Why Helldivers 2 is GOLDEN AGE Gaming

[Music] when I was a kid my father showed me a movie called Starship Troopers yes he should not have done that and you better believe my mother was upset when she found out but I was profoundly changed from that point on for two main reasons number one a bunch of SFI Space Marines blowing up terrifying bug aliens oh oh yeah I was hook number two that scene with Dizzy yeah you know the one from that point on I always yearned for a video game experience that would make me feel like a soldier involved in a galactic War mini games tried to fill this void including Starship Troopers but uh yeah I did not really scratch that itch but then to my complete surprise that desire of mine was finally satiated nearly 30 years later prove to yourself that you have the strength and the courage to be free join the hell divers hell divers 2 one of the most fun video game experiences I've ever had I have logged over 100 hours worth of play time into this game and I cannot put it down it's like someone took Starship Troopers Halo ODST Terminator and Warhammer 40K threw it all into a blender and served me a smoothie that blew my mind both me and Tom have been obsessed with it and we both agree that it feels like it hearkens back to the Golden Era of gaming from our youth it really does Hell divers 2 is a return to form for multiplayer games the pure simple joy of jumping into a lobby with friends and the chaos that ensues as you frantically try and take down an army of aliens and robots with nothing but the gun in your hand and the friends at your back without the pressure of an extremely over monetized cash shop gating your progression it's just something that's far too uncommon these days this is the most fun I've had in a co-op game since a certain other legendary shooter that starts with h and ends with two we felt like kids again epic battles being waged across a galactic Theater of War as friends and strangers alike battle together against the enemies of mankind the game play is epic the lore is outstanding and it's just freaking fun even when I lose missions I find myself laughing and smiling which is really a testament to how incredible this game actually is there is so much to praise about this game and that is exactly what we're going to do in this video from the game mechanics to the lore of Hell divers to the community that shapes the progression of the game strap yourself in folks because we are about to disect what makes hell divers 2 one of the best and most Innovative games of 20124 on that note let's dive become a hell diver hell divers 2 is a live service game published by Sony interactive entertainment and developed by Arrowhead games the premise of the game is extremely simple you take on the role of a diver a faceless elite soldier recruited by a hypercharged parody of American jingoism called super Earth a Galaxy wide authoritarian government that demands utter falty to the flag and the cause of spreading managed democracy across the Galaxy nothing says representative government like forcing your will via the barrel of a gun so that's exactly what you do here expand outward across the Galaxy from superar taking on both giant bug aliens and robotic hordes to spread your vision of Peace at the expense of anyone and anything that gets in your way Liberty be praised for the enemies of mankind surround us on all ends and only the might of the hell divers can repel them first there is the coldhearted automatons these vile socialist robots are the children of the cyborgs who appeared in the first hell divers game obviously they are a threat and must be eradicated for their radical believes I mean not being human but choosing to be a machine that's incredibly anti-ar to me then there's the termined Swarm not to be mistaken for the flood the Zerg the tyranid or the arachnet from Starship Troopers these bugs are Fascist oh disgusting and they refuse to be a part of the glory of super Earth instead of enjoying their Meek and humble life on Federation Farms they had to rebel and now fight back as a terrifying swarm of monsters needless to say we the Glorious Federation of superar will scrape these bugs off our boots then there are Whispers from the ministry of truth about a third faction called the illuminate apparently these nerds are super Advanced and there have been rumors of their cloaked ships in orbit spying on super Earth operations menacingly these foes were in the first hell divers game so if they dare show their faces again the hell divers will be there to put them in their place Freedom as a followup to obviously hell divers one the sequel UPS the Annie significantly by taking what had previously been a top down twin stick shooter letting you experience the action from a distance to throwing you and your squadmates directly in The Fray in a third person view for the kind of feeling hell divers 2 is going for this was definitely the right decision not only does this work way better for giving you that gritty frenetic War as hell kind of experience but it's also a much more marketable camera system and the subsequent explosion of popularity The Gamers receives compared to its predecessor seems to prove it just looking at the comments comparing hell divers to its sequel you can see a lot of people saying how much the switch in perspective went towards winning them over having played both I'd have to agree the switch to third