I'm a couple hours in at launch so far and I'm really liking Helldivers 2. A 4/5 game atm, will be updating that score as major updates release.

However I could easily see myself coming back to the game pretty regularly even if there was no promise of future updates. Whether with friends or randos, Helldivers 2 is good fun!



Extended Thoughts

I really enjoyed the first game, and I think Helldivers 2 is a perfect transition from stylised twin-stick, to photorealistic 3rd person. Something as simple as the combination of having weapons need to "catch-up" to the crosshair and how ricochet works, perfectly translates the conditions that would lead to friendly fire incidents in the first game.

Also while the art style shift was confusing at first. After playing the game, I think it effectively uses this art style change to add to gameplay. Dark/fogged areas being illuminated with gunfire is both visually impressive, and mechanically engaging.

Hoping for vehicles, weapon upgrades/customising, and The Illuminate (or some other 3rd faction) to be added over the next year(s). I honestly don't have any complaints other than the obvious launch network issues and missing vehicles

(Vehicles which I think added nothing but flavour to the first game. I do think could be the final piece of the puzzle that pushed Helldivers 2 to be a 5/5).

[Edit 03/03/24: The game is continuing to hit all the right notes and I saw the mech leak. Yeah this is a perfect co-op game.]

Best game Ubisoft has made in a long time.

Outside of some issues with combat (mixture of balance and bugs) which was ultimately still great, the game as a whole is pretty dang good.

If you like exploration platformers, absolutely worth checking out.

(Note: I beat the game with a 67% percent complete save. I would absolutely recommend doing side stuff when you feel like it, but this is not a situation where you want to 100% before credits. Using those late game abilities in post-game clean-up feels like the intention.)


Extended Thoughts

For the most part, the core of the game feels like if the UbiArt Rayman games hand a new instalment that was an exploration platformer instead of level based. The Prince of Persia-ness comes mostly from the aesthetic/narrative. However I will say one of the early upgrades that is this games equivalent to the Sand of Time trilogy "rewind", does A LOT for the puzzles and combat.

Both the puzzles and platforming I have the least to say about, because it just worked. They both made sense, and felt great to do. Really snappy, whenever I repeatedly failed a harder optional platform sequence, it felt like my fault.

I want to stress the combat is actually very good. If you have ever gotten sucked up in a "Action Game (good)" aka, "Character Action" game, especially DMC, you can feel the passion from the design team oozing with what they put in here. They really went above and beyond what you would expect to be here in a game of this genre. I think PoP: TLC has the most mechanically deep combat of any 2d Exploration Platformer. The optional combo tutorial NPC does a fantastic job of highlighting the kind of stuff you can pull off, with what on the surface looks like very basic combat.

My only real issues with the combat are there is some mild jank with hit/hurt- boxes, frame timing, and bugs. There were multiple occasions where I dodged something, only to "get hit" on recovery of the attack, then teleported to another platform, like there was a safety check to make sure I wasn't being popped OoB (one time this did actually put me OoB during a boss fight in the forest).

Also damn I play a lot of action games, and some of the later bosses were kicking my ass with extremely strict parry/dodge timings on Normal difficulty. I felt like I needed 2/3 runs to know what the attacks actually did, because the windup was so short, I couldn't sight read some. The fact there was also a "Counter Hit" system where late parry/dodging would actually incur MORE damage taken, felt unnecessary (should have been reserved for higher difficulties for sure).

I do want to highlight specifically one later boss I want to beef with. This boss has ranged attacks, that after its 1/4 health lost cutscene transition, gains command grabs. One of these grabs is a counter stance the boss enters, and doing any hit to them triggers an attack where you lose half your health. This is one of the only times in the game there is "grey health", and if you dont get hit for an amount of time after getting grabbed, you will gain the health back. Except this is boss that does mass amounts of range attacks, so you will probs get hit for 1hp and lose that 50%. To beat this fight you had to learn to not attack when there was an opening, and instead sit around hoping they whiff the counter, instead of just looping into another long attack string. I feel like if the active frames for the counter weren't immediate, this wouldn't have annoyed the shit out of me so much.

If I had issue with this, I shudder to imagine more casual players fighting some of those bosses.

I bring this boss up not just because I took that shit personal, but it also highlights a level of dedication. Clearly the combat designers knew what they wanted to make, and holy hell you can feel them being limited by what was available. With such a small combat toolset, they are really pushing it to its limit. That same boss while kicking my ass, also would take more damage between attack phases if you understood how to extend your combos. You could either hit them with the 1-2-3, or if you knew your stuff, you could launch them, full aerial combo, air-reset, 2nd full aerial combo into helm splitter into a super.

