and direct your attention appropriately, points for that!

There are plenty of weapons and a solid variety of attachments! Attachments with less powerful buffs will usually come with perks (like gaining accuracy or stability on hit) which makes modifying your weapons particularly enjoyable so that there's a legitimate balance between brute force bonuses versus more situational advantages!

As you play, you get to unlock "challenge cards" which make up the majority of your progression and keeps the levels interesting each time you return. Some are minor and affect enemy strength or give you flat boons or debuffs. Some are a little more fun and simply give you faulty HUDs or even recreate some of the original "tactical cam" look from the movies!

Each class has its own niche, however none of them feel so overwhelmingly that none of the other classes can't cover each other's roles if needed. The biggest variation will be in the weapons they're able to equip and what special kit they can bring, but otherwise each can hold their own just as well.

This has all been a bit of a ramble, but it's hard to overstate how much I was surprised and how much I've played within simply the first few days of owning it! Be prepared for not a lot of public players to group up with currently, but I'm really hoping this clears up over time and becomes more populated! Until then, bring some friends and toy around with classes, gear, and roles; it's well worth testing the waters here!

Been playing this game for a little while now, and honestly I've been hooked! Not too sure how this edition of the game stacks up to the previous version people have been talking about, however I can at least compile how this version shakes out so far.

The Good
*Fantastic art style and memorable models of subs and landmarks
*Great music that really brings the world and encounters alive
*An odd but still interesting RPG-like encounter system when exploring wrecks that isn't exactly "high stakes" but still rewarding
*Upgrades for your sub are modular and can be swapped out frequently, though are still in need of resources so they aren't entirely weightless
*Combat isn't overly fast paced, so shots feel more weighty and satisfying with each hit, though you can still be overwhelmed if not careful

The Bad
*Not unlike real undersea visibility, certain patches of the world can be a bit hard to navigate; the sonar pings help and always provide a clear, but temporary view. Without those pings, the world can sometime feel a bit claustrophobic and a chore to traverse.
*Despite the subs looking unique and exciting, certain subs don't seem to play nice with the world. Subs like the Sul-Atlantica are so big that anchoring to certain landmarks isn't impossible, but can some times bury you in the world and deal damage until it wriggles free.
*Keeping your crew competitive against the RPG encounters can be fairly costly, and sometimes the results of a lack-luster crew can be extremely frustrating.

The Bugs
*If you're hoping to buy all the subs in the game for fun, it's best to stick to one until you have access to the final level and buy the rest there, as there's no way to install area-critical upgrades for your subs you've bought before then outside of the first sub you brought to the story mission that unlocks said upgrade. Buying subs in the final area gives them the upgrade by default and is currently the only way I can find to apply the upgrade to multiple subs.
*Speaking of subs, you also can't sell them, so I've found myself with two subs that are unable to enter the final level and unable to remove from my current roster. Not game breaking, but annoying.
*Docking with certain stations can be a bit unstable from time to time, even with subs that aren't intrusive to the environment's geometry.
*And my final bug isn't a big one per-se, though while the game looks pretty, and the frames are smooth for the most part, it feels like during combat there's a good chance the game will stutter. This is all coming from a computer that handles modern games well, so it's more of an optimization problem, even on the fastest settings.

Overall, it's a game that has some rough edges, but I find the core gameplay satisfying and the world's aesthetic charming enough that I'm happy to give it a positive review! I hope, however, that the developers give it some love in the future and haven't, as many seem to suggest, moved on to other projects.