Helldivers II (8th February 2024)

[Ike]

1 hour ago, Sheikah said:

 The whole story is a storm in a teacup though, to the point of people saying they'd quit playing a game they're enjoying. There was a pretty good article on Kotaku documenting the sensationalism.

Wonder if the people who got refunded are just going to buy the game again...

They must have known that adding the PSN requirement would then restrict what countries it would be available in though.

[Julius]

Someone made a Star Wars mod for the game and it looks INCREDIBLE

[Hero-of-Time]

Crazy numbers. I couldnt have been more wrong thinking it was sent out to die.

[Julius]

New trailer from TGAs:

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The sightings, rumors, conspiracy theories. They were all true. The ancient Iluminate civilization are back from extinction!

Defend new colonies! Confront new enemies! Take the wheel, or mounted gun, of your sweet FRV ride and charge into thrilling new levels of urban warfare on PS5 and PC.

New Helldivers II DualSense variant announced too:

 

Edited December 13, 2024 by Julius

[Julius]

Put 15 hours into this with a couple of friends over the last week, across three sessions (last Friday, Tuesday, and yesterday). 

Goes without saying from the fact we played this on a Tuesday: game is incredible.

Super fun, easy to adjust the difficulty so we can weave in and out of casual talk on lower difficulties and zoning in on higher difficulties, really funny to just mess about and kill teammates "accidentally" with friendly fire, sentries, stratagems, etc. Needing to put in a Konami code styled input for stratagems is genius, just enough to take your focus away from what's going on around you but fast enough to be worth it. 

Couple of bugs here and there, including a game where me and my two friends disconnected in-game but could continue to the end, despite party chat and everything else still working? This was at the end of a mission when trying to extract, so on my side I had to keep at bay hordes of the alien zombie dudes, whereas my friends had no-one on their end to keep at bay. Absolute pandemonium and I pulled it off  but we still have no idea what actually happened! 

Appreciate the Warbonds, so far I've stuck it out without shelling out more for the Premium stuff, and am on Page 6 of the free Warbond you start the game with. There's always cooler armour/weapons/whatever to aim for, which is really neat, and right now me and my friends are playing a game of "chicken" to see who caves first in picking up a Premium Warbond before the others follow suit 

Bugs are probably my least favourite enemy so far? Bit chaotic, them diving at you can be rough, but their missions have been easy so far (played up to Medium I think). In the middle are the Terminator dudes who are probably the easiest to take on, so we've taken on some bosses (through Challenging), but the sound design is so cool! My favourite enemy is honestly the alien zombies I mentioned before, the small city streets, the sheer number of them, etc., all calls for far more strategy than the other two enemies – even on Medium it's proved a sufficient challenge for us so far. There was one mission where we only had 10 minutes left on the clock and had a main objective left (escort civilians, which can be painful! And yes people got shot by our sentries, before you ask) but it really got us pumped up and focusing, and we managed to extract in overtime. Awesome stuff. 

Can't wait to get back to it  oh, and I love how varied the locations our too, just visually, very Star Wars-esque! And the music is stunning also! 

[Julius]

Beat my first Super Helldive (max difficulty) with randoms the other night; I actually disconnected from them during extraction on the final of the three missions (had this happen a couple of times, always a pain but ramps things up!) and so had to fight off SHD with 3 lives (reduced due to only me being in the lobby) which was pure chaos. Going in one of the guys commented on the chat on what a Lv 19 was doing in Super Helldive – I then proceeded to die the least  to be fair to him, there was no venom to it, I think he was just genuinely shocked (as was I). The community aspect of this game has honestly been brilliant and it's by far the most fun I've had playing multiplayer with randoms in the longest time, possibly ever! Just calling in items to help each other, for example on the intense World War field type planet I mention below I had my Jump Pack and me and one stranger had the entire map to cross to extract...so I call in another Jump Pack for him and we hop on over. That aspect of sharing and helping each other out is so pure and simple fun. 

Over the course of the last week I've gone from Lv 10 to Lv 22 just playing with randoms, and probably in about half the playtime. Accidentally joined one person on an Extreme dive and then things just escalated from there. Me and a friend picked up our first Premium Warbonds, I went with Polar Patriots because of the bulky Star Wars look to the armour and helmets, and I'm now on the last page of that, and like Page 7 or something of the free one. No doubt in my mind I'll probably be picking up another Premium Warbond sooner rather than later. 

Yeah, honestly, I love this game. At this point it's seriously getting in the way of me getting back to Infinite Wealth right now, probably a combination of the idea of being at a point where I feel like I *need* to grind (be it Dondoko or dungeons) in IW whereas I'm *happy* to grind it out in Helldivers 2, and that's no shade on IW, I think I'm just more in the mood for this right now  

Love the enemy variety (duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude the AT-AT/AT-M6 styled walkers of the Automatons?!), the stratagems are super fun (500kg bomb? Why the heck not!), only a couple of levels now until I get the Exo Suit and get to go all Metal Gear up in here. The planets have me genuinely awestruck at times, there was one in particular where it was very World War field feeling planet and I think it was my first game on Helldive difficulty? Super intense stuff, probably my favourite individual match I've played. 

So far my main loadout has become the 500kg bomb, Orbital/Napalm strike (orbital for Automatons, Napalm for Terminids/Illuminate), Laser Cannon and the Jump Pack. Primary weapon is the Scythe, having two laser weapons can take a bit of time to take things down, but the unlimited nature of the ammo (being cooldown-based) + how it slows some enemies (the AT-STs come to mind) or melts some bots after a hot second has worked out for me on every difficulty so far. I did pick up the Railgun to free up some requisition slips space (see below), so maybe I'll try that out, might need to research my next weapons loadout a little bit. 

There are like slight annoyances I've come across, but they're few and far between. Biggest is probably that I didn't realise requisition slips max out at 50k, so I've probably missed out on 30-50k just through simply not noticing it. Guess it's on me, but why the limit? Let me save, damn it! 

But yeah anyways this game is awesome  think I'm going to plan to hold off on the controller until I've put 75+ hours in, so that it'll be around £1 or less justified by each hour of play 

[Julius]

New Warbond announced, the Western-themed Borderline Justice drops this Thursday!

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Wanted! Dead or even deader: savage, freedom-hating fiends!

It's High Noon, Helldivers! Round up a posse and mosey to an untamed galaxy with this Premium Warbond overloaded with weapons, explosives and armour for this season and beyond.

Oh, we going all Red Dead and Star Wars western with this one  the Hover Pack! As a bonafide Jump Pack enjoyer I might be in for that alone! 

Quick update on where I'm up to – Lv 27 now, still like Page 7 of the free Warbond and on the last page of Polar Patriots.

Still having a great time 

Edited 6 hours ago by Julius