Helldivers 2 is the new standard | Review

all right I'm going to say it hell divers 2 has set a new standard for live service games moving forward and I mean that in the same vein that Elden ring altered public perception on exactly what a AAA game can be and how balers Gate 3 showed how quality and passion could overcome monetization hell divers 2 is blazing its own path and I'm hoping many more will follow in their footsteps I sat down today to write a review and I'll be honest with you I'm not really good at reviews but this is still a review but it's more than that it's a collection of my experiences playing hell divers 2 looking at the most meaningful parts of that experience reflecting on that and seeing what that might mean for games moving forward so yet again my friends I ask you for liberty for manag democracy Lock and Load and let's Dive In To Hell diers [Music] to [Music] now I want to start with the premise of Hell divers 2 as I think it's one of the most important key ingredients as to why this game is resonated with me and many others beyond all of the other things that the game does exceedingly well like many I love Starship Troopers the themes of the movie flew right over my head I was a kid at the time when I saw it but it had guns bugs space travel and a shower scene which was more than enough for my prepubescent boy brain to be enthralled with the movie got him yeah S sim got the bug also I'd like to personally thank 1990s Denise Richards for single-handedly flipping the switch of wait girls aren't gross so with hell divers 2 there really wasn't much of a barrier to entry to making me interested in playing the game I've always loved the premise and it's something that's always stuck with me and I think that that's true for a lot of people if you think about it some of the most popular games ever made or even popular media that's ever been made has always leverag the premise of Against All Odds and we aren't strangers to plots of Galactic Wars fighting against unknown enemies with the power to erase our existence it's an iconic premise and that's likely the reason why the game has been so widely adopted logging in and playing hell divers 2 feels like the first time playing Halo 2 with friends I know a lot of people have made the comparison between the Halo games but it really is just like that the chaos and how quickly you can feel overwhelmed the stakes at play and the music oh my God the music well I don't think that any game is going to have the impact of Halo 2's theme a cup of Liberty the hell divers 2 main theme song slaps the theme alone has already amassed over 1 million views on YouTube hell divers 2 starts off with the two things necessary to make a great game iconic because you can have a great game but that doesn't necessarily mean that game is going to be iconic hell divers 2 is because if you think back at the most iconic games of all time Mario Brothers Pokemon Legend of Zelda Doom Final Fantasy Halo all of these games have something similar in common which is a premise that many players regardless of their background can get behind and also a theme song that absolutely hits and this is one that definitely does because I can't tell you how many times I've been diving in with friends and I'm humming the theme song as we're fired down onto a planet there's just something so motivational about that theme song and when it's actually played in game that just makes for this incredibly Dynamic combo and you could tell that before they even made this game they were already thinking about these kind of things they weren't necessarily prepared for the level of success that the game got but they were still thinking about all of the things necessary to make this game great but even more so to make it iconic the game feels great to play and the sound design is next level and anymore nowadays that's anything everything that you could be asking for setting off one of those icbms just to hear the sonic boom that follows is so damn satisfying controls are responsive weapons feel tactile enemies respond to damage in a way that you would actually expect them to and enemy kills are so gratifying no matter how big or small they are and I think that that's something that's really important especially in a game that revolves around fighting hordes of enemies fighting is the core gameplay Loop so making sure that your kills feel rewarding is important every weapon feels different you can see the damage that you're doing to the enemies where parts are flying off of them their armor damage they're missing a leg or an arm some of them are bleeding out when I call in a stratagy I get this awe inspiring display of fire and viscera the game reacts in a way that you want it to the game almost seems like your imagination is on the screen it's funny that while conically I am a dispensable drone of super Earth I feel like a superhero hell divers 2 does an incredible job of giving the player opportunities to have these main character moments drawing comparisons back to Halo I still remember this one moment in a campaign where I knocked a covenant off of their ghost dodged a shot from a wraith used a rock as a ramp launched myself into the back of a Scarab detonated the core and then drove the ghost off the back as the Scarab blew up in the background moments like that are the reasons why we play games moments that make us sit back and say damn that was fun hell divers 2 gives you those moments every single time you drop just the other night I'm playing on a higher difficulty three bile Titans spawned with a wave of bugs spitters are raining Fire On Us From a Distance depleting our last reinforcements I'm the only one alive there was one last clutch of eggs to destroy I hail married a 500 kg bomb perfectly into the nest mission complete I make my way for Evac fighting off waves of enemies chasing me as I drain every last round I have into them I run into a crash site found some ammo fire off a few more rounds got to Evac and successfully escaped all the while my teammates are cheering me on there is nothing more satisfying than playing a game like this hell divers 2 does this really good job of making you feel like the main character in a game that you're not the main character it's these overwhelming odds that you're pitted up against these massive waves of enemies that you're fighting all at once but also the overwhelming Firepower that you can let loose on a battlefield because your strategems your Small Arms