HELLDIVERS™ 2

In the 2.3 hours I played this game I:
1. got killed 6 different times by illuminated
2. got a 23 kill orbital strike
3. got killed by my teammates 5 times on the same mission
to top it all off, my friends were level 60 and i was level 1
amazing game, if you haven't bought it, then you're missing out

Game is unplayable, Constantly getting connection errors every time I load into a match

Used to be a really cool game, problem is it remains excatlly the same for you if you do not invest more money in a game you paid full price for - no new weapons, no new strategaems basically nothing new for you unless you pay, or grind a lot.

Don't listen to the people who say things like "too little too late" or "lazy devs". If the devs were truly lazy, this game would've been abandoned long before the patches and updates. This game shows what a dev team can pull off when they listen to their fans instead of getting as much money as possible and giving up. If you like big explosions, watching your friends get thrown across your screen, and brief moments of actual good decision making and teamwork, this is for you

This game built itself a bad reputation very early on into its lifespan, scorning the community with lacking content drops and generally absent development from their perspective. However, with the recent Illuminate attack, I firmly believe that Arrowhead has taken a step in the right direction.

This game has an exemplary community, concept, and gameplay loop. I have no doubt that the game generates profit for both Sony and Arrowhead. However, the secret sauce to this game's continued success is not how many cosmetics it will sell, but how many community members will share the game with their friends, family, children, and coworkers at the drop of a hat. It's nothing but fun, and if it stays that way, I see great things coming in the future.

Honestly this is just such a fun game. The Illuminate update is awesome and there are just so many crazy in-game moments. I saw a dude drive the new vehicle off of a ledge onto a turret and blow up, then the explosion ragdolled me into a wall causing to die from impact, and ship debris was falling from the sky. 10/10

I mainly come from an FPS (competitive) background. This game has allowed the boys to get back together again and play for few hours on the weekend just blowing stuff up, and relaxing. I can play my own sweaty games and then come here and relax killing some bugs or bots. Love this game. The best $40 you can spend.

their last update keeps using a 'runasadmin.vdf' script that GGsetup calls that's trying to make an any INbound rule in my firewall.... not sure why that's necessary.

the game itself is actually pretty good, but I'm not installing malware to play it.

if you're playing it already, disable the inbound "Helldivers 2" rule, and if you have the capability, Zendesk.

For all the reviews mentioning "pay wall"...you buy the game for $40 and all warbonds can be acquired by...surprise...playing the game and earning SC lol

This game lets you earn in game currency, but after supporting the game through cosmetic battle passes about 4 times. I've come back after letting content come to the game for over 8 months, right after the new enemy released from the award show. To find my new content of weapons is basically blocked by a freaking battle pass, which reminded can be earned from in game play. I support this game but after almost a full year of having to play meta weapons and lack of content, im saddened by the lack of freedom this empire runs on.
Great graphics, great game play. Content takes extremely long to come out on.

Would love to play the game but now every time I try to launch it an error 114 keeps popping up from the gameguard. Uninstalled, files deleted, reinstalled, verified files and still having the same error. Even the videos online arent helping and are over 9 months old. How is this not fixed.

Daamn this game rocks! Theres nothing like getting your ass handed to you and laughing hard while it happens. The difficulty goes from soloable to absolutely insane and the gameplay is amazing.
I highly recommend it, especially if you like to roll with mates.

This is the most addicted I've been to a multiplayer game since Left 4 Dead 2 or GTA during the pandemic. This game is honestly incredible. One of the best PvE Coop games out there, and one of the best communities I've ever seen, and am proud to be a part of.

What keeps me coming back besides the excellent gameplay and awesome metagame is how Helldivers 2 wears its influences on its sleeves very proudly, as it should with how well it's been executed. The world, tone and mechanics that the game has is very reminiscent of (but not limited to):

1). Starship Troopers (fighting alien bugs on planets far from Earth, the overly bombastic and satirical military tone, the fact that it seems for the massive amount of bugs you fight the only vehicles you get are some walkers, and it's mostly just ground troops thrown into the meat grinder).

2). Terminator (pretty self explanatory, fighting the Automatons gives a very Terminator 1/2 feel even down to the music and overwhelming nature of the Automatons).

3). Halo (Helldivers compared to the ODST's being called the Helljumpers, being dropped from orbit in pods into battle, even the aircraft that extracts you is called the Pelican).

