I figured out why I love 'Helldivers 2'...

so I've been trying to figure out over the last couple of days why I like hell divers 2 so much it's not a diss or anything to the game it's just that normally I'm not into these types of games nor are my friends but we all cannot stop playing it's a problem at this point like normally we might try a live service game or a multiplayer Co-op shooter or something like that for a few days and then move on kind of just be burned out like it was fun it was fine but what whatever it's kind of like sea of Thieves I always play sea of Thieves for like 1 afternoon for 6 hours and then I don't touch it again for 6 months but that's normally how I approach most of these games I just burn out on them super quickly but with hell divers 2 it's been very very different I'm like thinking about this game when I'm doing other stuff I just want to like figure out how to quickly do the rest of my work so that I can get back to playing this faster it's really weird but it makes me feel like I'm 15 again playing whatever games were coming out when I was 15 you know what it didn't actually start like this I first decided to try hell divers 2 because I had just played through all of Suicide Squad kill the Justice League and frankly I needed a pallet cleanser after how stanky that game was after the first couple of missions within hell divers I thought the game felt really easy and while I liked it and it was fine I wouldn't say that I loved it as the title of this video describes but there was a moment when everything clicked into place I was playing solo when I realized that there were more planets than just the starter one where you go and fight waves and waves of bugs with my limited exposure to the game before its launch I had just falsely assumed that the game was centered around fighting exclusively these tyranid looking creatures and so while there may be secondary environmental effects like acid or fog or maybe some different weather patterns I thought that this was pretty much all the game had to offer but once I realized that there were more planets to explore with totally different different types of terrain and that there was an entirely different enemy class in the form of the automatons I grew all the more excited and what Amplified this excitement was just how different these missions played out in terms of gameplay but also in how different they appeared graphically and in tone the bug missions and those planets are basically just Starship Troopers but in a game form but these automaton missions are basically Terminator 2 the video game and it's awesome the first mission I did fighting these automatons was at night with a fine Mist laid out across the map there was dense vegetation everywhere and as I mentioned before I didn't do a lot of digging into this game before it released so the first time I dropped in I didn't know what I was getting myself into needless to say I was quite surprised when I crossed the precipice of the hill before me to witness an army of terminator-like Androids staring me down that soon began unloading everything their rifles had in my direction as I frantically ran away with the red glowing projectiles flying over my head I felt genuine surprise and excitement all wrapped up with a bow of Terror and it was amazing and honestly in some ways this felt like a totally different game out of nowhere there were many different challenges that came with fighting these types of enemies as opposed to the Mindless horde bugs that simply charge directly towards you these enemies are more tactical they can flank you and most importantly they can shoot back and not just little spews of acid like the bugs can shoot rather these guys have entire arsenals at their disposal sometimes even mortars and tanks and on higher difficulties you can come across hulking behemoths with racks upon racks of missiles to launch at you others will charge at you with chainswords right out of the universe of 40K while other grunt Androids will man Gatlin guns that fire lasers after I completed this first encounter I was kind of in shock in a really good way and I immediately started texting all of my friends saying guys I know you've seen like some trailers you've heard some Buzz about this game you got to get it it's seriously that good I need my Bros let's get in a party and figure out where we're dropping cuz it's awesome and drop we did we had an awesome time and immediately started playing everybody's gotten hooked and we're actually like rearranging our schedules to be able to play this game more which has not happened in a very very long time I think the last time we had a game like this that hooked with all of us together was maybe like when war zone first dropped maybe that's the moment that it all came together man I got smashed right there that was crazy but all this got me wondering like what is it that this game is doing or has done that has clicked so easily with all of us is it just the perfect game at the perfect time does it do something individually really really well like is just the game play that much better or maybe the shooting mechanics or is it just that we're old Boomers now and these types of games appeal to us I I'm trying to figure it out and I think I've put it together the list of things that this game has going for it that makes it so exceptional and that has led me to loving it even though I really did not expect to love this as much as I do I do think it's important to just reference up front though that the game is not perfect and while I have grown more impressed with the game the more time I've put into it there are are some still omnipresent frustrations such as the surprisingly frequent server maintenance which naturally shuts down the entire game entirely while it's being performed and occasional issues while matchmaking on PC but all of these issues are quickly being improved and it seems like a lot of people are even reporting that they aren't having any issues anymore at all so by