As someone who put a lot of time into the first title, nobody expected the game to do this well. It's a sequel to a top-down co op extraction shooter released like 10 years ago.
Goes to show-
Gamers have been wanting a fun drop in/drop out co op shooter for a long time. What's here is pretty great and will only become greater as updates roll out with new content.
Launch was a blunder thanks to the aforementioned explosion in popularity. Getting to play the game at all for the first week or so has been an unfavorable experience. Now that patches have started rolling out, this will hopefully never be an issue again.
This game flaunts ragdoll physics, difficulty, and volumetric fog with swagger. It's the perfect blend of fun, challenge, and beauty.
Explosions are a-plenty and getting launched or knocked over are common occurrences. While sometimes frustrating and sometimes deemed "out of your control," ragdolling around adds a tinge of spice not often seen in games these days. Makes the game feel more loose- or dynamic, with a sense of flow.
Aiming feels really nice with a blend of first person and third person sights. Getting hit or moving around will affect your aim, making cover all the more vital to success. Going prone and lining up the perfect shot feels really rewarding.
Co op weapons are a nice idea- where one player does the shooting, the other player reloads. However it takes too much coordination to use on the fly and the second player doesn't get to do much.
It requires player 1 to call in the weapon, wait for it to drop, pick up the weapon. Player 2 has to pick up the backpack that dropped with the weapon and latch onto player 1 when needed. This means player 2 must dedicate their backpack slot to only assisting player 1. Player 2 also doesn't need to manually do anything once attached to player 1. There is no reload minigame or anything. Player 1 unlocks a higher rate of fire. That's it.
The game is so chaotic at times, good luck having your player 2 ready to STOP firing their weapons and come latch to you instead. It's just not happening. Player 1 is better off using the weapon while wearing the backpack themselves.
What's here at launch are two enemy factions, the robots, and the bugs. Plenty of strategems that range from air strikes, special weapons, or backpack support items. Ship upgrades that require pickups found during missions. A "warbond store" that require mission completion medals to fill out. There's just enough variety and unlocks to give players who love a grind something to do. A good grind paired with easy drop-in co op makes for a really good formula.
"Super credits" are this game's premium currency and there's a shop that rotates every other day or so. This sounds pretty cringe at first glance, but there are ways for you to earn them for free. You can either redeem some credits via the warbonds store using mission completion medals- or find stacks of 10 super credits out in the field at places of interest littered around the maps with no implemented cap on procurement. Grind for as many as you like!
Allowing the player to earn this premium currency at all is a really nice gesture and makes the, let's be honest, "required" monetization pill a tad easier to swallow.
What didn't make the transition between titles quite yet are the alien faction and vehicles, with vehicles already announced as "coming soon." Once those get added and we reach a point where brand new stuff is added into the HellDiver-verse, the game will truly blossom into an all-timer must play. With Sony backing this thing hard, we can expect support and servers for a long time.
Goes to show-
Gamers have been wanting a fun drop in/drop out co op shooter for a long time. What's here is pretty great and will only become greater as updates roll out with new content.
Launch was a blunder thanks to the aforementioned explosion in popularity. Getting to play the game at all for the first week or so has been an unfavorable experience. Now that patches have started rolling out, this will hopefully never be an issue again.
This game flaunts ragdoll physics, difficulty, and volumetric fog with swagger. It's the perfect blend of fun, challenge, and beauty.
Explosions are a-plenty and getting launched or knocked over are common occurrences. While sometimes frustrating and sometimes deemed "out of your control," ragdolling around adds a tinge of spice not often seen in games these days. Makes the game feel more loose- or dynamic, with a sense of flow.
Aiming feels really nice with a blend of first person and third person sights. Getting hit or moving around will affect your aim, making cover all the more vital to success. Going prone and lining up the perfect shot feels really rewarding.
Co op weapons are a nice idea- where one player does the shooting, the other player reloads. However it takes too much coordination to use on the fly and the second player doesn't get to do much.
It requires player 1 to call in the weapon, wait for it to drop, pick up the weapon. Player 2 has to pick up the backpack that dropped with the weapon and latch onto player 1 when needed. This means player 2 must dedicate their backpack slot to only assisting player 1. Player 2 also doesn't need to manually do anything once attached to player 1. There is no reload minigame or anything. Player 1 unlocks a higher rate of fire. That's it.
The game is so chaotic at times, good luck having your player 2 ready to STOP firing their weapons and come latch to you instead. It's just not happening. Player 1 is better off using the weapon while wearing the backpack themselves.
What's here at launch are two enemy factions, the robots, and the bugs. Plenty of strategems that range from air strikes, special weapons, or backpack support items. Ship upgrades that require pickups found during missions. A "warbond store" that require mission completion medals to fill out. There's just enough variety and unlocks to give players who love a grind something to do. A good grind paired with easy drop-in co op makes for a really good formula.
"Super credits" are this game's premium currency and there's a shop that rotates every other day or so. This sounds pretty cringe at first glance, but there are ways for you to earn them for free. You can either redeem some credits via the warbonds store using mission completion medals- or find stacks of 10 super credits out in the field at places of interest littered around the maps with no implemented cap on procurement. Grind for as many as you like!
Allowing the player to earn this premium currency at all is a really nice gesture and makes the, let's be honest, "required" monetization pill a tad easier to swallow.
What didn't make the transition between titles quite yet are the alien faction and vehicles, with vehicles already announced as "coming soon." Once those get added and we reach a point where brand new stuff is added into the HellDiver-verse, the game will truly blossom into an all-timer must play. With Sony backing this thing hard, we can expect support and servers for a long time.