4). Left 4 Dead (Enemies are incredibly satisfying to fight thanks to the feedback similar to how zombies in L4D2 are always fun to blow to pieces, not to mention the very arcade like fun and feel of the game).

5). Star Wars Battlefront 2 (The Galactic Conquest mode in that game is basically how Helldivers 2's metagame sort of plays out, but it's closer to a Dungeon Master that creates community events, defence campaigns of planets, and so much more. It feels like Galactic Conquest in BF2 fully realized, and with more than 1 player).

6). Warhammer 40K (A universe in constant war with other races, a general bloodhungry atmosphere cultivated by both the in-game characters and the fans referencing the game in memes that scratch that certain itch that can't really be explained by people not in the know but those within the fandoms revel in).

There are likely many other influences that I probably haven't played or can think of off hand that have played a hand in the direction that the developers took to craft. Either way, the game takes these influences and puts its own spin on it that is so original and awesome that it feels truly unique. It truly does feel like one of those perfect fantasy game concepts that you'd put together in your imagination.

Gameplay wise, the shooting and aiming feels very different from any other game. There are no hitscan weapons (lasers notwithstanding), it's all projectiles so leading your shots is necessary, but the game throws a very unique wrinkle into the mix: the aiming reticle is essentially split into 2 pieces: where you want to aim with the mouse, and a second circle where your character is actually aiming. This second reticle has drag and takes into account the direction of the actual gun and recoil from firing or your aim being thrown off by an attack. As a result, unless you are using a armor set with a specific perk on it, you can't whip your aim around all willy nilly, you have to pace and time your aim, which can be difficult under pressure, but adds to the fun challenge of the game.

The other wrinkle of the Gameplay is the use of Strategems, which are basically like killstreaks from COD except you can call them in at any time assuming they aren't under cool-down, or have run out of uses, etc. Airstrikes, orbital strikes, support weapons like different rocket launchers with different functions, support backpacks, automated turrets, even mech suits once you've leveled up enough to unlock them. Having only 4 at a time per player helps to act sort of like a class system without a class system specifically. There is a great variety of them to use, and most to all of them are viable as long as you use them smartly. Punching the codes in also adds to the challenge of trying to do it under pressure especially when completely surrounded, which can lead to accidental team kills, which leads me to the next point.

Team Killing is bound to happen in this game, whether by a bad stratagem throw, overly zealous aiming, even the backpack drones accidentally setting you on fire. TK's are just the name of the game. It adds to the frantic and panicky nature of the game, as doing things under pressure like aiming and trying to punch in codes is tricky and hard to do fast and properly. This can lead to some deaths and the game sometimes feeling like bullshit (which it can be, cough cough random ragdolls cough), but it's for the best to do your best to not get frustrated by them, as honestly most of the time it's funny especially in hindsight, and this game is truly at its best in a semi casual setting. Getting sweaty and mad decreases the fun of the game, especially on the higher difficulties. I recommend sticking to the difficulty that you feel is most fun.

The difficulty and challenge is quite fair up to Difficulty 7 I find. 8-10 is honestly bullshit though, especially if not prepared. It can be fun once in a while to try out the highest difficulty, as it is exhilarating to barely extract alive, but it does end up feeling so stacked against you that you feel forced to rely on the meta Strategems and Weapons, which does limit a fair few off of the table since some of them are just too niche to be viable to survive on those difficulties. I find that personally up to 7 for bugs, and 6 for bots gives the best balance of fun and challenge, and also still allows for most of the weapon and stratagem sandbox to still be viable as long as you don't play dumb.

A coop game is nothing without good coop, and this game has some of the best I've played. Coordinating with your team is great, and this is like one of very few Steam games where players will actually use the in-game voice chat as well as the text chat, and in-game callouts instead of everyone having to hop in a discord server and arrange a whole meetup and whatnot. Any match where at least one person has a mic is infinitely better than a silent one where nobody is speaking, as even just one person can help to coordinate different plans, choose which objectives everyone should be going to and doing, etc. If you're gonna play this game, HAVE A MIC. You will have a much better experience than without, though if you are stuck without one, the in-game callouts are a decent substitute.

Customization is a bit limited, unfortunately. There isn't any options for changing the colours of the armours or weapons yet, though that does seem like something that might be added down the line. There are lots of options for the player cards and titles, emotes at the stats screen and during the game, so that's good at least. Paint jobs for the vehicles are locked behind most of the Premium Warbonds, so that's unfortunate.

