A Mercenaries-like game with the movement and shooting of MGSV, all in service of a persistent galactic war against Starship Troopers-style bugs and Terminators? Yes, please! More Jello, mom!
I'm not sure exactly how we got here from the top-down Helldivers 1, which I found to be fairly rote, with the emphasis on friendly fire being more frustrating than funny due to its perspective. When the trailer for this came out, it gave me flashbacks to Risk of Rain 2, one of the worst games I've played in recent memory. Thankfully, Arrowhead actually put some time into learning how third-person shooters work, and the gameplay loop is satisfying...
As long as you're using the right equipment.
See, the number one problem with the game now is balancing. There are like 3 actually viable weapons, and 4 or 5 viable stratagems (supply drops summoned by inputting a dpad code like you're playing DDR, and they can be extra weapons, like anti-tank rockets, emplacements/sentries, or artillery bombardments) at the time of writing. Most are useless at higher difficulties. Many of the stats shown on weapons and items are outright false.
This isn't a huge deal, as I'm sure it'll be fixed soon, now that they've ironed out the server issues that plagued the game at launch, and it is an entirely PvE game anyway. But it does go against the "use what you think is fun" mantra when I'm basically forced to use a Breaker and Railgun because the higher difficulties spam giant armored bugs at you and armor penetration doesn't seem entirely functional. I do find the Robutts much more fun to fight, anyway.
I'm having a great time with this. It seems there's much more that will be added soon, including mechs, and I'm interested to see where this goes considering the ongoing storyline aspect of it.
[DISCLAIMER: I have only played this with random people, with voice chat off. Sony's insistence on enabling the Dualsense mic by default, with little notification to the player, always results in a ton of godawful noise if you have voice chat on. Also, the only person I know that would play this with me refuses to buy it because he's busy with Crisis On Infinite Aeriths. I'm out here spreading Democracy by myself. And I'm loving every minute of it.
UPDATE: Score (8/10) removed because the recent patch has completely fucked things up. Will update this and add rating again when the dust settles because this might be another Evil Dead situation.
UPDATE 4/30/24 - Settling on a 5/10 for now, as the developers continually tinker with things, often making them worse. Maybe instead of releasing a new battle pass that has One useful item in it every month they should focus on fixing the goddamn bugs that only get more prevalent with every patch.
I'm not sure exactly how we got here from the top-down Helldivers 1, which I found to be fairly rote, with the emphasis on friendly fire being more frustrating than funny due to its perspective. When the trailer for this came out, it gave me flashbacks to Risk of Rain 2, one of the worst games I've played in recent memory. Thankfully, Arrowhead actually put some time into learning how third-person shooters work, and the gameplay loop is satisfying...
As long as you're using the right equipment.
See, the number one problem with the game now is balancing. There are like 3 actually viable weapons, and 4 or 5 viable stratagems (supply drops summoned by inputting a dpad code like you're playing DDR, and they can be extra weapons, like anti-tank rockets, emplacements/sentries, or artillery bombardments) at the time of writing. Most are useless at higher difficulties. Many of the stats shown on weapons and items are outright false.
This isn't a huge deal, as I'm sure it'll be fixed soon, now that they've ironed out the server issues that plagued the game at launch, and it is an entirely PvE game anyway. But it does go against the "use what you think is fun" mantra when I'm basically forced to use a Breaker and Railgun because the higher difficulties spam giant armored bugs at you and armor penetration doesn't seem entirely functional. I do find the Robutts much more fun to fight, anyway.
I'm having a great time with this. It seems there's much more that will be added soon, including mechs, and I'm interested to see where this goes considering the ongoing storyline aspect of it.
[DISCLAIMER: I have only played this with random people, with voice chat off. Sony's insistence on enabling the Dualsense mic by default, with little notification to the player, always results in a ton of godawful noise if you have voice chat on. Also, the only person I know that would play this with me refuses to buy it because he's busy with Crisis On Infinite Aeriths. I'm out here spreading Democracy by myself. And I'm loving every minute of it.
UPDATE: Score (8/10) removed because the recent patch has completely fucked things up. Will update this and add rating again when the dust settles because this might be another Evil Dead situation.
UPDATE 4/30/24 - Settling on a 5/10 for now, as the developers continually tinker with things, often making them worse. Maybe instead of releasing a new battle pass that has One useful item in it every month they should focus on fixing the goddamn bugs that only get more prevalent with every patch.