the time you're seeing this video it might be a total non-issue more than anything it just seems that the issues with this game are directly tied to the fact that PlayStation the publisher had no idea a this game was going to be anywhere near as successful as it has been on PC especially and so they didn't like prepare for all of these players so they didn't have the server infrastructure established and they just weren't prepped for it I mean this is absolutely ridiculous Arrowhead game studios has managed to get a game out with 128,000 players on a Tuesday afternoon right now as I film this which is just Madness their 24-hour Peak was 196,000 just back there like that's ridiculous that is insane bear in mind this game that nobody was really talking about just a a couple of weeks ago if we compare it to Suicide Squad which just launched they are down to a 24-hour peak of 3100 and their alltime Peak was 13,000 when you compare that to Marvel's Avengers from 4 years ago they had a peak of 31,000 so just going to toss that one last little nugget out there for everybody that was saying I was being too mean to Suicide Squad it's already dead but meanwhile hell divers is not slowing down they just keep doing better and better and better and it seems like as word of mouth is carrying this game forward and as more and more people are hearing from their friends how good it is more and more people are buying it to the point where there's 200,000 people playing at this point 21 hours ago so like in the evening of a Monday it hit its alltime peak that is ridiculous just imagine what the numbers will be like this weekend and you know it makes me wonder if one of the lessons to this is that perhaps longer marketing campaigns for Games bad idea maybe it's just a bad idea pal world and Hell divers 2 two games which came out of pretty much nowhere have taken the Internet by storm and everybody has been playing those games and they really were not marketed very heavily at all hell divers had a couple of trailers and if you were aware of pal world you knew what was going on but I think it's fair to say most people who have been playing pal world had no idea pal world was a thing just a month or two ago I also think it says that Gamers like being surprised they like having like ooh piece of candy opening up the present and being surprised that there's another candy inside like they love having these little surprises come out of nowhere and unfortunately with so many delays happening all the time with games being announced 5 years ago that are still like five years out like an elder scroll 6 it just gets really frustrating and difficult to stay excited and for those games to live up to the high the expectations that come with a very long marketing cycle whereas when a game just kind of drops out of nowhere and people come across it and try it with an open mind without having any sort of pre-established opinions on it they can just end up being pleasantly surprised and having a great time so maybe the lesson for Publishers is don't announce games until they're ready maybe that's the lesson I don't know but going back to what I was trying to say which is explaining why I love hell divers 2 and why you might also love it as well as I alluded to earlier in the video with the first time I came across the automaton Terminator looking guys one of the things that hell divers 2 has going for it is the sheer intensity of encounters whether you're fighting the robots or massive hordes of bugs you are probably going to get your heart pumping pretty damn fast especially once you start climbing the difficulty ladder and you see some of the endgame boss class bugs and Terminators you will be shocked at just how tough it can get out of nowhere everyone on your team or you if you're playing solo has to be playing at their absolute Peak collaboration is key forethought is key and positioning is Paramount and this leads to encounters that can turn cinematic very very quickly as I mentioned earlier with a description of the first time I played the automaton level cresting over that hill to see all of these glowing red eyes for me felt like a scene right out of a movie and there there are many many more instances like this especially if you're on a platform like Tik Tok where people have started sharing their experiences there are literally countless examples of people coming up with cool situations or stumbling into them which are right out of an action movie but in this case it's not a scripted encounter that the devs had to spend months and months working it's purely Dynamic and it's individual to each and every player there will be moments that you're playing the game and something so insane and crazy happens that you just want to tell your friend group about it next time you chat this happened with me the first time I launched an ICBM in the game as it takes off it goes up and it whoops over and the first time I played this I was like oh well it's kind of a bummer just flies off into the distance oh well I mean I get it it's just not reasonable to expect anything else but oh maybe you can see it in the distance no it's probably going into another oh my God and it was awesome and you do the salute and the shock wave hits you and all the bugs around you get alerted to the huge bright light in the distance it was an awesome moment that I didn't expect that was purely Dynamic and that I made happen through self-discovery of mechanics and things it's awesome and these are little encounters and and things that happen that you might not even expect if you didn't watch the trailers I don't even know if this was shown in any of the trailers but the fact that I didn't know that this would happen or could happen made it all the more exciting when I did see it and again I think it's just another example of how sometimes Publishers and developers need to be a little bit more koi with some of the cool stuff that their game has because you want to make sure that the Game Stands the best chance of