I am unplugged from a lot of advertising, but this seems very much like a game that is spreading due to word of mouth/direct exposure rather than purely marketing driven. I know that I usually wait at least a year to pick up games, especially multiplayer games since I’m almost always playing those solo. Enough people I know actually got this one and praised it, though, leading me to break my habits and pick it up.
The game itself is mechanically good, but the important thing is that socially excellent. A fantastic game to have fun with friends. That gives it an evergreen nature
Fun with what?
How’s the general community when playing with randos? I bounced off the first one because of toxicity.
Mostly fine. Some people will kill other players to take the samples they collect (in game credits for upgrades) which is just silly because all credits are shared by all players.
Pretty good. Just used common sense. When you join a group. Talk to them on your mic. See what kind of people they are. If they don’t respond. Maybe move to another group
Fun is the only metric that matters.
It’s been running pretty much perfect the last week or so.
I bought it at launch and it wouldn’t work at all so I refunded it. When the first major patch came out I have it a second shot. Very happy I did.
Still has pretty bad matchmaking, lobby joining, disconnection, and crashing issues, but the in game bugs are far fewer.
Ok? I’m sure all 700,000+ people playing are all having a bad time.
I doubt they’re all having a bad time, but it’s certainly not “running perfect” and is still riddled with server issues and bugs, albeit not as bad at release.
The point is that it doesn’t have to be perfect to have fun. Lots and lots of games are imperfect and still fun to play.
I didn’t say it needs to be perfect to have fun. You said it was running “pretty much perfect”, which it’s not. I’m just pointing out that it still has lots of technical issues because your comment claims it doesn’t. Some people might not want to buy the game until the technical issues are worked out and I wouldn’t want them to be mislead by your comment.
The game is very fun but a hard crash two seconds before you board an extraction shuttle after an intense 40 minute mission, or being stuck running the other half of your OP by yourself and failing because your team left and matchmaking some replacements is bugged is not fun. It’s perfectly understandable to want to wait until these issues are fixed before you spend $40 on something.
For me and all my friends “pretty much perfect” is how it’s been. We’ve had no crashes, no matchmaking issue, etc. Sucks if that’s not been the case for you.
FYI: I initially refunded the game because it didn’t work at all for me (couldn’t launch the game without crashing immediately).
Yeah I call bullshit on that. These issues are still pervasive and will pop up at least once in any extended play session. This is true not just for me and my extended group of friends, but for any randoms I meet as well, across both PS5 and PC. You could certainly go several days without crashes as those are becoming less frequent, however matchmaking is still very bugged. If you booted up the game right now and attempted to join lobbies without using quick play, you’ll immediately notice that you’ll fail to join most of them. If you play one mission in an operation, and your teammates leave or disconnect, there’s a 50/50 chance that the matchmaking will allow anyone to join your game unless a friend specifically joins on you. If this happens you have to abandon the operation entirely to get matchmaking to work again. This limits the amount of medals you can earn and also disrupts planet liberation and defense. SOS beacons are still entirely non-functional. People are still spawning onto other players ships and getting stuck behind the freezer pod wall.
I’m a huge fan of the game and the devs are working hard to fix things but let’s not be disingenuous here.
Too bad about the invasive anti-cheat. Sounds like a fun game otherwise.
If you play on linux then you don’t have to deal with kernel anticheat. But it might also not work in the future, but right now it’s gold on protondb.
I bought it after waiting for the server issues to resolve.
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It’s a third person 4 person squad based shooter wherein you’re dropped onto randomly generated maps and must complete a main objective, with random secondaries and extra collectibles placed around.
You can bring a limited load out of “stratagems” that you can call down during the mission, which can be anything from dropping explosive ordinance to dropping secondary weapons or defensive turrets.
You complete the missions to gain experience and different currencies used to unlock more stratagems and equipment, with more options unlocking as you hit certain level thresholds.
The shooting model is interesting in which projectiles are aimed based off where the actual gun of your character model is pointing, so where the game is fun and chaotic at easier difficulty levels, precision, strategy, and loadout choice become increasingly important as you go higher in difficulty levels, giving it a range from “blow a bunch of shit up with your buddies” to “complete objectives and extract by the skin of your teeth through extremely tight and considered tactical play”.
Friendly fire is a huge deal in this game, you can crush yourself or friends with drops, easily accidentally kill each other with your guns or with turrets trying to shoot past you at enemies, it can be hilarious, but also puts major importance on lines of sight and caution.
You can unlock certain loadout options through a sort of battle pass in which you spend points acquired in gameplay to unlock equipment in tiers, with the next tier becoming available after spending a certain amount in the overall pass. $40 USD for base game, another $20 for a second battle pass track that has alternate loadout options. Most of the really good unlocks are in the free pass, though, and after about 45 hours I’ve earned enough currency through gameplay to unlock the premium pass without paying real money.
That being said, that only unlocks the pass, unlocking the equipment within it requires in-game currency, so I wouldn’t say it’s pay to win since you still have to put in the legwork yourself, and getting the pass without paying extra is more than doable, compared to the first game which had a ton of DLC that could only be bought and instantly unlocked.
