Do you feel that there are not enough co-op titles on the gaming scene where you can easily shoot and relax with your friends? Well, maybe Helldivers 2 is just for you. You can read what it focuses on, what it excels at, and what currently represents its main weakness in our review.
- Platform: PC (reviewed), PS5
- Date of publication: February 8, 2024
- Manufacturer: Arrowhead Game Studios
- Genre: Cooperative action
- Czech localization: it is
- Multiplayer: ano (online)
- Data to download: 70 GB
- Cena: 40 euros/ 980 CZK (Steam)
The story of Helldivers 2 will make you a fighter for democracy
Quite often in the gaming scene, you will come across a piece that in some way resembles a well-known series. In the case of Helldivers 2, it is obvious which way the wind is blowing, and the creators do not hold back in this regard. The story will make you a member of the special unit Helldivers, whose mission is to spread peace and democracy across the universe. And who prevents its representatives from this godly endeavor? None other than well-eaten bugs whose desire for human flesh leads them to commit suicide.
The encounter with a primitive race of alien bugs is brutal here. In most cases, you’ll find yourself in the bowels of a drop pod on colonized planets where settlement has turned into a brutal massacre. Your goals are different. One time you have to activate a mining station, another time you have to get data or eliminate enemy nests before the bugs start to spread and cover the whole world with the help of their bodies. The range of beetle opponents is passable. Among them you can find weak pieces with zero stamina, but also silent killers and monsters whose armor allows them to survive a large part of the damage.
Just when you think you know all your enemies, another threat will “appear” on the scene. In addition to bugs, humanity also encounters intelligent robots in Helldivers 2, whose ranks are noticeably less wide than insects, but their combat effectiveness and abilities, on the contrary, represent a real threat. Compared to insects, they don’t rely on quantity, but on quality and heavy fire from laser rifles. Each of the factions is pushing you from a different direction in the galactic war. Therefore, to keep the enemies away from the common people, you have to go to different tuned worlds and eliminate the trouble makers on them.
What are we going to talk about, the concept is not particularly complex. Prim is played here by working with a wide variety of weapons that you can get your hands on. So initially you have a really limited spectrum available, but as you progress across the battlefields, you unlock new pieces through war medals. A certain number of items await you in each category. As soon as you spend enough metals awarded for “bravery” in it, the next level will open for you, where there are already untouchable toys that can be invested in their acquisition. The concept here is not poorly conceived. Thanks to him, the player is always driven forward.
In addition to medals, you also work with a battleship, which you improve and thus gain access to new forms of support from space. This way you can get support weapons, different versions of raids, or even a salvo from orbital cannons, capable of turning stronger bugs into meatballs. However, I personally loved the automatic turrets covering my back more than once in the stages when it was necessary to stop shooting for a while and start reloading, which you definitely do not apply here after every shot.
The main reason you don’t want to change the magazine after a few shots are fired is the fact that the rest of it never stores, but you just throw it away, losing ammo that had the potential to be fired at the ever-present enemies. Ammo is never enough, luckily it is sometimes possible to request support from a ship with the help of a quick press of specific buttons, evoking good old cheating, which will provide you with vital ammunition.
I have to say that the difficulty in Helldivers 2 has steadily increased, so there were a couple of times where my squad failed to exit the world. Yes it’s right. Death took my entire team more than once, luckily he had his work cut out for him so he fulfilled his duty to society. But I have not always fallen victim to bugs. Shooting into one’s own ranks here is a common factor that drinks a person’s blood. On the one hand, it can be said that killing a friend somewhat belongs to the color of the Star Trek film series. But when you’re playing with people throwing grenades at your feet, or calling in orbital attacks on your positions quite deliberately, it’s not much fun. I probably wouldn’t be angry if there was an option to turn off friendly fire.
It would be useful at least when you play with random players, where you can expect a lot of strange actions. However, dying due to friends’ mistakes isn’t Helldivers 2’s primary problem in my opinion. The far bigger shortcoming is the technical side, which is starting to become a problem for PC players more than it should be in Sony games. According to the minimum requirements, it should be possible to run Helldivers 2 on a relatively weak machine (Processor: Intel Core i7-4790K / AMD Ryzen 5 1500X, Memory: 8 GB RAM, GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti / AMD Radeon RX 470)
The reality is, however, that on the presented machine, the player would only get an unplayable mess. For normal operation, you need a much more powerful desktop computer, and even on it the whole does not run perfectly at the moment. For myself, I had problems with frame drops and the game itself on a set with an AMD Ryzen 7 7700X, GTX 1080 Ti and 32 GB of RAM, which is a configuration that greatly exceeds the requirements of the creators. However, it was still not enough to play smoothly. I also ran into a number of different bugs, which in my opinion are just as much bad luck as optimization. I therefore do not rule out that you will not encounter any “bugs” or frame drops while playing Helldivers 2 on your PC. However, I personally cannot wave my hand over it, because I have come across several players in the area with similar difficulties.
The battle for the fate of the universe was not without losses in Helldivers 2
After completing several dozen jumps, I have to admit that although I didn’t expect much from Helldivers 2, it turned out to be quite a pleasant affair, which I also enjoyed due to the fact that thematically it is very close to the cult Star Infantry. Just like the legendary film series, this piece also spews hordes of aggressive bugs of various sizes and types at you, in addition to which you also have to deal with really angry automatons, which, on the other hand, evoke memories of the Terminator with their processing.
Mowing down enemies is really fun here, although completing the quests themselves is definitely not a walk in the park. Definitely not. Fortunately, you have an interesting enough variety of weapons and abilities at your disposal that you won’t get tired of playing. Essential for the overall experience is the presence of companions with whom you already have some gaming experience. They will help you enjoy playing to the maximum. Without them, you can encounter different types of teammates, and the encounters are not always pleasant. The main shortcoming, at least in my eyes, became the technical side, which is not in ideal condition on the days I play Helldivers 2. However, as is often the case with games, time more than once solves any problem, so hopefully the creators will manage to debug their creation and provide it with a stable dose of content the kind of future it deserves.
Review
Helldivers 2
We like
- High level of fun
- A wide range of diverse equipment and support elements
- A selection of enemies evoking memories of cult film series
- You will enjoy playing with your friends to the maximum
It bothers us
- Considerably problematic technical side
- Playing without friends because of firing into your own ranks hurts enough
2024-02-13 16:01:31
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