selling and you're convincing people to buy it so you want to show them all the cool stuff but when you don't know something cool is in the game and then you discover it yourself it's infinitely cooler than if you see it in a trailer like it's not even in the same ballpark but the point with all this is is that there are extremely intense moments of gameplay that are purely Dynamic and they lead to cinematic experiences that the players craft for themselves and that's a pretty rare thing in video games the next thing on my list is that the chaos outweighs the repetition what I mean by this is that often in these live service games they are built around a repetition of a core gameplay loop it's how every video game works but when you're talking about a live service game it's Amplified because they're trying to get you to play it for hundreds and hundreds if not thousands upon thousands of hours and so by definition there will need to be repeated content but the really cool thing about hell divers 2 is that the chaos that comes with the extreme difficulty and high intensity of encounters actually outweighs the repetition sure you might be going to blow up a bunch of eggs once again or you might be running off into the distance to launch a missile or to scan something or blow up an automaton manufacturer ing site and it very well could be that you've done that very activity dozens upon dozens of times but that end activity is not the reason that you're enjoying the game it's not even the core of the game play of the mission rather it's the cliche of it's not about the destination it's about the journey and in Hell divers 2o it's not about completing the objective that is the core of the gameplay it's getting there and then moving to the next one trying to avoid the hordes and M es and trying to fight your way off and defend your buddy that just got downed over there because a charger came and knocked him down that's where the game really really excels and speaking of helping your buddies direct collaboration within teams fits both narratively in here and it also keeps things engaging and further Dynamic examples of this would be offering reloads with Supply packs which you can carry as a backpack and then use to help refill ammo supplies for your team or when a teammate is really low on Health you can offer them stems to heal them up or even something as simple as pairing up with one of your buddies to help them reload The Recoil L rocket launcher where you basically squat next to them and then refill shells so they don't have to do it themselves and they can keep it trained at whatever the target is this isn't that live service thing of like you're on a team and you're all just shooting this thing together and that's the teamwork that makes the dream work there are actual things that you can do with your team in certain instances that Direct ly amplify their own abilities or certain weapons that they're using and change the dynamic of the encounter and it's really cool because it leads the group to figuring out if there's certain ways that you can complement each other's play Styles where one player might want to be more of a tank build where they're carrying a bunch of really heavy weaponry and they call in extra heavy specialty weapons and then another member of the team is focused on support and they call in supplies focus on reloads and healing up the tank whenever they get wounded and so you basically have builds for your characters but without any like faux RPG mechanics or skill trees that aren't really skill trees because everybody ends up just getting everything at the end of the day they're actually different and they feel different this leads me into the next one which is the vast array of abilities and upgrades not just for the player but also for the Player's ship this offers long-term growth opportunities that are substantial and tangible and when I say an ability in a game is tangible I mean this is a just a 1.72% damage increase on heavy attacks within 5 m of an objective marker but rather something significant like you can now carry two extra grenades or your number of stems is doubled or you now have access to this huge missile strike that you can use to take out heavy class like bile Titans or whatever it may be they are abilities and improvements that totally change how you approach encounters not little passive stuff where like oh my combo counter can now go higher and then I'll get a 2% increase percent chance of crit damage and my crit damage will be Amplified by 0.25% if I happen to be singing like happy birthday while I do it it's not like that it's something you can actually feel the moment you get the upgrade it's like okay let's go try it let's go give this a shot and you can try it directly it's not a matter of did it even work is it bugged you just it's it's tangible I don't know how else to put it and all this compounds into something that I think really helps hell divers too which is its vast array of difficulty options these difficulty options are visible and tangible themselves in the sense that you get access to all different classes of enemies as you go up to higher difficulties this kind of makes sense like if you're playing on the super easy like beginner difficulty for tutorials and stuff you wouldn't expect to come across like Titans you know these are those massive four-legged creatures that you've probably seen in the trailers and the cover art for the game putting one of these on the lowest difficulty encounter would probably not even make sense but keeping them restricted to higher difficulty levels makes more sense and feels more fair and honestly it actually kind of encourages you to push yourself and try to get to the higher difficulty levels and upgrade and improve and play seriously not goofing around too much so that you can get to those more interesting encounters because taking on a bot Titan in a nest or something is way more fun than just shooting through hordes and hordes of low-level grunt bugs that