My biggest problem with progression is with the Ship Modules, which require Samples that you can find on missions. The requirements for the samples for the Modules is ridiculous, and maxing all of them out takes a long ass time. I still haven't done it in my 77 hours so far. I will do it eventually, but man having to farm commons and super rares takes so long. They really need a way to boost the amount of samples you get, maybe a way to multiply it based on the difficulty of the mission or something.

Overall, there is so much to cover with Helldivers 2 that I can't do it justice in a couple paragraphs (I was 4000 characters over the limit for this review and had to delete several paragraphs just to be able to post it). I highly recommend this game even if you don't have friends to play it with, since this community is one of the best I've ever seen a game foster. It's a great time, whether you wanna be a sweaty meta abusing nerd, or just a casual 2 hour killer with the bois. This game is excellent, and I hope the support continues for a long time.

The games is really fun, for me the game play loop just felt really repetitive. I personally did not enjoy it the more I played.
I could not give it a dislike as that might not apply for everyone. It really is extremely enjoyable.

The game is probably in the best state that it has been in for a long time. Ignoring the problems with Sony with their own attempted influence on the game, the 60 day plan for this made pretty much everything fun to use.
Hopefully the addition of a major content update is added soon.

Fun, but I'm not going to put up with a game that crashes so often and so inconstantly. It runs fine 90% of the time and then BOOM crashes on the final mission just before extraction. There's no way to rejoin a mission after a crash either.

A game that had huge potential but goes through ups and downs and lost nearly 90% playerbase due to devs not thinking what players want. But they are slowly making up for it and the game is worth it for hundreds of hours of fun with friends.

I was a little skeptical about this game when it first came out after watching a few videos on it, but after I finally give it a try with a friend of mine i really have to say i love this game. It's super addicting to clear out whole outpost with huge explosions and fighting off hoards of enimies all while running out of ammo and barely making it out. Honestly the only thing i wish they could add is a little bit more customization from the beginning. It,s also very hard to progress and see any type of reward for a while. grind aside its still super fun.

When this game first launched it was amazing. Even waiting 3 hours to play added to the anticipation. The co-op was buggy but once you got in, it was a blast. A couple months in and that's when all the BS started happening with Sony, Arrowhead vs the community, the nerfs. I stopped playing after 3 or 4 months but if I could go back and play this game for the first time with the homies, I would.

One of the best multiplayer/co-op games available at the moment if you enjoy action games. It's my game of choice at the moment as it's so much fun and I love seeing if I can survive in the harder difficulty modes. They're adding new content when they can. Has a great soundtrack. Most random players will work as a team and there's plenty of new people joining if you like passing on your knowledge. COME GET SOME!!! FOR SUPER EARTH!!!!

The fight for Super Earth is not only an exhilarating experience, it's challenging and often comical. Lots of replayability especially with friends. The community based world building and roleplaying really immerses you. Beautiful and epic score that never fails to captivate, but I suggest throwing on an oldies playlist and going ham with the LMG. This game nails game feel and gunplay. I highly recommend it.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☑ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☑ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☑ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☑ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☑ 9
☐ 10

Helldivers 2: A Brilliantly Satirical Space Opera
★★★★★ (5/5)

Helldivers 2 is a masterclass in combining intense cooperative action with razor-sharp satire. This third-person shooter puts you in the boots of a Helldiver, an elite soldier fighting for Super Earth's version of "managed democracy" across a hostile galaxy. And what a fight it is.
The game's greatest strength lies in its commitment to both chaos and comedy. You'll find yourself dropping into hostile planets with up to three other players, ostensibly spreading democracy through superior firepower. The tongue-in-cheek propaganda, over-the-top patriotic messages, and deliberately excessive military bravado create a brilliant satirical layer that never feels heavy-handed.
The combat is deliciously challenging, requiring genuine teamwork and coordination. Whether you're calling in orbital strikes, managing your limited resources, or simply trying not to accidentally shoot your teammates (harder than it sounds), every mission feels like a high-stakes adventure. The friendly fire mechanic adds both tension and hilarious moments of accidental betrayal, perfectly fitting the game's tone.
What sets Helldivers 2 apart is how it weaves its satirical elements into every aspect of gameplay. From the hilariously straight-faced mission briefings to the earnest declarations about spreading democracy through overwhelming force, the game maintains its brilliantly absurd tone while delivering genuinely excellent gameplay mechanics.
The progression system keeps you engaged, with new weapons, stratagems, and equipment unlocking regularly. Each new tool in your arsenal opens up fresh tactical possibilities, ensuring the gameplay stays fresh even after many hours.
Highlights:

