Helldivers
At a first glance Helldivers may seem like another top-down multiplayer bullet-fest, a la Dead Nation, Call of Duty Dead Ops, etc. But after playing for just a short while, Helldivers shows you exactly what sets it apart from the competition. Heavily reliant on cooperation, communication and careful planning, Helldivers is sure to test your teamwork capabilities and performance under pressure. That’s not to say Helldivers can’t be enjoyed alone; it can. However the true nature of Helldivers lies in its four-player co-op. Helldivers is probably one of the best co-op games ever— if not the best—and is a tacticians wet dream.
Set in a future where Super Earth is waging war on three fronts against three hostile alien factions—Cyborgs, Bugs, and The Illuminate—you, the Helldivers, are deployed to various planets to ‘spread democracy and freedom’ by extinguishing the evil aliens and completing objectives, before extracting and leaving the planet conquered and ‘liberated’. Helldivers’s cheeky plot and genius setting set the stage for its marvellous gameplay; procedurally generated planets and objectives mean a different, yet familiar experience every time. With a wide variety of weapons, upgrades, perks and—the juiciest part of the game—stratagems, you and your Helldiver set out to repel the alien armies and force them back across the galaxy to each of their respective home-worlds. The game is completely online PvE, with each individual and team of Helldivers contributing to the war effort. There is an offline mode, wherein your accolades and accomplishments will not be counted toward the community influence. You still level up and are rewarded accordingly, so the online functionality isn’t necessarily required to play the game. The more the community focuses their attacks on one faction the further back from Super Earth they retreat. This whole process is meant to be continuous; as the community fends off the Bugs, the Cyborgs will advance further into Human territory and so on. The procedural nature of the game creates infinite possible situations. The entire community of Helldivers works together to eradicate the alien threat and secure safety for Super Earth, making each planetary conquest as futile as it is necessary.
The first few planets you’ll encounter will most likely only have one or two objectives apiece capture this area by keeping it clear of enemies for a certain amount of time, activate this S.A.M. site by inputting the correct directional combination, etc. The reward for completing all of the missions on any given planet scales with the difficulty and number of objectives. The game’s most defining feature is its stratagems, which are tactical drops containing various useful equipment, bonus weaponry and offensive strike placements that can devastate the battlefield and turn the tide to your favour. The player can only take four stratagems with them to any given mission, in addition to the two permanent stratagems that are ingrained into every Helldiver: the reinforce (used to revive fallen teammates) and the hell bomb (used to blow up certain objectives and annihilate your enemies). Examples of stratagems are ammo drops, special weapon drops(LMG’s, Flamethrowers, Rocket Launchers), vehicle drops(including my personal favourite the EXO-44 Walker Exosuit), and AoE attacks such as airstrikes. The accolade for an easier planet will most likely be an XP boost or a new stratagem, while harder planets will grant you more useful stratagems and better perks. As you level up and unlock new difficulties, new objectives will appear on harder planets, forcing you to drastically change your approach.
Helldivers plays from the top-down, utilizing the twin-stick control scheme popularized by the genre to its fullest extent. It is really easy to die, and caution is recommended. Reloading will discard your active clip, so you need to make every bullet count. Friendly fire is always on, so communication and coordination are crucial to avoid accidental team-killing. Arrowhead has a system in place similar to the Xbox Live karma system wherein players with a reputation of accidentally killing teammates are grouped together to filter the arseholes out, keeping the community full of friendly players. Simply killing enemies will yield no results as the mission objectives are your only concern; any shooting you do will be to defend yourself or your teammates while completing the task at hand. Once you have completed all of the objectives on a planet, it is time to extract. Once you reach the extraction point and call the shuttle you have one minute and thirty seconds to hold your position and fend off the enemies until your transport arrives. It is beneficial to everyone that the whole team extracts together as leaving a teammate behind or failing to revive a teammate before extraction results in a penalty to your score, diluting the shares of XP spread upon completion of a mission.
The top-down-twin-stick shooter has found a home in Helldivers that competing developers are sure to shamelessly plagiarize in future games, because playing Helldivers is a menacingly good time. The game rewards planning and teamwork and punishes needless combat, pushing the player to do exactly what the developers intended, or risk death. Couple the great shooting mechanics with the organic gameplay dynamic of the stratagems and you have a highly customizable, gorgeously stylized, blood-pumping experience that you and/or your squad will be playing for months on end. I only wish it was available to other platforms, namely PC where I believe it would thrive.
