HELLDIVERS™ 2 Reviews

Helldivers 2 is a great game and i had tons of fun on it but the reason why i am writing a negative review is because of the kernel level anti-cheat it uses (nProtect GameGaurd) from what I've heard it doe not fully delete itself and it is buggy as hell and it doesn't even do its job correctly and I've also heard that it runs in the background now i know you can check task manager to see if its running but it can hide itself as it has very high privileges. I have uninstalled the game and GameGuard using third party uninstaller and it has found leftover files and i don't even know if its fully gone as it is a rootkit and has more windows privileges then me so it can hide itself and even higher privileges then the user is what i have read. So for now i won't be playing helldivers 2 for now not until they get a different anti-cheat such as easy,battle eye,etc i know there still not the best anti-cheats but at least their reputable as apparently in the past game guard has had some bad rep in the past. games fun but garbage anti-cheat and maybe i will play it again in the future if they start to use a different anti-cheat but for now no as having some sketchy ass anti-cheat on my machine is something i don't feel comfortable having. also for anyone wondering a kernel level anti cheat has full access to your machine and has admin privileges sometimes surpassing yours as it is in ring0 (kernel level) now i know that many other games use kernel level anti-cheats but i know that they are reputable. please switch the anti-cheat i really did have lots of fun in this game and i do wish to play 10/10 game 3/10 anti-cheat (at least its not the worst of the worst)

To start this off, I want to say that Helldivers 2 is one of the funnest games I have played with friends, when it works. Unfortunately however, after a year fixes, patches and changes to Helldivers 2, it still only works half the time. Since launch, this game on PC has had a rather large crashing problem. I've not let it bother me too much and have tried to look past it because the game is fun. However, these crashes have become more frequent, to the point that every other drop into a mission has crashed mine, or a friends game, since the new Servants of Freedom warbond released. These crashes also tend to happen more often when playing with friends than it does solo, and we aren't running this game on PC's that can't support it. Alongside these crashing issues, Helldivers 2 doesn't run particularly well either. Regardless of what settings you run, it still stutters and runs fairly sub-optimally, which is just outright disappointing this long after initial release. The Helldivers community is quick to defend this game from criticisms. However, what I think would be more productive, is wanting the people in this community, the people you ultimately play with game to game, to have a more positive experience and for their game to run as well as it can, regardless of PC specs. It is clear to me that outside of people's individual PC specs, this game has huge problems with player connectivity, crashing, and general game performance, and I think for a game as big as Helldivers 2, and as dedicated a community as Helldivers 2, that for these problems to persist as badly as they do this long after launch, that these issues shouldn't be nearly as bad as they currently are. As stated above, I have looked past these problems because the game is quite fun, but something has to give, and these things need attention.

came from playstation and loved this game, will not let me play with any of my playstation friends now that ive bought the game TWICE. crossplay "works" but it doesnt

Drop in, shoot bugs, blow stuff up, accidentally teamkill. WOULD DIE AGAIN AND AGAIN FOR DEMOCRACY! 10/10

Game is amazing. THE CONSTANT NETWORK ERRORS ARE NOT. Hd2 has been effectively unplayable for me for the better part of a month, as 90% of missions end with me or my team being disconnected, forcing us back to the ship. This problem has been talked about for over 10 months, and they still haven't fixed it. Be careful when purchasing game as you will want to play it all night, but after the 20th disconnect u will almost certainly punch a hole through your monitor...

Helldivers 2 delivers an absolutely thrilling combat experience, with every battle feeling intense and cinematic. The game is a nonstop visual spectacle, making every second on the battlefield feel exhilarating. However, after around 50-60 hours, the gameplay may start to feel repetitive. That said, it still provides an incredibly satisfying gameplay experience and is absolutely worth it. 👍 8.5/10

Starship Troopers as an action comedy, shot by Francis Ford Coppola. It has beautiful explosions, bleak landscapes, the same tone that Verhoeven took towards Heinlein's work, and a bunch of simple, satisfying, and well-interlocking mechanics. Even the bugs are fun. Pun not intended initially. Occasionally I get thrown into a prone position and am able to "surf" around while prone at running speed. Highly recommend the game overall, even if you're not normally a fan of multiplayer games. The comedy of the game evens out the normal edginess other games might inspire, much like Deep Rock Galactic and/or Team Fortress 2 do (in wildly different ways, all 3 of them). I've had some amazing cinematic moments at all levels (have played up to Helldive difficulty at this point) mainly due to the multiplayer interaction.

---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☑ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ---{ 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 ---SCORE { ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☑ 9 ☐ 10 I love this game but the bugs (not being able to get out of fast recon vehicles, not being able to interact with objectives, stratagems and grenades bouncing off of stupid things) make it extremely difficult to play sometimes, I will 100% change this to a 10/10 if these bugs are fixed. And a lot of the content costs money to access, or absolutely absurd amounts of grinding, but I still enjoy playing this game and will continue doing so. EDIT: I am simply an idiot and did not realize that I can't get out of the car when I am viewing the map, changing my review to a nine out of ten, will become a ten if grenade and stratagem bounces are fixed.