Exceptional cooperative gameplay that rewards teamwork
Brilliant satirical writing and world-building
Challenging but fair difficulty curve
Diverse arsenal of weapons and strategic options
Regular content updates keeping the game fresh
Outstanding graphics and atmospheric design

Minor Drawbacks:

Can be punishingly difficult for solo players
Some missions can feel repetitive over long sessions

Helldivers 2 is a rare gem that succeeds both as a satirical piece and as a mechanically sound shooter. It's a must-play for anyone who enjoys cooperative gaming, dark humor, or just really likes spreading democracy across the galaxy, one explosion at a time.

FOR SUPER EARTH! 🚀

"We are so back, it’s so over." Repeat this until the end of the game. That sums up my experience. Amazing game, 2024 GOTY for me—but the developers keep playing with it, constantly changing how the game plays. With each update, it feels like I'm playing something different from what I bought at the start of the year. For some, this might be a good thing, but for me, the game I loved has changed so much that I don't even recognize it anymore. Sure, they've added good things, but the bad changes outweigh the good.

For example, they keep adding more tanky or annoying enemies that aren’t fun to fight. There’s no option to turn them off—you either have to play on lower difficulties or just deal with these new, annoying enemies that weren’t there when I first bought the game. They also keep messing with the game's balance like it's a competitive title, which makes your favorite weapons either useless or so overpowered that you don’t even want to use them. One patch your gun might be great, and the next, it’s nerfed into the ground, never to be restored to its original state.

This game launched perfectly, but with every update, it’s gotten worse. One update, the community is praising it, and the next, everyone’s hating on it. At launch, the realistic gunplay and ballistics felt important and made sense, but now guns feel like they shoot magic bullets and explode. Some might enjoy that, but I bought the game for the grounded experience it offered at launch. Now, we have a beautiful yet unrecognizable mess.

The core reasons I bought the game have been lost. Instead of adding to the perfect game we got at launch, they’ve kept changing the base formula. Instead of adding new content we got balance patches. Yes, the game is in a good state as I write this, but it will 100% change again with each update, I feel like the vision for the game has shifted so much that what made me love it in the first place is now gone.

(I have 500 hours on a different account if you're wondering that, I've bought the game at launch and reviewed it then but Steam won't show your review again if you update it so I'm posting it on a different account.)

I've invested a lot of time into the game. I can't recommend jumping into it at this point.

If you come in with zero expectations and then set them a bit lower for an online-only matchmaking FPS with "community" missions in mind, you may come out ahead.

I've had a lot of fun with people playing the game, but the developers continue to break and shoddily glue back together aspects of the game.

A huge problem with the game is that it lacks any real long-term goal or objective which makes playing it feel a bit pointless unless you're chatting with friends along the way.

There is nothing to work for, despite the arbitrary currency caps that are just meant to slow your progress, you will quickly run out of things to obtain.

The "warbonds" or premium credit-driven ( can be found free in-game) packs with cosmetics and some weaponry that manages to disappoint, only seem to shine a light on how empty the game is and how these "premium warbonds" are something you would expect at release.

Perhaps one day the game will implement some end-game and worthwhile goals to achieve, no risk, no reward. Currently though, the game feels empty, like a polished storefront with nothing in the backroom.

I fell for the 40 bucks and stuck it out for the long-haul. Left feeling short-changed. Heres hoping for a better future for the game.

TL;DR If you only have a few hours a week to play a hectic FPS with friends, this can be a fun pick. If you're expecting any sort of end-game goals or purpose for this "community" driven game, check your expectations.

Watch collecting samples, warbonds and requisition slips as they all have a different currency cap and it can be discouraging to play and realize you missed out on some rewards after the mission. Just spend them when you have them and (tab) to see your balances.

Our son was only 14 when he was diagnosed with Lukemia. The journey was long, filled with treatments, surgeries, and countless nights where we watched him battle not just the disease, but the overwhelming fear and loneliness that came with it.

But there was one thing that brought him back to life in those dark moments: Helldivers 2.