fire your heavy weapons are destructive and damn do they feel good to use but they're limited you have to pay attention to whether or not not you're not reloading properly and tossing half a MAG on the ground as you're running away you have to make sure that you know when and where to use some of your strategems because even though the game is giving you the tools to be able to do anything that you want you have to pay attention to when and where you're using that stuff otherwise you're going to leave yourself in a hard spot later on in the game and it takes a while for you to realize not really that long but it takes a while to realize that the strongest thing the strongest strategy you have are the three other teammates that are on your team that's three times the guns three times the strategems and those give way to Hero moments that you're playing with other players rather than just the cool things that you pull off by yourself it's when you turn and look and you see one of your friends getting overwhelmed and they're just so happens to be another bug or another horde coming from behind them about to attack them you jump in help out do what you can you do your part those moments are incredible those those backtack moments where we're taking on hordes of enemies together barely surviving getting out by the skin of our teeth it's just so damn rewarding and it's also leading to an incredibly vibrant and really passionate Community around this game and I can't help but think that this was in arrowhead's design and I think that's where the game really shines teamwork and Community Building hell divers 2 isn't even a month old yet and the game subreddit has already amassed over half a million members putting it into the top 1% ranked by size that's not just because the game is popular it's because other players want to be in a community of other people that are playing the game the theme of Hell divers oozes with camaraderie we aren't playing Call of Duty which inherently pits us up against Real World beliefs or other countries We Are One people fighting for the survival of mankind we are brothers and sisters in arms fighting for a common cause I can't help but think back to an AS gold reacted to one of my last hell divers 2 videos saying that the game reminds us of how beautiful online gaming can be because it has the power to bring us together regardless of where we're from or the backgrounds that we have which is the aim of a narrative of a game like hell divers 2 that's how the game is built it's trying to make sure that everyone from everywhere is playing together metah humor turns into this kind of language that starts bridging social gaps just like we used to hear people with World of Warcraft say for The Horde now we're hearing people say sweet Liberty or let's spread some managed democracy this serves as a type of language to make sure that people feel included when you hear somebody saying something like that you know that they're one of your people they are like you all the memes compilation videos and superar related propaganda support this feeling of community in a common cause hell divers 2 is very much a game built from the groundup to be a Bastion for collaboration and finding friendship mechanically the game has missions that require multiple players to be able to align satellite dishes carry data drives open product lines and more there are crew served weapons which aren't something that we typically see in other games where one person is firing the weapon while the other one is stabilizing it and reloading even in matches where I've played pugs with nobody using a microphone hell divers 2 is still the most Cooperative game that I have played in a long time players pinging the map pinging enemies assisting other players and taking risks to save their teammates when I reflect on how Hell divers 2 puts teams first it's no wonder that the CEO has taken a hard stance on not adding PVP to the game if they did it would undermine the very purpose and meaning of the game now I will say this because the conversation around inclusivity in video games especially with the sweet baby ink stuff has been kind of going through the presses lately and I've seen a lot of people call for change in Hell divers too and it doesn't really make a lot of sense to me people asking for more inclusivity gendered capes and things like that in a game where it's not needed because it's already the most inclusive game you could ever play It's one common people fighting for the greatest cause of all time the right to exist there's no more powerful motivator than that and the triaa industry would likely shy away from a premise of a game like this because they think the satire would be lost on people fighting for Liberty fighting for managed democracy people not necessarily get that we've already seen that a few people haven't either thinking that the game is promoting fascism but that's just Twitter being Twitter with that but ironically the game is already the most inclusive game you could play there is no skin color there is no gender there is no identity other than hell diver speaking of the cause that we're fighting for recently Arrowhead Studio CEO Johan pead answered questions regarding well how we liberate planets saying I've seen many hell divers 2 post about Planet Liberation amount at Peak concurrent users the community is able to liberate high amounts of planets but as soon as the peak passes the enemies manage to take the planet back each planet is seized constantly think HP regen this means that at low concurrent players planets lose Liberation percentage it's a push and pull any great game has a great story however what if that story was told by the players and directed by the developers that's the question that Arrowhead Studios has set out to answer and it's one of the greatest narrative choic of our time I want agency in my games I want to make an impact and I want to see the world respond to the things that I do it's largely one of the reasons why I loved balers Gate 3 the game responded to me and to itself and it just made the game just that much more engaging to play initially I wasn't sure if I would like the premise where other players actions could affect my actions and impact the game I mean what if they aren't doing what I want to do and then I realized it's not about me it's about us what do we we want to do Johan's post alludes to the idea that we as players can coordinate outside of the game to focus our