As a preface, I've originally reviewed it May 03 2024 just after I had hit a hundred hours on it and feel like I'll keep coming back for another shot of Liber-tea.

Changed my review to negative on May 04 2024 in response to the PSN debacle which resulted in Sony fumbling the bag with Arrowhead having already sold the game in many countries where it's impossible to register on PSN without breaking Sony's own terms of service (or worse, without owning a console).

What good faith remains is due to the decision made May 06 2024, to leave things as they were before. Positive review reinstated now. Here's to Helldivers everywhere.

Review:

Helldivers II is a bombastic, frenzied cooperative horde shooter where you (and up to three friends with yourself) don the garb of Super Earth's finest and get quite literally shot right into the thick of an evolving Galactic War against the Terminids (space bugs), Automatons (space Terminators), and all other xeno miscreants in an unrelenting ultra-patriotic rampage across the outer colonies of the totally benevolent⁽ᶜᶦᵗᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿ ⁿᵉᵉᵈᵉᵈ⁾ Super Earth Federation.

The game's highlights include a very diverse weapon sandbox that is very accessible to get started it yet holds lots of complexity, paired with the dynamic feel of the live-service aspect of the game being curated world events and operations orchestrated behind the scenes by the developers, while accounting for player activity and accomplishments at the collective scale to adjust results.

The gunplay feels as unique as it is fun, there's lots of little quirks and nuances to every weapon and Stratagem (special items and attacks from ships in orbit/air support), and while the progression can feel like a snail's pace at the lower end of difficulties, the game highly encourages you to climb the difficulty ladder with increasing amounts of operation rewards and occasional community-wide grants of progression currency as global events unfold.

It's still got its rough edges -- the live-service format is played to its strengths here by making the progressing war fronts feel like they shift, change and develop in a convincing push and pull narrative, while the core loops and arsenal of the game provide no shortage of ways to shoot, incinerate, explode, overpenetrate and bombard the enemies of humanity until the Kells come home. On the other hand this same format means that the game often feels like the "balancing" changes done can feel like moving goalposts while the devs try to figure out what they're doing with the arsenal and enemy makeup.

Helldivers has managed to capture an especially magical aspect of online games I've not seen since PlanetSide, and even then, not ever to the sheer scale Helldivers has managed to reach. The whole core idea of the game's Galactic War meta-loop is to have a coordinated community of millions of players working together towards a single common goal.
Unsurprisingly, hundreds of thousands of people with a single goal on their focus proved effective even in sending a message even outside the context of the game via protesting against the unreasonable and forceful PSN account linking mentioned above (where many countries were hung to dry without a way to legitimately play the game even after purchasing it) and being an especially egregious and shady as the game had worked perfectly fine for months prior to any PSN integration.

The long and short of it is, Helldivers fosters this sentiment of unison that blurs the line between videogaming coordination en-masse and collective patriotic LARP in a way that is both ridiculous and inspiring in equal measures. And I love it.

In any case, burnout can be felt from continued exposure to bug bile and energy cannon plasma, so if the game isn't feeling too fresh, often a week or so is enough of a break to come back and see enough changes to make things feel that bit more exciting and have renewed interest.

Fighting enemies can be exciting, frustrating, or both at the same time in equal measures and the effect is significantly amplified when you let loose with the air support and charge the enemy with your friends. Coordination with your fellow teammates is completely optional, but highly recommended as often mistakes and poor communication will result in dramatic, comedic, and often explosive causes of death that'll send your team scrambling into chaos and fumbling to do damage control,

There's little to be said in terms of atmosphere and feel of the game that the whole game doesn't say for itself, with regards on every aspect from the swelling musical themes and the sharp art designs used in the game, it really feels like one of the better displays of all aspects of a game coming together really well. The contagious always-in-character tone and tongue-in-cheek overwhelming patriotism greatly contributed to the viral nature of the game. It has character, it's got absurd levels of energy, and it's just a great game overall.

There are a couple problems now and then, mostly performance related, and it does use nProtect GameGuard anti-cheat still, which is both ancient and actual garbage in terms of functionality and how poorly it interacts with mostly everything in modern computers as well as just being a questionable choice of anti-cheat, but barring that I would be hard pressed to find more problems to describe besides being wary of the fact Sony/PlayStation Studios still owns the project and deserves to be scrutinized. As for Arrowhead, keep up the good work, you've got a good thing going. Don't let it die.

All in all there's a reason it got this popular and most of the praise it gets is well deserved. Hard to go wrong with picking this one up.

11/10 - Would patriotically manage democracy again.