He found it during one of his hospital stays, and at first, it was just something to pass the time. But soon, it became more. As he played, he would tell us about his missions—how his squad worked together, how they fought back against impossible odds. We saw him light up with excitement, a spark of joy we hadn’t seen in a long time. The game gave him a sense of purpose, a chance to be a hero, even when he couldn’t be one in his own life. For hours, he’d immerse himself in that world, and for a while, the pain seemed to fade.

Sadly, he lost his battle. But those moments, those hours spent with Helldivers 2, were some of the happiest of his final months. We know that, for him, it wasn’t just a game. It was a source of strength. A way to feel like he was in control when so much of his life had been taken from him.

To the creators of Helldivers 2: Thank you. You gave our son a little piece of light when everything else felt so heavy. You gave him a way to feel like he could fight back, and for that, we are forever grateful.

I've been struggling with getting into multiplayer shooters and their competitive nature, but with this game being PVE, and everyone is collectively working towards the same goal, has made me enjoy shooters again.

I wish there was an option for a mixed review. I love this game, I really do. It has such an unbelievable amount of potential for awesome gameplay, unique storytelling, and crazy co-op shenanigans. Sometimes it achieves this. There are moments where it feels like everyone is truly contributing and steering the direction of the game. The problem is, for every fun thing in this game, there are multiple truly awful design decisions.

It's as if Arrowhead Studios were gifted a genius-level child and decided to raise it on a diet of Fanta and Elmer's Glue. It's frustrating that so many people in the community can come up with so many cool ideas for the game, but Arrowhead just does the absolute bare minimum.

Their content release cycle is an ouroboros of truly baffling decisions: Content gets added, the content is either broken or extremely underwhelming, the community gets pissed, Arrowhead says they'll conduct an internal review into their design philosophy, a month goes by, they finally add a modicum of fun to the content, they release something new, and it's either broken or extremely underwhelming.

Some examples of this: At one point, a new mission was added where the Helldivers had to land on a planet completely infested by bugs and defend drills that would pump dark fluid under the crust to destroy the planet. When the mission launched, it was borderline unplayable due to bugs spawning under the drill and almost immediately destroying it.

Recently, the Helldivers spent about two months and multiple major orders building a space station to wreak havoc on the enemies of democracy. The anticipation of this new mechanic was enough for players to overlook the fact that no meaningful content had been added in months.

The space station was finally built, and it was the most simple, barebones, awful mechanic ever. It's a glorified menu with three extremely basic, boring effects. Nothing new, mind you—just reusing stuff already in the game. When the Helldivers activated the Orbital Bombardment effect, it just ended up teamkilling people. It became so problematic that shields had to be added to everyone's loadouts. You couldn't even see the space station in the sky.

Now the station has moved, and the new effect is that, every now and then, some strafing runs will target enemies. Granted, it's much more playable and there is significantly less teamkilling from it, but that's not setting the bar high. It's somewhat cool for a mission or two, but it's just more strafing runs that we can't even control. We still can't see the space station from the ground (though the planes flying around all over the place are kinda cool!).

It might seem like I'm harping on the space station too much, and perhaps that's true, but it feels like the quintessential example of the constant frustration I experience with this game. Something that was meant to be awesome ended up being a broken, bare-minimum effort disaster that almost no one enjoys in the long term.

I respect that some people might find it fun and hilarious; I think it's great that you can have fun with that. I just wish they could implement these ideas in a way where everyone could enjoy it.

I want this game to be a shining example of how live-service games can buck their negative stigma by providing a simply good game without predatory, manipulative monetization. It looks like we're up to the "Arrowhead says they'll conduct an internal review into their design philosophy" stage, and unfortunately, given their track record, I think I know what the next few steps will be...

Helldivers 2 accomplishes what most live service games, owing either to publisher incompetence or corporate greed, cannot: a consumer-friendly and sustainable monetization model. The game is reasonably priced at $40, and the game's premium currency can be earned through normal gameplay. The FOMO tactics are kept to a minimum with a periodic rotation of Super Store items, so it's less of a Fear of Missing Out and more of an Annoyance at Missing the Window and Having to Wait for a Month.

This is worthy of praise all on its own. No keys and crates, no loot boxes, no limited production runs. Warbonds and Super Store items are logically equivalent to the expansion packs or DLCs of offline games. Personal orders, which are the daily incentive to play, can usually be completed with a concerted effort in a single mission on just about any difficulty above Trivial, and within a full operation if not. You don't have to grind for hours to get your daily bonus of medals.