person serves the game a lot better things can get absolutely hectic in Hell divers 2 and giving you the more restricted boots on the ground perspective heightens the game's most intense moments in fact pretty much every decision of Hell divers 2 core mechanics are designed to heighten the game's intensity one of the most intriguing things about hell divers is the way the game handles its aiming and weapon responsiveness the system they've implemented here is super unique while you can move and aim just like you'd expect at a typical shooter you actually have two retic one that represents your character's point of vision and a separate one for the weapon you're holding depending on the physical size and handling of the weapon you've chosen its reticle actually takes time to aim lagging behind your view and takes an extra bit of time to settle meaning you have to be more intentional about your aiming and firing than a more twitched Bas shooter for light weapons like SMGs and pistols this is barely noticeable but for large guns like automatic shotguns and heavy machine guns this can be pretty considerable you can comp compensate for this by crouching or going prone but this obviously reduces your general mobility in a game where enemies can quickly swarm and overrun you the entire system becomes a trade-off between precision and Mobility I think describing it it might sound a bit annoying like why would I ever want to deal with that but it's a little similar to and I hate to be the guy who says the thing but it's kind of like dark souls in a very loose conceptual way and I don't mean her it's the Dark Souls of Shooters I mean it uses its ition to enhance its sense of catharsis let me explain on paper describing the slow plotting stamina based combat of Dark Souls sounds like a nightmare just like this labored aiming might sound lame and in the beginning it kind of is you can't just jump in and apply your typical muscle memory here but hell divers much like Dark Souls rewards persistence gaining Mastery over this new system feels all the more rewarding and just like from soft's finest the incredibly cathartic game feel will help ease the te portion as every bullet that connects with the bug or bot feels absolutely glorious it feels even better when you're able to do it with precision and intent if you've never clicked with dark souls and are now thinking you won't Vibe with hell divers don't worry the actual friction to adjusting the hell diers aiming is a lot smoother than adjusting to Dark Souls this is a live service after all so they need as many people in the game as possible throwing a massive difficulty wall in front of perspective players right from the get-go would hurt the game's adoption hell divers aiming is novel and has to be considered to be the most effective but early game you can still play without considering it all that actively and kill stuff which can't be said about souls the game is still very accessible aiming isn't the only curveball the game throws your way though it's always been a bizarre hand waving way of reality in video games where if you reload before a MAG is spent in a video game you somehow magically still hang on to the bullets you just tossed out of your gun one of the biggest mistakes I actually made in my understanding of mechanics in a video game actually ended up increasing my enjoyment of it for nearly 18 years up until its remaster was released I had mistakenly believed that if you reloaded before your mag was empty you lost all the bullets you didn't use in Resident Evil 4 I'm not usually a fan of horror games so R4 was one of the first ones I tried to play in Earnest so for a game that was ratcheting up the tension compared to my usual Fair of Devil May Cry and ninja giden this was a really interesting Push Pull of balancing using my limited resources wisely versus the comparative com of a full magazine of course I was just being an idiot and Resident Evil 4 doesn't actually work that way but having that little extra bit of friction in Resource Management that I at least thought I had to contend with made the most intense moments of that game even more intense hell divers despite being much more frenetic than re4 ever attempts actually does this you have to constantly balance the risk of approaching a situation with a half empty mag versus wasting a limited resource to be better prepared for the next ambush in fact fact nearly all the basic mechanics go out of their way to add a bit more friction than the standard implementation probably the most iconic feature of Hell divers 2 is the way you call down your big guns in addition to the standard weapons you bring with you on your person each hell diver has a kit of remote weapons you can call from your ship these special weapons called strategems each require you to press an unique button combination from WD or the d-pad in real time in the middle of gameplay to activate this isn't knew per se Arrowhead used the same mechanic in the original hell divers and even before that in their previous game Magicka however I think the mechanic shines here in Hell divers 2 all the more because of how much more overwhelming the moment to moment of this game is and how that intensity is at its peak when you need to shift your tension away from the chaos in order to call in a strategy considering you typically won't be calling out your big guns like an orbital strike or Napal unless facing