Personally, I really enjoy it, the game looks great, plays great, it can be as infuriatingly difficult as you make it through difficulty choice, but it’s a great time with some friends, or even with randoms.
The super credits used to unlock the second battle pass can also be found in game in a relatively healthy amount (including in the first battle pass), making unlocking that second battle pass very possible without spending real currency.
Sounds similar to Warframe, thoughts?
Also, is there any singleplayer ability?
It’s not nearly as fast-paced or mobile as Warframe, and Helldivers is much more about the chaos you cause with your buddies than grinding for gear and materials. You don’t have to worry about mods or damage types (dealing with armored enemies and fortifications is the most you’ll have to worry about), just shoot bugs/Terminators and call in an airstrike or orbital bombardment on anything guns won’t kill. I’d say it’s closer to Left4Dead than anything else.
You can drop by yourself if you want, but it is an always-online, live-service game, and the focus is on co-op.
Ah, alright, thanks!
You deploy in a team up to four people, kill some bugs/robots, complete some objectives, and then exfil.
It’s third person, but clicking right joystick gives you ADS and the game never mentions it.
Bought it on a whim and played a couple games. Not too hard to figure out, there’s just zero instructions on how to complete objectives.
What makes it different is everyone plays the same objectives like “defend this planet” and people have to participate or the planet is lost.
Not the best game ever, but for $30 it’s cool enough.
Yeah, my friend group found the kb/m control was RMB and MMB together for ADS.
Interestingly the controls and control type (Tap/Hold/Press/Release) are very customizable which is another awesome thing.
You can change a setting so that tapping RMB is ADS and holding RMB is the standard aiming.
You can even have it remember the type of RMB you want to use per weapon .
It does have really excellent rebinding options. It even has a setting to remember whether you were in first or third person last on a per weapon basis
Hate to nitpick, but isn’t it 40 bucks?
Sales come and go.
It took me forever to finally salute the flag in training. Not sure why that was so hard to trigger. The instructions were told once his to do it and I accidentally clicked though it so fast I missed it. Took me 10 minutes of walking around trying to salute.
I’m doing my part! I’m not normally into this type of game but I’m here for the propaganda!
It’s fun, but extremely raw right now. Lots of balance issues, random disconnection issues, game stability issues, occasional game breaking bugs. More fun with friends than solo or randoms. Wait for a sale, though if $40 is nothing to you, then I guess go for it.
What balance issues are there? I want to play with some friends but they have a habit of metagaming and killing the joy.
Man, I love the singleminded drones downvoting me just because I didn’t say this game is perfect. I still like this game a lot, I’m just saying it’s got flaws right now.
-There are a lot of fun primary, secondary and support (big guns) weapons to use. The gun play is very fun. Cool weapon models, cool weapon SFX, cool VFX. Unfortunately, only the automatic shotgun and arguably the incendiary shotgun or SMG are viable at any difficulty past the beginner stuff since the ones I mentioned are the only ones with enough DPS and/or ammo reserves to be useful at that level.
-Support weapons are the big guns. All of them very cool. Unfortunately, at difficulty 5 and higher, your team encounters multiple enemies during each swarm wave with heavy armor - heavy armor that is untouchable except to a scant few weapons that can pierce that armor. GG no re if your team doesn’t have a competent person bringing one of these. At the moment, the meta is just use a railgun for everything, not because it is overpowered, but because it is the only weapon that isn’t severely undertuned.
-General difficulty balance: OK, so the game sells you this idea of being a badass space soldier who gets to slaughter hordes of bugs or robots, right? But at higher difficulties, the meta shifts from being DOOM guy lite into being scared little babies who need to stealth past all the enemies on each map in order to succeed.
There’s more I could nitpick but those are the big balance issues imo. Like I said, very fun, but expect to be frustrated by bugs and balance issues the more you play.
DoctorButt, you are saying an excellent game isn’t worth $40. If Helldivers 2 to is not worth $40 I don’t know what games are worth that. Despite some bugs this game still provide excellent entertainment and lots of fun with friends. And that’s what you are paying for. And you don’t need railguns.
However the game is needlessly difficult right now because all the enemies have 100 percent armour penetration and they are basically useless. This will probably be fixed in the next patch. It doesn’t mean it’s not worth the price.
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Railgun is the best support weapon by a wide margin and many orbital strikes are just bait. Many of the primary weapons are mediocre and the secondary weapons there’s basically only 1 good one.
That’s said I played a lot of Helldivers 1 and trust that balance and new progression will come.
… I’ve already hit level cap in-game and am almost fully capped on all the samples.
Playing with friends is great imo. If they meta game I suggest just really leaning into a chaotic roleplay.
If you don’t use the Breaker shotgun and the Railgun support weapon, you’re effectively handicapping yourself. Thats the main issue.
The unlockable SMG works just as good as the Breaker IMHO. Railgun is a must-have though. Enemy armor needs a total rework.
Well deserved. Awesome game.