I begin with all of this because I want to be fair. My experience with this game is not wholly negative, but the negativity happens where it counts the most, and that's in the gameplay. I may even continue to play once some issues are fixed, but I cannot recommend this game. The developers have proven multiple times over that they are incapable of learning from their mistakes, so the flow of gameplay over the course of a few weeks, even consistently playing the same difficulty levels and planets, is a roller coaster, but the jerky kind that gives you kidney damage and makes the kid behind you blow chunks into your hair on the big drop.

Arrowhead does not playtest, and they cut off their community feedback surveys mere hours after opening them, and such surveys are only (to my knowledge) presented in the Discord server anyway. There is no direct way to access them from within the game.

There are many issues with this game. About half of all Terminid missions I play end up triggering the Bug Breach bug, where the Bug Breach notification is permanently stuck on but no new Terminids spawn on the map; existing patrols are left to wander, but will not replenish once killed. This bug can trigger at any time during a 40 minute map, creating a massive inconsistency in difficulty, as the latter portion of the map will be an utter cakewalk. I have played Impossible missions that only feel Challenging, and Helldives that are merely Hard. This inconsistency in difficulty is exacerbated by RNG often swinging the spawns hard towards chaff or hard towards heavies, failing to achieve balance and considerably increasing or reducing the difficulty of a given mission.

I have no idea what a difficulty 8 mission is supposed to feel like, but what it usually feels like is a steady rhythm of encounters broken up by surprise BS. Examples of BS include dropping a 500 kg bomb directly on a Bile Titan only to have it survive and chase you down at high speed after its bile sack was destroyed, being instantly trampled from behind by a Charger or Alpha Commander that no longer makes noise due to audio issues in the game, and getting set on fire by your own Guard Dog Rover's laser. These are all readily noticeable within a few rounds of playing at difficulties where such targets spawn, which makes them something readily noticeable with even a modicum of playtesting.

On the Automaton front, Reinforced (Rocket) Striders display none of the characteristic red glow of other Automatons, have an armor scheme with few discernible weak points, execute fast-acting untelegraphed attacks, and deal splash damage that will ragdoll you into a wall several seconds of tumbling away if the explosion doesn't kill you outright. Even if the ragdoll impact doesn't kill you, it takes you out of the fight (read: removes your agency) for what feels like a long time.

To Arrowhead's credit, they have acknowledged that the game's ragdoll mechanics are excessive, and have announced their experimentation with solving the problem in the patch notes, but have not yet pushed these changes to the live servers.

Aha! Live servers! You admit they must have test servers!

Yes, it seems like they would be testing those ideas, doesn't it? Well, at the same time they've been researching this ragdoll problem, they've been preparing to roll out the Democracy Space Station, which is a mechanic wherewith the playerbase votes with its resources (samples, requisition slips) to move the station to a planet somewhere on the front lines of the Galactic War. The planet which the DSS orbits will gain certain advantages for the Helldivers there.

The advantage they implemented was a randomized map-wide 380mm friendly fire barrage. It makes no effort to target enemies or their structures, and it makes no effort to avoid striking Helldivers. It is, in effect, a mission-long meteor shower without any UI elements or visual cues to identify the strike zones. Arrowhead promptly responded to their bungling of a months-hyped game mechanic by increasing players' reinforcement pools and logging off for the weekend. They came up with a bit of lore about "mitigating the inexperienced gunners on board the station", trying to pass off their obvious failure to playtest and subsequent flimsy damage control as a kind of storytelling.

Do not be fooled; the narrative of this game is thinner than the toilet paper in an office building bathroom. And had anyone at Arrowhead stopped whiffing Pilestedt's farts long enough to speak up and say "hey, getting randomly shelled out of nowhere makes this borderline unplayable unless you're a masochist stimrunning everywhere", they wouldn't have pushed a bad feature and received a brouhaha of blowback in response.

Furthermore, they pushed a bad, untested feature while purporting to be testing changes to ragdoll mechanics. I expect those changes will also be untested, and that they are merely blowing smoke out their asses, but I will be perfectly happy to be proven wrong.

Don't spend your money on this game. Not until Arrowhead sits down as a team for a long, reflective talk about how games should be developed.