efforts and in an interview with PC Gamer he further revealed that the game has a game master Joel who pulls the strings and nudges us in a direction depending on our actions reading from the article directly pead says we have a lot of systems built into the game where the game master has a lot of control over the play experience it's something that we're continuously evolving based on what's happening in the game and as part of the road map there are things that we want to keep secret because we want to surprise and Delight pad also said that Dungeons and Dragons has been a major inspiration for Arrowhead the studio aims to replicate collaborative reactive storytelling of tabletop gaming in Hell divers 2 acknowledging the differences between designing a campaign for a small party versus millions of players it's the same format when you're building that for millions of players it's just that you can't get as person with every individual but you can still do some twists and turns Arrowhead says it has predictions about how the war will play out and has devised set pieces that it thinks will be significant but in true tabletop fashion the story will change based on player behavior in fact it already has game master Joel has already had to grease the wheels for the enemy a few times when the hell divers Community proved a little too efficient at spreading Liberty felstead continues with there have been some sudden movements where maybe one planet was too easy or one was too hard and Joel had to get up in the middle of the night to give automatons a bit of reinforcements so players don't take the Planet Too Quickly we all remember Malon Creek oil and blood ending in utter defeat only for our forces to be redeployed to the liberation of veld an easy Victory meant to reignite our resolve I love being a part of an active Story one that is driven by the community itself and I think Arrowhead has tapped into something really special here players want to be a part of something something greater than just playing a game and Hell divers 2 is delivering that in a way that I don't think any other game has outside of maybe Pokemon go at its peak very few games make you want to reach outside of your own Community or collaborate with others on a massive scale this game never fails to impress me at every single turn it seems like they already thought of the greatest the best the most perfect thing to do for that situation and even reading back on some of their older articles where they were talking about how they wanted to have an individual impact on gameplay they wanted to drop in on matches give people free strategems throw in some extra enemies do some crazy stuff just to mess with players on an individual basis well sadly because of the massive scale the game is grown to because of how popular it's become they haven't been able to really do that we have seen some instances of it but they wanted to do it more often than what they're able to now but they're repositioning and they're gracefully taking this massive success of theirs and pivoting in ways that they need to to make sure that the game maintains the success that it has and with all this massive influx of money that they're getting from all of their sales I'm leading to believe that with everything that they've done up to this point how well they've handled the launch even though it did have server issues that they eventually fixed I think the game's just only going to get better I tend to bounce off live service games outside of the occasional MMO but that's not to say that I don't like live service games it's just that many of them do not deliver the kind of experience that I'm looking for and lack the quality to keep me engaged for long enough to keep playing them far too many games today are released with so much focus on the contents of their battle pass and the progression through payment that they completely forget that they have to make a fun game first I'd be lying if I said that I knew I was going to like hell divers 2 when I first started playing it it's a live service game game and reflecting on how poorly many live service games have been made over the last few years why would I end up liking it however hell divers to embodies what their CEO's belief is and that's that you have to earn the right to monetize this actually makes me think back to fortnite and memes aside that game is incredibly effective at doing this as well to my knowledge there's no content that's barred or requires payment to play I always found it odd that many studios were trying to make their own fortnite but then end up making garbage games that aren't fun and lock the most important things behind pay walls in Hell divers 2 you earn everything that you need to play the game and unlock content you can pay for Cosmetics but it's an option you can easily earn super credits just by playing the game I haven't felt pressured at all to spend money in Hell divers too heck there is nothing in the game that's even pushing you towards even going into the cash shop to begin with no battle pass popups no discount on currencies and even if you go into the cash shop the most you can buy is $20 a stark contrast where in many games today $20 is the cheapest option that you have thanks for buying our $70 game would you like to buy $150 worth of in-game currency I just ended up enjoying hell divers 2 so much that I upgraded my version of the game I became a super citizen hell divers 2 embodies a lot of great philosophies ones that are endemic to successful games and Studios it's in the game The Narrative the community and its monetization hell it's even in the way the studio runs its business as the CEO just claimed recently that after their immediate success they would not overhire just to eventually need to lay off a practice that has been all too common in the video game industry and we're witnessing The Fallout of instead of making me feel like I need to spend money I want to spend money hell divers too makes me want to spend money because I want to support the game because I want to support the studio because I want them to make more games in the future that's really important and it's a value proposition that's been lost in the ancient Tex a feature complete game that isn't begging for my money at every single turn a game that's not overpriced doesn't have overpriced things in it and I can earn everything just by playing the game just a foreign concept nowadays and what's crazy is is that while