![]() ![]() The tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top way in which it sets up the ongoing war between the aliens and our homeworld, Super Earth, is a clear nod to director Paul Verhoeven’s film, and it lends the action a delicious sense of both humor and danger. Losing one Helldiver in the act of reviving another is a common occurence.From the opening cinematic, Helldivers wears its Starship Troopers influences on its sleeve. It’s especially risky when reviving squad members, as there’s always doubt as to exactly where in the proximity of the beacon one to three people are going to suddenly crash on. And while it seems obvious that you would avoid the immediate area around a beacon to which a phone booth sized hunk of metal is expected to plummet any second now, that little beacon can be overlooked when the bullets are flying (this is, of course, also a useful tactic for eliminating more troublesome enemies). The Helldiver’s requisitions arrive on the planet essentially the same way the Helldivers themselves did they’re dropped in from orbit. If you’re tapping away at codes, you are not shooting that horde of cyborgs bearing down on you, and you’re certainly not going to be able to take out that patrol creeping up from behind.Īnd then there’s gravity. Here’s the hitch: If one wanted to get technical, one could say it’s actually a three-step process, in that the first step is putting down the gun. This puts a targeting beacon in the player’s hand, which may be thrown into the field to indicate where the strategem should be deployed. Deploying a strategem is a two-step process which begins by using a communication device to input an authorization code, achieved by correctly tapping out an onscreen sequence for the desired strategem with the directional pad. These powerful tools also come with some downsides. Before long, the only options available become retreat or death. ![]() And, while those troops are being dealt with, more patrols are moving in and calling their own squads of heavy hitters, snowballing into an massive conflict. Within seconds, patrol units can call in reinforcements to do real damage. If a patrol spots the squad, they have to be killed immediately. At worst, these are small packs of a few enemies that can be easily dispatched, but they’re a tremendous threat to the mission. Enemy patrols roam the map, looking for your squad. On the ground, Helldivers plays with an interesting balance of stealth and combat. Every mission ends with a last stand scenario where the team must hold out against oncoming enemies for an extraction shuttle to carry them safely away, and at least one Helldiver must extract for the mission to succeed. Escort tasks will probably still be everyone’s least favorite thing to do, whether it’s leading a group of survivors or following a supply train, but there isn’t a whole lot of punishment received for failing objectives on a mission, so long as you can get off the planet. ![]() It’s a decent variety, and missions tend to offer a mix of objectives across the maps, rarely weighing too heavily on any one type of activity once the player is taking on missions with three and four objectives to complete. With tongue planted firmly in cheek, the sparse but effective setting material does just enough to allow the player to consider what they’re engaging in without distracting from the action, while delivering wry chuckles here and there. From propaganda messages promoting the idea that Super Earth is spreading “democracy” through the galaxy (by the totally legitimate means of conquest), to the flavor dialogue spoken by Helldivers in the midst of a firefight (“Have a nice cup of liber-tea!”), it presents a scenario in which it’s made perfectly clear that there are no “good guys” in this war, only conquerors. While there’s an absence of any real plot, the setting of Helldivers does enough to establish itself as a pointed satire of American exceptionalism, colonialism, and military pride. Given command of a ship, Helldivers are directed to venture into star systems controlled by three alien races which threaten Super Earth’s way of life, pressing forward in an effort to conquer alien homeworlds. Players take the role of a Helldiver, a special forces soldier trained to drop onto enemy planets from orbit as the tip of humanity’s conquering spear. ![]() Helldivers is a squad-based sci-fi shooter, presented from an overhead perspective. ![]()
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