There is a craving for beauty in a person – a desire for the stars, a desire to see other planets, a dream to shred countless representatives of another civilization with a sharp bayonet. Not everything is Star Trek, science fiction can be different. Warhammer 40K, Starship Troopers, or at least Ender’s Game – no unnecessary diplomacy, only violence and destruction.
But there are shamefully few games about this. And released exclusively for PlayStation Helldivers – this is a real outlet that allows you to make all your deepest dreams come true: at least crushing bugs, at least driving over sparkling robots in a tank, at least conquering highly developed ancient aliens with brute force.
The indicators at the top right indicate that in 11 minutes one of our capitals will be destroyed. And judging by the yellow stripe, we won’t have time to do anything.
Democracy is a dish best served cold
A soldier who enlists in the ranks of the Hell Marines is first reminded that he is going to defend Super-Earth – an ideal planet where, according to statistics, 100% of the inhabitants are happy. There are no quarrels, no conflicts, no crime: and total well-being is hampered only by an external cosmic threat. That’s why young people from all over the world join the armed forces to fight for what is right.
Having put on massive armor with coats of arms, signs and patterns in gray and gold tones, the paratrooper gets his own spaceship and is free to go anywhere. The map on his bridge is arranged as simply as possible: in the center is the Motherland, around are enemies. If you go to the right, you will encounter huge beetles. To the left – you will meet robots who decided to defend their own freedom. And from below you will find the Enlightened Ones, who are essentially to blame only for the fact that their weapons are more powerful than ours, and the government decided to declare war for preventive purposes.
While you are deciding on a task, propaganda looms here and there: political reports, statistics on everyone who has killed, killed and is killing right now. A war is not won alone – soldiers just like you Helldivers work together and the galaxy map is redrawn in real time. Each sector highlighted as ours was truly won through collective effort. Each of the three fronts is assessed by influence points: at the time of writing the review, Hell Marines directed all their efforts towards the beetles, but the war with high-tech aliens is not particularly popular.
On average, one conquered planet brings 8 – 10 influence points to the global standings. To capture one region (not even to win the war) you need more than 3 thousand points. And when the troops advance to the enemy capital, an epic battle is coming, which also requires collective efforts. The defeated race will drop out of the race until the others are defeated. And the battle will begin again! And once again! And one more thing. And one more thing..
However, our task is small – choose a region, a planet of suitable complexity and go to clear.
Don’t spit in the well – democracy will fly out
Having chosen a planet that suits his www.metal-casino.uk abilities, the private must complete several missions on it. In a small area of the territory, tasks are marked: capture the area, launch a rocket from the mine, deliver cargo, escort survivors after the disaster.
The location is always boring and monotonous. It could be an icy desert, a swamp or sand dunes – the essence remains the same. Apart from the points that are important for the assignment, there is nothing worth studying. Another thing is important: designed as a small labyrinth, the level allows you to perform wide maneuvers and retreat for a long time. Which is damn important.
The planet is teeming with enemies. If you stop and look at the radar, it will show all living things around. Nobody knows about the paratrooper yet. By timing your movements, you can stay in the shadows and complete the mission without attracting attention. If you do have to face someone face to face, all is not lost: this is just a scout, and you have 2-3 seconds to kill him before raising the alarm. But anxiety is a big problem.
Enemies begin to teleport onto the paratrooper’s head and fall out of the ground. There are not only dozens, but hundreds of them. They run faster, their weapons do not overheat and do not fail. An ordinary mortal is practically powerless in front of them. And this is where the pride of the Hellborne Troopers comes into play, stratagems – beacons the size of a tennis ball, which are aimed at artillery.
The following picture will bring special pleasure to Warhammer fans. The paratrooper selects the desired stratagem, throws it into the midst of enemies, waits a few seconds, and a six-barreled turret lands from space in a huge metal capsule, which opens fire on all living things. Meanwhile, a huge humanoid robot has already arrived at the call of another “ball”, in which you can crush enemies five or even ten times more efficiently.
The point is that the enemies on the planet never end, and the only way to fight back is to kill everyone faster than they can call for help. In a minute of silence (before meeting the next patrol) you can have time to activate air defense, launch a rocket or blow up a hive. Then you need to get to the evacuation point, call your people, wait for one and a half minutes and fly away peacefully.
Returning to the ship, having counted the experience and upgrade points collected, it is useful to see what new stratagems have become available and what weapons have been unlocked. You can dress up the paratrooper a little (who has probably already received a promotion), and then it’s time to rush into battle again.