playing this game I've been reflecting on a lot of my views on triaa games on live service games and I don't have a problem with in-game shops I don't have a problem with live service games I have a problem with bad games and games that want to try to Gaslight us into believing that the only way that they're going to get better is if we pay them more money it's the games are too expensive to make anymore well you're the ones that are making them too expensive you're the ones that are overspending in the first place the funny thing is is that they're not gaslighting us they're telling the truth they cannot keep these games afloat if we're not spending money on microtransactions on Battle passes and overpriced titles and all these different things best part about that is we're already voting with our money Suicide Squad kills the Justice League well that game's not going to survive nobody's even playing it right now and the few people that are are definitely not spending enough on microtransactions to keep the game afloat for over a year uh what's the other one skull and bones that one's dead in a year that's I would actually put money that game is dead in the water before the end of the year on maintenance mode nobody's going to be playing it and nobody's going to be spending the money on microtransactions 10 years in development oh man there's no way you're going to make that money back I'm voting with my wallet hell divers 2 is not a game without flaws weapons need balancing armor isn't calculating damage reduction strategems are wildly one-sided at times and major orders to liberate single planets can leave players without the opportunity to participate at or reap any of the rewards with that said hell divers 2 is good at what matters and it makes it really easy to forget and forgive any issues that the game has I only ever hyper fixate on issues a game has if the game itself isn't fun to play sure missions can get repetitive and guns aren't balanced but damn does it feel good to land my pod on top of a bile Titan to perfectly land a strategy and clear a wave of enemies to extract a mission with a ton of samples to save my friends from certain death and only moments later for them to kill us all because they brought a mortar to a bug Mission hell divers 2 is fun just as simple as that the momentto moment gameplay is addictive and chaotic you feel like a god one minute and you find yourself running and screaming the next it doesn't beg for more money its narrative is constantly evolving it cares about its players it actively engages with its Community it adapts to player feedback and has brought a lot of people together this is what a live service game should be this is what live service Games should strive to be this is the beauty of online games I love this game this is one of the greatest games that I've ever played especially a game that's Co-op I put it right there in the same rankings as balers Gate 3 or as Elden ring or as anything else that's been incredibly impactful and the way that I write about games or talk about games or games that I want to make content about or games that I just want to play originally I had another mark on this paper where I was going to talk about how I think that the game should have a campaign or some type of single player options outside of just you know playing with pugs and then I realize and think back to exactly what the CEO said which is a game made for everybody is a game made for nobody that's very much true this game just needs to be itself it doesn't need to change it doesn't need to do anything other than just fix some of the core issues that the game has and then just keep pumping ing out more content and they have plenty of content that's scheduled I think that this game is going to do incredibly well I think it's going to thrive to be honest with you and it's primed to do so because many live service games are getting stale for a lot of players a lot of people are looking for a new home Destiny 2 players have been screaming at the top of their lungs people are getting tired of Call of Duty I don't think fortnite's probably really going to go anywhere but you guys get where I'm coming with this this game has kind of Hit The Sweet Spot in the time in which it came out because people are looking for a new home they're looking for a new everyday game and Hell divers 2 looks like it's going to be able to deliver on that I want this game to succeed I'm going to continue to make videos about this game mostly because you guys have encouraged me to do so with all the views the subscriptions we just hit over 50,000 subscribers on this channel which is actually crazy I started going full-time on YouTube after I lost my job in construction uh back in December it was just before Christmas and I went full-time on YouTube starting January 1st first two months I gained over 20,000 subscribers pretty wild I thank all of you for that that's a huge huge help you guys have no idea what you've done for me and I'll probably give some type of update to give you guys more of a peak and understanding on what's going on with my situation but I really appreciate all the support and I really appreciate being able to be a part of this game a part of its community and continue to talk about the game so if you want to know what I think about hell divers 2 it's one of my favorite games of all time and it's quickly becoming a game that I can't stop playing so I hope you guys enjoyed the video I hope you guys enjoyed the review for whatever it is and if you guys haven't tried hell divers 2 play it if you think it's a game that's going to interest to you if you think you have friends that would love to play it as well get it it's well worth the money you'll have an absolute blast playing it if you can't find people to play with think about joining my Discord link is down in the description anyway that's all I got for the video If you guys did enjoy this video think about liking or subscribing to the channel drop a comment down below think about different things you want to talk or say to me I guess um patreon link down in the description and uh yeah that's all I got catch me live stay cool stay righteous stay safe but most of all held up s I'll see you in hell PE family family family family

Channel: Legendary Drops

Views: 111,120

Keywords: Helldivers2, HD2, helldivers, helldivers 2 review

Id: rONr2yvlQkY

Length: 25min 37sec (1537 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 05 2024