We contributed months for the DSS for it to be released like THIS? Congrats, you gave the bots unlimited 380mm bombardments that are CENTERED AROUND PLAYERS. Not objectives, not large enemies, the bombardments are centered around the players.

decent game but they need to fix those simple coop/host connection not find problem, it getting annoying buying a game and you can 9/10 play onley solo

To Arrow Head and its devs:

Going to be brutally honest, the Devs don't have what it takes to make this game what it should be. This game can be an absolute blast to play but can turn into the most infuriating experience with just one mistake. Get yourself killed and you'll get thrown into a meat grinder and if your base loadout isn't the best of the best (because maybe you wanted to have fun with other weapons) you just get killed over and over.

They claimed that the main focus of the game should be fun but they don't want the game to loose its difficulty factor. The problem is the devs don't have the skill to do that without just overwhelming you. Enemy patrols will just spawn right behind you. Kill and enemy trying to call in reinforcements? Anther one will immediately start calling one in. Were you trying to kill them quickly to save some time? Too bad, they called in a breach/dropship. Should of used the best weapons/stratagems instead of what you wanted to play with.

Invisible walls/bodies block your path, getting you stuck while being chased causing you to die. Watching your character stab themselves with a stim jut to be hit by an enemy immediately and cancels your heal. Certain enemy attacks that rag-doll you way too easily, rendering you helpless and killed. Stratagems bouncing wildly resulting in either killing you/your team or making it useless.

The DSS is the latest example that the devs are unable add fun things. It took so many Major Orders for this underwhelming addition for the game. As of right now, it's a glorified resource sink and planetary stat padder. No public hub, no additional exclusive DSS stratagems to call down, and no weapon of last resort option.

I don't think they can help themselves, they don't know how to make the game fun. They were so worried about the weapons not being OP that them nerfed the fun right out of the game. They wouldn't listen to feedback of how just nerfing everything was not fun. It took the player base leaving for them to even see this and buff the game. Even after that, they have secret nerfs, and "opps, we forgot to say that one of the buffs we mentioned in the update got cut out", Things that just leave a bad taste in my mouth.

I'm sure they will add things to the DSS eventually, but the problem is there are features it should of had from at the start. I just don't think they are able to see that. Right now they feel like a one hit wonder studio. They were able to make a really fun game but sadly don't know how to run a really fun game. I fear this game will die a slow death at the hands of a dev team that doesn't know what to do with what they made.

The DSS is finally online after long and hard work and the First Helldivers have generously donated to bring the firepower to the bots... Unfortunately also to their own people...

@ArrowHead:
STOP THE DAMN PLANETARY BOMBARDMENT OR FIX IT!!!

I thought being too close to the 380mm was bad, but this takes the cake... You're not safe on the whole map anymore and that's what me and the community worked so hard for... This is a joke or what...


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Deutsch:

Die DSS ist endlich nach langer und harter Arbeit online und die Ersten Helldiver haben großzügig gespendet um die Feuerkraft zu den Bots zu bringen... Leider auch zu ihren eigenen Leuten...

@ArrowHead:
STOPPT DEN VERDAMMTEN PLANETAREN BESCHUSS ODER FIXT IHN!!!

Ich dachte schon zu nah an der 380mm zu sein währe schlimm aber das setzt dem Ganzen die Krone auf... Auf der Ganzen Map ist man nicht mehr sicher und dafür haben ich und die Community so hart für geackert... Das ist doch ein scherz oder was...

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☑ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☑ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☑ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☑ 9
☐ 10

They keep making the game worse and FUCK SONY. every update it just get worse and worse, they still havent fixed crashes, and DSS just made everything worse plus they pretend to listen to community but they actually dont

It's painful to admit, but the early success of this game was a complete and perfect fluke by AH and is in no way a good representation of their competency as a game developer.

I've played over 500 hours and while I'm quite invested in the game I simply can't recommend it. AH has repeatedly made the most counter intuitive decisions that go against all common sense in relation to gameplay and the implementation of new mechanics. It's clear they have zero quality control or play testing and it shows.

They have an excellent artistic vision and knack for story telling and it is truly astounding what they have managed to squeeze from a dead game engine, but they are not good developers. Every major improvement has only been implemented after intense community backlash that is always (unfortunately) deserved, as the issues are always the result of irrational and truly bizarre decision making. The most recent example is a space station that the whole community worked towards constructing and looked forward to immensely; one of its 'perks' has been wiping out squads since it came online and is truly a terrible experience.

I think I've started to have enough. I'll still play, because there's still fun to be had, but It's clear the game is never destined for the truly great heights it may have achieved.