> Watched Starship troopers before hand > Watched Terminator before hand > Watched Battle: Los Angeles before hand > Booted up Helldivers 2 > First game I get absolutely curb stomped by a Bile Titan 10/10 would play a third game

You know the developers know what they're doing when right click closes out menus... In all seriousness, easily one of the most fun games I've ever played. The overall game-feel is stellar, from the movement / physics / gun-feel / atmosphere / lighting / music / enemy diversity. The emergent gameplay is always a good time. And then you take into account the (currently) 3 different enemy rosters (Terminids / Automatons / Illuminate) that all feel so different to go up against, it helps keep things fresh. Fair warning the remainder of this is an anecdotal rambling as I think of things. The overall live service aspect has been great, with the addition of new weapons to try out, the new faction to go up against (at the time of writing Illuminate has been out a little while now). My most favourite recent addition was the FRV vehicle (jeep) which is a blast to hoon around the planets on. If only we had a means to flip them back over when you eventually take a tumble and land on your roof! But I guess it rewards careful driving! The devs have been transparent with their direction, and balance passes have for the most part been in our favour (aside from one, which was not long after reverted). I've been playing since launch and whilst there initially were some hiccups in terms of bugs/crashes etc I really can't complain currently. I was initially playing on a 1060/8700K, so for all intents and purposes I had to bump everything way down to make it playable. Since upgrading to a 4070S/7800X3D and I must say it looks gorgeous and runs smoothly. It's been a good while since I've crashed. There's the occasional bug here and there no pun intended, but they've slowly been getting squashed as time goes on. The latest one I noticed was occasionally the FRV tires being blown out, but still showing as fine, nothing game breaking. I'm a sucker for the grind, so it's nice to have the ability to find the super credits to get the warbonds for free (aside from the time, but it's time well spent having fun). The early game was fun unlocking all of the different stratagems and ship upgrades. The late game is a grind for samples for the latter upgrades, and then the gradual hunt for the super credits is the slow trickle until the next warbond drops. I'm 2 levels away from the current levelcap of 150 around 560 hours deep, which for the sake of clarity is pretty much for bragging rights only, there are no benefits of leveling past around level 30. Early on stratagems are level gated, after that it just gives you player titles. Difficulty-wise, the difficulty progression was good. Early on you get slowly introduced to the enemy and mission types. i.e. tier 3 difficulty might task you with killing a charge or a bile titan, whereas in a tier 9 they're just an enemy that you can be pitted up against multiple times throughout a mission. Plenty of side objectives to complete on later difficulties to min-max xp. Missions are timed, ~40 minutes for a standard main mission or ~12 minutes for the smaller scale 'kill the waves of enemies' ones. But don't let that put you off, it's the whole 'gunning it to extract, to escape the horde' moments that are part of what make this game great. The current highest difficulty (10) can have it's intense moments, but with a competent team, they're very much doable. For the most part I currently have been sticking to 9's, but even then, sometimes the game director decides you're going to have a bad day. However not as drastic as say, everything going wrong all at once on Darktide. Difficulty levels are unlocked by completing a chain of 3 of the previous difficulty. I.e. completing 3 tier 5 missions unlocks tier 6, and so on. With each chain being locked to whichever planet you want to play on. The environments are nice and varied. For those unaware, each mission takes place in a circular area of the particular planet you choose to dive onto. Each planet has a different biome, think desert dunes / snow / snow with ice / jungle / rolling hills, that kind of thing. There are modifiers per planet, so maybe one has earthquakes that occur so often, one might have an EMP style weather effect that makes you unable to call in stratagems for a short time. Another might have blizzards, or sandstorms, etc. With the Illuminate being added the planets they're on have some urban environments, which is a nice shift. The areas aren't gigantic, but they're not tiny (aside from the intentionally small levels for wave-defense / elimination mission types). Up until the FRV vehicle dropped, we were on foot (aside from slow lumbering single person mechs), and it didn't feel bad running from objective to objective. The different point of interest keep things interesting as you might be hunting around for supercredits, samples and even just ammo if you're running low. The stratagem system is really solid. The call in method of d-pad/arrow key is great. I would definitely recommend any new keyboard players to rebind their stratagem inputs to the arrow keys so that you can WASD run with your left hand and mash out call-ins with your left. Sounds kinda janky but trust me it's pretty much mandatory late game when you're getting overrun. The stratagems themselves are wonderfully varied. From the eagle strikes (think strafing runs, bombs, rockets etc) to orbitals (barrages, railcannons, precision strikes) to turrets (gatlings, mortars, flames, lightning towers). Then there are all of the different types of heavy weapons you can call in (LMG, HMG, autocannon, rocket launchers etc) the list goes on. Much of the variety from the game comes down to your loadout choices i.e. maybe you want to focus on burning everything, sure, use a call-down flamethrower, napalm strikes and an orbital that calls down armageddon for your foes (and your team if you're not careful!). Multiplayer is great with friends or randoms. The comm-wheel removes necessity for verbal comms if you're so inclined, but my overall experience has been a positive one. The emergent and often triumphant comradery with randoms makes it a joy to play. It's a rare sight coming across those with malicious intent. Disclaimer there is friendly fire, but most of it is accidental (and often hilariously so). I could probably count on one hand the times I've dealt with griefers in 500+ hours. And even then, if you're hosting, you can always kick them. And if someone was to kick you, you get put back into your own instance now, so you don't lose any of the samples etc the team collected (so long as you can then extract). Helldivers 2 is steeped in satire, and doesn't take itself too too seriously. The over the top super earth anthem, the crazed battlecries as you murder hundreds of giant bugs. This goes hand-in-hand with the physics based combat which can lead to some funny moments. One time I tossed a grenade down a bug-hole to destroy it, then a stalker (big invisible bug) rushed me from behind, flicking me into said bug hole with said grenade, killing me instantly when it exploded. Not even mad.