Honestly my biggest takeaway from finishing the game is just let them make a 3d follow up! Everything here on the Puzzle/Platform side would translate great to 3d, especially since it would mean we could bring back wall running. No I'm not just trying to get a "Warrior Within but good with no caveats" game.
I would love to see what this team does if they get to no-holds-barred make a fully realised Character Action game (I mean fuck, this game not only does the rule of 3's rival fight, but that rival fight is JUST Vergil)

Equal parts interesting and jank. Truly a product of early Kickstarter.

Every cool thing here is countered by something that really needed a QoL pass. Or just an extra couple of "no new features" development sprints. While playing you can see issues stemming from an ambitious team, lead by industry vets, that were all learning UE4 while making a tight budget, multi-platform release. (Seriously, did you know they were trying to also release for Wii U and Vita for a while there?) There is a lack of polish that it would be easy to argue exists because instead of addressing issues during dev, the team instead has to prioritize Kickstarter stretch goals (they even had to resort to getting a publisher anyway because they absolutely didn't budget in enough of a safety net).

I don't regret kickstarting this back in 2015 (holy shit time is crazy), but I wouldn't say it should be high on anyone's list of Castlevania game's they need to play.

I would however love to play a sequel that hopefully learned the lessons the indie scene already figured out. While getting to put the time in to polish the core instead creating public funded stretch goals.

Gravity Rush was a fun romp, Gravity Rush 2 was a chore.

Before going into specifics I'll say I found Gravity Rush charming as hell (I 100%'d it and gave it 4/5 stars). GR2 is ONLY for people who already liked the first game.

If you played GR1 and feel the need to play GR2 instead of watching a "Gravity Rush 2 full movie" youtube video (which I do recommend over playing the game). I would strongly suggest to just do Story Quests (also maybe knock it down to Easy later to compensate for lack of upgrades).

Doing otherwise makes the game worse. I honestly believe if I didn't decide to pivot from doing every Side Quest, to beelining the story after Story Quest 9, I wouldn't have finished it.

Extended Thoughts

I'm gonna get pretty negative here.

Gravity Rush had some rough edges, but was unique enough to carry someone through to the end. Gravity Rush 2 still has those rough edges, plus everything new it adds is awkward at best, tedious at worse.

The core mechanics of Gravity Rush 2 haven't been improved at all from the original. So the issues with camera wrestling, awkward geometry collisions, and barebones combat haven't been addressed. When the concept was fresh this was more forgivable, in a sequel it sticks out.

Instead of improving the core, it is "built upon" with a style switch system. On top of the default, there is now a lighter style that lets you attack faster+weaker plus float better. As well as a heavier style that lets you do big slow hits and fall faster. This does nothing for me. It's awkward and almost solely exists to use in situations where the game locks you out of your default kit to make you use the light style to jump to a goal, or use the heavy style to slide fast. Outside of that, there are times where it makes sense to switch for combat, and being able to fall slower or faster has it uses. But I don't think the style switch overall really does anything for the core gameplay.

If instead of the bloat of the style switching, Gravity Rush 2 added some kind of timing mechanic to traversal and made combat more fluid instead of the constant stop/start, it would have done wonders.

Outside of toolkit "additions", the other new feature is stealth sections that make me want to rip my hair out holy shit they suck. Enough of the Side Quests had them, that I just stopped doing Side Quests all together.

So why finish it?

If you ignore all the extra content in favour of just doing the main story (and got the game cheep) Gravity Rush 2's worst crime is just slightly overstaying it's welcome (also those stealth sections holy shit).

There was still a part of me going "oh this is cool" or "oh this music is fun" or "oh X from Gravity Rush 1!" to carry me through to the "Final Chapter". In which case I was locked in until the actual end of the game.

Light Spoilers
Gravity Rush 2 has an erupt "ending" after an honestly pretty gnarly (for its age-rating) looking boss fight. Then after talking to a new NPC at different locations a couple of times, it starts the "Final Chapter", which is what fans of the first game would have been waiting for this whole time.

I stress, while not fully worth playing the whole game just for it. The Final Chapter is solid closure for loose narrative threads and characters from the first game. (If you told me the Final Chapter was originally bonus content for Gravity Rush Remastered, I'd believe it. It honestly just kinda happens as a replacement for a strong ending for Gravity Rush 2).
Light Spoilers Over

With Japan Studio sadly being closed and the talent breaking off into many smaller studios. If we every get a spiritual follow up to Gravity Rush (assuming after Slitterhead actually comes out in another 5 years), I would still love to see one with less jank, and more of those good tunes.

OH! Not to leave this rambling as all negative, credit where its due, Kohei Tanaka obviously kills it. The music is easily the best part of the game. While nothing hits the high of Douse Shinundakara, plenty of songs rival the quality of the rest of GR1's OST.