a more intense challenge it once again adds to the intensity of the game games combat taking your mind away from the fight and your thumb off the trigger to press a button combo up in the corner of the screen adds another little ratcheting of tension grenades are an incredibly important part of your kitten and Hell divers 2 as well not only do they do a lot of damage but they're one of the most cost-effective ways of destroying enemy spawn points on the map often times for additional resources since they're typically sub objectives on every Mission you'd think an item that integral would be mapped to a button however unlike almost every shooter released since Halo 1 that standardized it grenades aren't a dedicated button press here you instead again have to take your thumb off the stick and toggle them with the dpad and wait for a short animation as your character Subs out the weapon with them it doesn't sound like a lot but that extra little bit of friction over something like a Halo 2 grenade contributes to the feeling of Chaos in the middle of battle where pitching a grenade into a termined hive is what you need to stop them from swarming you but that action isn't immediately available just like you'd have to Fumble for a second to grab a grenade in real life hell divers adds that bit of friction back in to make its gameplay more tense even something as simple as access to the mini map is made more complicated instead of having a constant motion tracker or mini map on screen you have to manually call the map up and while it's up you can't shoot pick up items or interact with other objects for me I play on the keyboard which has been a smooth experience for the most part though I do have a few thoughts first off you better be sharp with your map to know when it comes out and when to put it away there have been a few moments where I spam the keyboard and see myself getting killed unable to move because you guessed it I forgot to put the map away again you have to be very mindful of your surroundings and when and how to interact in the game now one of the most contentious features of the game is one that adds probably the most friction but in my opinion is also one of the most critical Friendly Fire hell divers gives you some absolutely insanely powerful weapons and strategems to use but you have to use them responsibly they're just as effective on your teammates and yourself as they are on the enemy drop an Eagle Strike too close and it will turn your entire Squad into meat paste alongside the group of bugs in front of you call in a 380 orbital strike without announcing it first well enjoy that because there's nothing stopping it from blowing up your entire [ __ ] team even firing a sidearm have Hazard Le into a swarm of enemies and a straight bullet hits a teammate kills them like it's that easy to do friendly fire now there's been a small outcry to disable friendly fire but I think it's integral both to the balancing of the game's weapons as well as reinforcing the themes and just general Vibe of the title as well personally I love Friendly Fire just yesterday a teammate's mortar strike knocked me off our point and I accidentally dropped a bomb strategy that activated right on the team next to extraction yes we all died and we all laugh too individually none of these gameplay adjustments really do all that much except for friendly fire you can do a lot of damage with that if you're so inclined but taken as a whole all these little tweaks essentially slow you down they make you less reflexive in what you can do which honestly is probably mandatory considering how much raw Firepower the game gives you right off the rip which only gets more insanely out of hand as you progress from a balancing perspective that needed to be curbed somehow but even beyond that all these little bits of friction come together to make some truly insane ass clenching moments as you're fumbling to call in a critical strategy before being completely overwhelmed by a terminate swarm or frantically diving for cover waiting for a cool down while a small army of automatons rain down gunfire the added friction makes all the triumphs on the other side all the more climactic wrestling with these systems and coming out in the other side Victorious is I feel what makes this game so memeable so memorable and what keeps you coming back chasing that euphoric high of juggling all these Microsystems and coming out on top all this would be for not though if the actual core mechanics of Hell divers 2 were trash fortunately the game is anything but this is some of the most satisfying third person shooting I've played in a while I don't play enough live service games to tell you if it's best in class but I think you'd be hardess to match hell divers 2 for raw spectacle if nothing else it really comes down to the beautiful blend of enemy feedback and sound effects both Bots and bugs are brilliantly reactive to damage expressive Gibbs and hit Sparks from each fraction clearly and visibly let you know you've done some damage and the wounds that actually tear away at the bodies of the enemies bleeding gaping holes and bugs and missing limbs of bots show you in no unclear terms how damaged an enemy is it's clear to the point that there's no need for things like damage numbers constantly popping up or enemy health bars the enemy design themselves does all that work for you this almost feels necessary though