It seems that this is peculiar Crimsonland. Alone, this is how it is: before us is a meat shooter with a top-down view, in which there are always more enemies, there is always not enough ammunition, and the rescue ship is always just a little bit away. Missions are short and almost identical, there are few types of opponents. But it’s not even close to real Helldivers. For some reason, a paratrooper alone cannot cope with even a difficulty level slightly above “easy”.
No matter how much you feed a paratrooper, he still looks at democracy
When a company of four people gathers (especially at one console), the combat power of the squad increases exponentially. It’s clear why: you can cover all four cardinal directions at the same time, move in dashes, assign someone responsible for the map, and generally shoot more.
However, instead of starting with ultimatums to defeat enemies, the party turns into a suicide party. First, some smart guy throws a stratagem at the feet of a friend – and a second later he is hit by a box of ammunition that fell from the sky. Okay, let’s throw another ball, this time calling an ally. And he, of course, decides to fall on someone else’s head. But the monsters don’t wait and attack from all fronts.
Friendly fire? Certainly! The paratroopers’ weapons are powerful and knock out fellow soldiers in a couple of shots. Therefore, when a comrade is surrounded, you cannot simply fire in his direction, hoping to “help”. By the way, this is also true for any automation: anyone caught between the turret and the enemy is obviously dead. There is even a separate button for this – “fall on your face”, in case of a volley.
What else? Everything is fine, you can kill each other with a grenade, run over with a car, burn with a flamethrower. My personal favorites in terms of idiocy are players who set off explosives to destroy an entire enemy hive without checking where their friends are. In the end, they do not have time to run away, and the “explosives” are not allowed to leave the screen. Everyone’s dead, hooray!
Teamwork in Helldivers above all. This is a powerful cooperative, where real victories can only be achieved with an intuitive understanding of each other. You can only take four stratagems into your hands, so you will have to agree in advance who will have ammo and treatment (there are no classes in the game). Someone needs to take a scout droid with them, and someone needs to take a dreadnought with them.
And of course, the main thing: for any action in the game, be it a quest or calling a partner, you need to knock out a certain sequence on the d-pad: up-down-down-right, for example. Or eight buttons. Or ten. If you made a mistake on the last character, please enter it again. And opponents won’t wait. In the most tense situations, the team defending the air defense is ready to curse the crooked captain who loses his sequence for the fifth time.
Playing with random people in such conditions is a lottery, as always. Sometimes you come across reasonable people, in a team with whom you can even complete complex missions without raising an alarm (which is almost impossible). And with others, they knock you down six times a round with their own machine gun, because they can’t figure out that they need to shoot in different directions.
In all this madness of random deaths, murders, in attempts to cooperate and understand each other under the onslaught of endless hordes of enemies, you completely forget that the maps are deserted, and the tasks are always the same. What the hell are deserted – we quickly go around through the right flank, the radar doesn’t see anyone there, at the same time we’ll collect bonus materials for research!
Two things are surprising about this. Firstly, a player of the first level is not very different in destructive power from a player of twenty-five: he simply has less choice of stratagems, skills and weapons. With the right tactics and using other people’s bonuses, a newcomer can fit into the team quite well. In general, it all comes down to skill.
Secondly, Helldivers competently dumps all available content on the player. New features appear in your inventory exactly when you have enough time to play with the old ones. New quests (escort, cargo delivery, collective cart pushing) open only at new difficulty levels, so you don’t suffer from monotony and boredom. After all, all three available enemy races behave in completely different ways, and it won’t be possible to deal with all three at the same time. So the war for the safety of Super-Earth will be long and glorious!
All those who like to fight in the name of the Emperor simply must join Helldivers, because these are their childhood fantasies come to life. This is the best action game based on Starship Troopers, Warhammer 40K and any other alien encounter story. These are short, aggressive and intense battles that consist of accidents, stupidity, epic victories and complex tactics, where every overheating of a weapon is punishable by failure of the operation, and every BMP falling on the head of a giant beetle is accompanied by happy laughter.
The only thing that’s hard to say for sure is how it will play out in the long run. “Perks” and new weapons will someday end, all the funny stories will exhaust themselves, and the third, fourth and fifth global wars will continue. And here doubts creep in: is there enough potential?? Probably not, you’ll get tired of it someday. So it’s not "amazing". But everyone must reach the twenty-fifth level!
Pros: refined mechanics; cultural references; original global campaign; great co-op; complex and intense missions; the ability to kill a friend with a drop pod.
Cons: at high difficulty levels the game often turns into absurdity; There is no point in playing alone; content exhausts itself over time.