charge you mindlessly and I have not even technically passed the halfway mark of difficulty me and my group have been playing mostly on the like fourth and fifth levels which are uh like challenging and hard and and those classes beyond that there are nine total difficulties and the hardest ones get absolutely insane and I want to experience them so that for me is almost like a self-motivating factor in trying to play the game more and upgrade further and encounter new things and different monsters or Terminator looking dudes just so that I can overcome that challenge and perhaps the greatest compliment you can pay to a game that is challenging is to say that it feels fair in its difficulty and if I'm being honest I think that hell divers 2 is actually pretty fair and how it presents its difficulty yes there have been times where I've set up a machine gun turret or a Gatlin gun turret only to have it shoot me while trying to shoot bugs that I'm standing between however the machine is just a stupid machine and it's just trying to shoot the bugs I was the one standing directly in the way of it between the machine gun and the bug I mean you touch a hot stove what did you expect to happen put simply when you die in Hell divers 2 it almost always feels like like you deserved to die in that instance yeah there are moments where it can be frustrating and you're like okay damn it like what how am I supposed to get over this this hump but it's usually because you were in the wrong place it's usually because you weren't properly equipped or because you let enemies overrun you and your crew or your crew brought you back in and tossed You Into The Hornet's Nest instead of throwing your resawn off into the distance and so usually there's a reason directly tied back to the players Act and I think that that's key the moment you have a game that you're playing that's really challenging or offers challenging difficulties but it doesn't feel Fair that's when it all falls apart like if Elden ring for example had the most busted hit boxes and just randomly bosses would kind of glitch and then their full health bar would refill it wouldn't be fun anymore it would be just frustrating and annoying and make you want to break stuff but the fact that it is fair and is balanced very very precisely makes it feel all the better when you overcome that challenge because you know and your friends know that if you were able to overcome that challenge you just worked harder at it you just did better than they did you know in the same way that if you can tell people oh yeah I beat Elden ring that to somebody they know what that required of you assuming you weren't using a super broken like bleeding build but still I'm saying that because I experimented with a bleed build and it was pretty broken but all of this to say I think hell divers 2 in terms of game design is a Triumph it works very very well and while it does have a couple of quirks here and there I don't think those problems grow to the point of changing the core facts of the case which is simply that this game did everything it needed to do to win over players in a month that normally is pretty dead for game releases I think the fact that the monetization is also pretty minimal is admirable as well this is coming in in a month where a lot of games have launched with like 2030 $40 skins in their shops day one uh whether you're looking at like foam stars or Suicide Squad or even you know this month in fortnite and Call of Duty there's egregiously priced things and so it's admirable to see them come and give you like okay here are some skins or some armor sets or helmets or whatever that are $2 if you like the game you'll support us and buy one if you don't like the game you probably aren't but there it is if you're interested did check it out now I think that that is a good balance to strike as the CEO of the developer said you have to earn the right to monetize I truly believe that if people want to support this title hell diverse 2 they have an option we are never forcing anyone to do so however and that's the key like they're not trying to milk you dry for every single penny you have they're offering the game for 40 bucks which I think is more than fair and if you want to support the game beyond that if you want to vote with your wallet and support it you can do that with two three $4 skins here and there if you're so interested I know I keep saying skins they're technically armor of different classes like you know the the like Scout armor heavy armor medium armor or whatever so it's technically armor it's not technically skins but you get what I'm saying so long story short I'm really enjoying hell divers 2 I didn't expect this to be a new obsession of mine early in the year but I'm here for it I love having new games to obsess over I know people think that YouTubers just like hating on stuff but like seriously I I like liking things and this is something I like so let me know if you're going to be playing hell divers 2 over the next week if it appeals to you or maybe you haven't tried it and maybe this video convinced you I don't know let me know your thoughts in the comments but with that I'm going to call it cuz as you can tell I'm losing my voice I'm sick once again my whole family is it's just that time of year apparently there's a bug going around so I'm not going to push it I'm going to go take some medicine and Play More Hell divers 2o which shouldn't surprise anyone after this video anyway thank you for watching I love you all dearly thank you for making my dreams a reality every day you're all amazing stay safe I love you all go eat an orange have some vitamin C so you don't get sick like me and I'll see you in the next video hugs and kisses bye-bye

Channel: Luke Stephens

Views: 448,448

Keywords: luke stephens, luke stephens helldivers, helldivers 2, hell divers, hd2, helldivers 2 funny moments, gameplay

Id: 9yHZWIzLhT8

Length: 23min 20sec (1400 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 15 2024