Countless MOs and so many planets lost to unwinnable scripted events just for a team killing garbage mechanic that is the DSS.

Who on the development team thought this would be a good idea?

I want to love this game but it’s so hard to keep playing these days.

Six months after launch when you finally think the game is shaping up and almost in launch ready state Arrowhead shows that they don't know what QA is.

I'll consider changing the review to positive when/if they learn what QA is. Until then new content added to the game is in an unacceptable state and takes weeks or months to be fixed to where it should have been to begin with.

This game is amazing, this game is flawed, this game is beloved by so many, this game is a real contender for game of the year. This game went through a rough time back in August 2024 with balance changes that people hated, but Arrowhead turned it around and made the game the most enjoyable its been since launch, this game is worthy of your attention if you like PvE multiplayer horde shooters where you can call in airstrikes and orbital lasers from the palm of your hand

But Sony doesn't want greatness, they keep showing over and over again that they don't want this game to actually be good, they want it to be theirs. Sony keeps threatening to force an unsafe PSN account linking to the game, which would lock out more than 170 countries who could play the game and did back before they embargoed the game back in may 2024, the game has been unavailable in those countries ever since, and Sony has not refunded those players who can no longer play the game.

This review WILL remain until all PSN account requirements are lifted and the game is relisted back in all of those countries, the world deserves Helldivers 2, Arrowhead games doesn't deserve this, and Sony can eat my ass. If it is announced officially that Helldivers 2 will never be relisted, and that PSN account linking requirement is permanently implemented, I will uninstall Helldivers 2 permanently in solidarity. Arrowhead games should purchase their rights back to Helldivers 2 and leave Sony in the dust, Sony does nothing but ruin Arrowheads hard work and scam its users, and I want them gone, or as good as gone. And I don't want this game to win any awards until Sony backs off, Sony deserves no praise for what they did to Arrowhead games and Helldivers 2.

First of The game IS Funny, hectic and genrally amazing....

It is just Sony who sucks yet again!

Don't by the game or spend money on super credits before sony learns anything

Game is top, best game I ever played. SONY is shit, quiting this game because of SONY, DO NOT BUY, DO NOT PLAY, they didnt learn anything at all ! This mandatory PSN account bulls***, this is corporate greed at it's finest. This game is not playable in 177 countries because of this PSN ACCOUNT bullshit, fuck Sony, fuck their investors and fuck their leaders ! DO NOT SUPPORT THIS CORPORATE GREED, BOYCOT THIS COMPANY THIS GAME !

Great game under the boot of Sony Tyranny. They are effectively stealing the money of Steam players who don't want to make a Playstation Network account. Again.

Sad as I enjoy the game but if Sony wants to do this for profit margins under the guise of "Safety" then I can uninstall the game and leave this negative review.

Jogo incrível para jogar com amigos, divertidíssimo. Ainda não joguei muito, mas pelo que joguei é sensacional, bastante itens para comprar à medida que você vai evoluindo, possui uma comunidade que realmente se ajuda, e a sensação de estar no meio de um campo de batalha com centenas de aliens e robôs, realmente deixam a experiência bem imersiva e, ao mesmo tempo, desafiadora. Além disso, a jogabilidade do game é um tanto diferente do que conhecia em jogos, realmente me impressionou.

NOTA: 9,8/10

Top demais!

Honestly I dont really leave reviews but i love this game a lot only issue is i spend damn near half an hour on a mission only for the game to crash on extraction, fun game really it is but losing progress like that is irritating when you are grinding medals.

Out of all co-op & glorified military games, HELL DIVERS 2 is no doubt the only game which has made its players special like a true HERO & not only they are on a journey to become a part of something great but also are the only last line of defence for SUPER EARTH

I express my utmost respect for the Arrowhead Staff who have presented a great gem like HD2 to us fellow players :)

I dont get much time to play, and this game is perfect to hop on smash some enemies of democracy with a very non toxic community. Best game to have a beer with.

After the patches and everything, this game still surpasses every other live service game you can buy. It's so refreshing to get a good game not made by an indie developer nowadays!

i am no longer able to play the game because of how much it crashes. Just today,i hopped onto several games,and people just crash one after the other,every single game. I havent been able to play for more than 30 seconds today without a crash.

This is absolutely the best game I have ever played! I have never had so much fun playing a game! I love how much detail and time was put into every aspect of this game! It is almost perfect. The only issue I have had with it would be occasional lag, but that is probably a problem on my end.