Imagine if you will, that you’re in an alien world with strange trees and bushes surrounding you, a vast lake in front of you. Suddenly, you hear a strange marching sound behind the tree line. Within the distance, you see a humanoid figure beginning to walk towards you through the fog and trudging its way through the brush. Then, another appears behind it and another and another. Their eyes begin to glow red, with their metal skin glinting in the faint glow of the morning sun. As they raise their rifles, and you raise yours, the first fight of your mission begins. 

     This is only a small piece of one mission out of the millions that you can go on in Helldivers 2, which was released in 2024. Helldivers 2 is a co-op, third-person shooter where you are constantly fighting in a war against the three alien factions within the game: the terminator-esque Automatons; huge insectoid Terminids; the mind controlling Illuminate. You’re able to battle across a wide array of environments with each unique mission. 

    For simplicity’s sake, I’ll be grading the game across four categories: Gameplay/Mechanics, Audio Design, Progression, and Community. 

Gameplay/Mechanics:  

     The average mission puts you into a set zone with various main and side objectives to complete. Once all main objectives are complete, then you may head to the extraction point and there you must wait for an aircraft called the Pelican to pick you up. A thing I enjoy a lot about this structure is that a mission can be as long or as short as you want. If you just want to hit all the main objectives quickly and get away, you are fully able to. But if you want to take your time finding all the various points of interest, collecting all you can, then you are also fully able to.  

     The gunplay of this game is not quite like most games where you have two crosshairs, an aiming one that shows where your character is aiming and a second one that displays where the barrel of your weapon is really pointing. It’s very simple to get used to, and an average player can have a good handle on it by finishing the tutorial.  

     There are many factions that a Helldiver can battle. The Terminids, Automatons, and the Illuminate. Each three of these factions have their own unique unit structures and tactics of dispatching each of them. For instance, the Terminids, a race of huge insects, is usually able to be dealt with fire and gas. Fire is the one I see the most used when on Terminid missions. Flamethrowers, shotguns, and lower caliber weapons are also often used on Terminid missions. Automatons though, unlike the Terminids, favor quality over quantity in each unit. This means that even the typical foot soldiers have higher armor ratings and more resistance to fire and gas, but there are a lot fewer in number. Taking higher armor penetration weapons as well as anti-tank munitions are the way to go. The Illuminate are a strange case as well as being the hardest of the factions to fight. They are composed of the zombie-like Voteless as well as the strong and heavily armored Overseers. The Illuminate combines the Terminid’s tactics of overwhelming forces via sheer numbers with fodder units with the Automaton’s emphasis on powerful “elite” units making them a little more annoying than the previously mentioned groups.  

     Either way, each faction occupying a certain niche allows for players to play and kit themselves out in whatever way they want. 

Audio Design:  

     The audio in this game is very well put together, from the music that plays while fending off an Automaton assault to hearing Terminids chittering in the distance. The use of sound is a means of identifying and locating enemies before they have a chance to see you. It is also a sign that you’ve been spotted and that you need to take cover. 

Progression:  

     There are many ways that players could improve their kit and armor thanks to the numerous systems in place to help players move forward. The biggest one being the warbond. The warbond is like a battlepass similar to many other shooters before; however, there is no free and premium edition of each warbond. In short, when you buy a warbond, you get everything in it. As well as the fact that none of them are on a time limit. You can even still buy warbonds that were released at the beginning of the game’s launch. 

     Another source of progression is the ability to acquire new support weapons and airstrikes with money you receive from each mission. You can upgrade your ship to help you deploy said airstrikes and weapons. Ship upgrades, however, use samples acquired from missions that someone must extract to get the full amount, encouraging protecting your teammates and exploration of the map to find said samples. 

     Weapon customizing is the smallest of all the systems and is more so designated for higher level players who have used their weapons a lot. This station allows them access to an array of upgrades.  

Community: 

      The Helldivers 2 community is exceedingly welcoming compared to many other online fandoms. For example, I played a mission yesterday where there was a new player to the game, and he wasn’t doing the best. He started to apologize, but my other teammates immediately started giving him strategies and recommendations for new weapons to help him. If you ever need help picking the next warbond or finding a new weapon or discovering new strategies for dealing with tough enemies, then there’ll be a Helldiver who’ll help you and guide you to the many videos on YouTube, Discord, or Reddit.