Helldivers 2 Review: Fighting for Super Earth Is Super Fun

Helldivers 2

Helldivers 2 is the first multiplayer game on PlayStation to unite the gaming community in a way we haven’t seen since Halo’s heyday, at least for a multiplayer title. It’s a surprise hit, amassing more players by the day and breaking all-time high records on Steam. It’s the first PlayStation-published game that was released on PC simultaneously. But is it any fun or just overhyped? Fortunately, it’s the former.

After a cheeky opening cutscene explaining the state of Super Earth and shoving military propaganda down your throat (it’s sweet), the game instills a sense of hyper-inflated eco-patriotism in you with an equally hilarious training sequence. The game wears and displays its Starship Troopers influence proudly, and I love it.

The gameplay loop is simple - you’re a soldier for Super Earth, sent to other planets in a galaxy that is being invaded by ghastly bugs, automatons, and other enemies. As a protector of democratic ideals, you must stomp these invaders with an arsenal of guns, grenades, and every piece of ammunition you can get your hands on. Each successful mission contributes to a global scoreboard, which feeds into the live-service elements of the game. It’s not just about you winning a battle, it’s about us as a collective winning the war.

The two things that make Helldivers 2 unique in its genre are stratagems and reliance on physics-based mechanics. Stratagems are pods you can call upon the battlefield that can contain a variety of elements - weapons, an SOS signal, ammunition, and respawn pods. Each stratagem requires a specific combination of commands that you must master before you can throw them on the battlefield, and that’s where the tension comes in. Given the frantic nature of the gunfights, it can be hard to find a spot to calmly choose what stratagem you want to deploy.

Movement in Helldivers 2 is fairly realistic with a lot of weight behind your character’s activities. Sprinting depletes stamina, and you can receive damage to individual limbs. The pods you call into battle can damage your enemies and friends. Speaking of that, friendly fire is always on so you have to be aware of your surroundings. Guns have recoil patterns that need to be learned, and you lose bullets between magazines as you reload prematurely. It all culminates in a chaotic environment that is both arcadey and tactical, and that’s where the magic happens.

Related: PlayStation Fans Want Helldivers 2 on Xbox

Helldivers 2 may be a live-service game, but it lets you earn your way up through its ranks with gameplay-driven rewards. Yes, it includes microtransactions for cosmetics but none of it is driven by a pay-to-win mentality that so many games in the genre fall victim to. Instead, the continuous nature of the game is justified through its meta-narrative.

If you’re a solo player who doesn’t want to play it with friends then you may have a tough time. While the early planets are designed to support the one-man army fantasy, the latter planets will have you sweating on the verge of breaking your controller. To that end, matchmaking options are simple and the friend code system works well enough. There are still some quirks like exiting someone else’s lobby not working as well, and I hope that’s fixed along with some quality-of-life updates down the road.

Unlike other live-service games on the market, Helldivers 2 rewards you with gameplay-based progression. Sure, it may be slower to earn all the weapons and cosmetics, but at least there’s the option. Each mission will reward you with medals and samples which can be used to unlock new gear and customize your ship. I’ve found most of the in-game pricing for these fair, with stronger stratagems scaling well with the rewards you get on the higher tiers. The Warbonds, which act as the game’s battle pass, fall on the weaker side forcing you to spend your current medals on things you wouldn’t want to purchase otherwise.

The mission variety in Helldivers 2 is also fine at the moment but I hope to see more added in the future. It’s an extraction shooter at heart, so the general outro of every mission remains the same. As you’re destroying Terminids, carrying flags, or conducting a survey, the map gets filled with optional side objectives that reward extra XP that help you level up. You never feel like you’re being pushed to do those for more rewards.

Half of the fun in Helldivers 2 is from the organic moments that emerge when fooling around with friends. Calling down a pod at the wrong time or walking into a trap laid by a party member is all part of the fun, but it heavily depends on what kind of players you’re queued with. Over time I’ve seen players establish an unwritten code of conduct, which is great for players like me who don’t like to communicate with randoms on the internet.

The only major problem holding the game back is its server infrastructure. With it hitting peak concurrent player limits it’s getting harder to log into matches. There’s no single-player mode so you can’t just grind out the existing planets while waiting for matchmaking. Developer Arrowhead Game Studios is frequently deploying patches to fix these issues, including options to kick AFK players and more. By the time you’re reading this review, most of these issues may have been resolved, so please ignore this bit.

Helldivers 2 PS5 and PC Performance

Helldivers 2 includes both a Quality and a Performance Mode on PS5, targeting 30fps and 60fps at various resolutions on the console. While the performance mode can be a tad blurry at 1080p, it’s still serviceable. You don’t really get a competitive advantage with a higher frame rate in this game, so we suggest playing it in the Quality Mode.

The PC version scales well on mid-range hardware. I played the game on a system with an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X and an Nvidia Geforce RTX 3060 Ti and was able to run it around 90fps on the highest settings. At 1440p I was able to hover around 60fps, though performance was often dipping just below it in the mid-50s. The lack of image upscalers like DLSS, XeSS, or FSR is disappointing though, along with the absence of Nvidia’s Reflex feature to reduce input latency.

Anti-aliasing at 1080p leaves a lot to be desired, so we suggest running it at a higher resolution using Nvidia DSR and then scaling it back down on a 1080p monitor if you’re playing with an older GPU. Thankfully, there are no shader compilation stutters during gameplay, and it’s a pretty smooth experience.

Helldivers 2 Score & Verdict

Score: 8/10

Helldivers 2 offers a robust multiplayer experience with sharp satire that will keep players hooked for a long time.

Helldivers 2 is out now on PC (Steam) and PS5.