Have you ever wanted to spread managed democracy throughout the galaxy with the gentle touch of high-caliber bullets? Ever been called short as a kid? Then stand tall on the dead bodies of thousands of robots. You can kill bugs and robots that threaten the perfect democracy of Super Earth. Fail your mission? I promise you won’t be sent to a freedom camp.
Helldivers 2 is a shooter game where you must liberate planets and do your part. Instead of following most games like it, instead of fighting against other people, you work as a team to liberate the galaxy from the threat of the Automatons and the Terminids.
At the beginning of the game, you go through the tutorial and are then given a ship that you can name. While it is not fully customizable you can upgrade it to improve your stratagems, a key part of combat I will talk about in a moment. As you level up in the game you can increase your rank and access new stratagems. You upgrade your ship as you find samples in different missions.
From your ship, you can perform upgrades, buy new stratagems, change gear, and access the war bonds. The war bonds are similar to a battle pass concept. As you do missions and level up you will gain these things called medals. You can use these to claim things. After you claim a page you can then begin claiming the next page. The war bonds are not tied to level. You can claim new armor, weapons, grenades, capes, character backgrounds, emotes, and victory poses.
REMEMBER! While your friends may be dear to you they are replaceable! In combat they will frequently die while you are using the highest quality life-ending weapons known to man, and so will you! Do not fear, stratagems can do many things including reinforcing players. While it will not be the same person canonically when you reinforce someone, your friend will still have all of their armor and the same loadout when they get reinforced, minus their support weapon.
Support weapons are stratagems that can be called which will give the player a weapon that is usually stronger than their usual weapons, but functions differently. I prefer to use the autocannon, which is… very interesting. It is also very explosive. Some support weapons have backpacks which can allow you to carry more ammo.
I will explain some more stratagems very quickly. Eagle ones are deployed very fast and usually explode a lot. Orbital ones are fired from your ship and take a little longer to be deployed. Sentries sit there and shoot at the enemies for you.
This game’s fast-paced combat makes it incredibly addictive, and while missions usually take lots of time, they are worth it for the cinematic intensity. You will feel like you are in a movie as you dive again and again for cover, trying to run before the automatons chop you into tiny little pieces. You struggle to get up as they swarm you and your squad, your eagle stratagems are almost ready, and then you all die. The mission is over. But you did the main objective so you get your medals and money.
Get Helldivers 2, it’s worth it, that’s all.