[h1]DIVE TOGETHER OR GO DOWN FIGHTING[/h1] As a preface, I've originally reviewed it May 03 2024 just after I had hit a hundred hours on it and feel like I'll keep coming back for another shot of Liber-tea. Changed my review to negative on May 04 2024 in response to the PSN debacle which resulted in Sony fumbling the bag with Arrowhead having already sold the game in many countries where it's impossible to register on PSN without breaking Sony's own terms of service (or worse, without owning a console). What good faith remains is due to the decision made May 06 2024, to leave things as they were before. Positive review reinstated now. Here's to Helldivers everywhere. Review: Helldivers II is a bombastic, frenzied cooperative horde shooter where you (and up to three friends with yourself) don the garb of Super Earth's finest and get quite literally shot right into the thick of an evolving Galactic War against the Terminids (space bugs), Automatons (space Terminators), and all other xeno miscreants in an unrelenting ultra-patriotic rampage across the outer colonies of the totally benevolent⁽ᶜᶦᵗᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿ ⁿᵉᵉᵈᵉᵈ⁾ Super Earth Federation. The game's highlights include a very diverse weapon sandbox that is very accessible to get started it yet holds lots of complexity, paired with the dynamic feel of the live-service aspect of the game being curated world events and operations orchestrated behind the scenes by the developers, while accounting for player activity and accomplishments at the collective scale to adjust results. The gunplay feels as unique as it is fun, there's lots of little quirks and nuances to every weapon and Stratagem (special items and attacks from ships in orbit/air support), and while the progression can feel like a snail's pace at the lower end of difficulties, the game highly encourages you to climb the difficulty ladder with increasing amounts of operation rewards and occasional community-wide grants of progression currency as global events unfold. It's still got its rough edges -- the live-service format is played to its strengths here by making the progressing war fronts feel like they shift, change and develop in a convincing push and pull narrative, while the core loops and arsenal of the game provide no shortage of ways to shoot, incinerate, explode, overpenetrate and bombard the enemies of humanity until the Kells come home. On the other hand this same format means that the game often feels like the "balancing" changes done can feel like moving goalposts while the devs try to figure out what they're doing with the arsenal and enemy makeup. Helldivers has managed to capture an especially magical aspect of online games I've not seen since PlanetSide, and even then, not ever to the sheer scale Helldivers has managed to reach. The whole core idea of the game's Galactic War meta-loop is to have a coordinated community of millions of players working together towards a single common goal. Unsurprisingly, hundreds of thousands of people with a single goal on their focus proved effective even in sending a message even outside the context of the game via protesting against the unreasonable and forceful PSN account linking mentioned above (where many countries were hung to dry without a way to legitimately play the game even after purchasing it) and being an especially egregious and shady as the game had worked perfectly fine for months prior to any PSN integration. The long and short of it is, Helldivers fosters this sentiment of unison that blurs the line between videogaming coordination en-masse and collective patriotic LARP in a way that is both ridiculous and inspiring in equal measures. And I love it. In any case, burnout can be felt from continued exposure to bug bile and energy cannon plasma, so if the game isn't feeling too fresh, often a week or so is enough of a break to come back and see enough changes to make things feel that bit more exciting and have renewed interest. Fighting enemies can be exciting, frustrating, or both at the same time in equal measures and the effect is significantly amplified when you let loose with the air support and charge the enemy with your friends. Coordination with your fellow teammates is completely optional, but highly recommended as often mistakes and poor communication will result in dramatic, comedic, and often explosive causes of death that'll send your team scrambling into chaos and fumbling to do damage control, There's little to be said in terms of atmosphere and feel of the game that the whole game doesn't say for itself, with regards on every aspect from the swelling musical themes and the sharp art designs used in the game, it really feels like one of the better displays of all aspects of a game coming together really well. The contagious always-in-character tone and tongue-in-cheek overwhelming patriotism greatly contributed to the viral nature of the game. It has character, it's got absurd levels of energy, and it's just a great game overall. There are a couple problems now and then, mostly performance related, and it does use nProtect GameGuard anti-cheat still, which is both ancient and actual garbage in terms of functionality and how poorly it interacts with mostly everything in modern computers as well as just being a questionable choice of anti-cheat, but barring that I would be hard pressed to find more problems to describe besides being wary of the fact Sony/PlayStation Studios still owns the project and deserves to be scrutinized. As for Arrowhead, keep up the good work, you've got a good thing going. Don't let it die. All in all there's a reason it got this popular and most of the praise it gets is well deserved. Hard to go wrong with picking this one up. 11/10 - Would patriotically manage democracy again.