since hell divers really feels like it's reaching for some cinematic moments at times while the story itself is clearly satirical the universe of Hell divers 2 takes its happenings quite seriously the atmosphere of an intense war and high stakes driven by blatant propaganda swallowed hook line and sinker by every faceless disposable recruit running through everything in the game from the raw visual language of the game to the serious delivery of the hell diver's dialogue even when they're saying ridiculous things like sweet Liberty my arm having tons of damage numbers and health bars all over the place would make the moment to moment feel a bit too gamey for that bizarre balance of serious and satirical to really stick but even if it's just happen St it's fantastic that the game was confident enough to let the graphics do this amount of heavy lifting it's just more satisfying to judge the state of an enemy by actually seeing how hurt they are as opposed to how much a floating bar above their head is empty add in some truly fantastic sounding guns that emanate raw power and have just a satisfying hit markers when your rounds connect even the most basic combat in Hell divers 2 delivers an excellent sense of catharsis that'll keep you coming back throw and calling down strategems that let you experience all those systems tearing through upwards of 20 enemies simultaneously along with with some absolutely glorious explosion effects you'll be in heaven and sweet Liberty are these moments satisfying lining up an Eagle Strike on a horde of terminats and seeing them explode in front of you it is magical especially in tandem with the visuals and sound effects you can really feel the weight of your power both on screen and in your headphones the big guns the big explosions and oh my God the delayed sound effect of the pods dropping from your Destroyer I get chills every time I play I look forward to the Cinematic of the pods dropping at the start of the mission it amps me up and in no small part is that also due to the music the composer for the soundtrack of the game was Wilbert Roger II who has worked before in Destiny Call of Duty and Star Wars the Old Republic the music of Hell divers UPS the immersion of the game to the nth degree every Mission ideally ends with an extraction from a shuttle but you first must defend your position for a few minutes from the enemy while the shuttle arrives these few minutes are sometimes the most epic part of the game wave after wave of enemies crashing against the might of you and your teammates the close proximity of the position means you have to hold your ground this lead leads to moments of combined strategems just obliterating baddies or sometimes you and your friends but it's the music the freaking music the drums the brass the strings oh it makes a hell diver really believe in the cause of super earth dying for it fighting in a glorious last stand against the foes of mankind shoulder-to-shoulder with your team again incredible sad because in the back of your mind you just went on a mission to get oil but the mood makes it come across as so epic and heroic that you don't pay attention to the war crimes you just committed who gives a [ __ ] fight to the last man for the glory and might of managed democracy the game has a staggering nine levels of difficulty and I'll admit I'm still only really playing on the first four since I'm largely playing solo for some reason yeah I'm like level 51 now and I usually play on the hardest difficulties I'm badass that way but no matter how high you crank up the difficulty your weapons never stop feeling powerful because hell divers 2 refuses to use a lazy difficulty shortcut that so many games fall back on that ruin any sort of game field their systems May otherwise have what's the main thing that makes your favorite weapons in video games feel powerful it's not the visual effect it's not the sound effect it isn't the look of the weapon itself either it's the reaction the weapon inflicts on its Target you could unleash the most powerful nuclear bomb on the planet but if you drop it on Godzilla he doesn't Flinch you know it had zero effect in that context even a nuke can feel powerless on the other hand if you made a game about shooting rubber bands at people but their bodies go flying into a wall and splatter into a million pieces when they get hit by them those rubber bands going to feel powerful the problem is while games are pretty good at cultivating this feeling at the normal expected difficulty as they ratchet up the challenge developers make enemies more difficult to fight simply by giving them more Health making enemies into bullet sponges on higher difficulty makes games harder yes but not in a way that is helpful to A Game's balance you want the weapons you fire in your games to feel good to feel powerful if a weapon can drop an enemy in four shots on normal that might feel great if it suddenly takes 40 shots from the same weapon on the same enemy on very hard now you're making the player feel weaker cuz their tools are 10 times less effective by contrast hell divers takes The Road Less Traveled and admittedly more difficult by creating difficulty spikes that introduce more enemies on scream at once and getting off entire classes of enemy types to only higher difficulties this means that your weapons always feel as good as they did on normal because their relative power is never being adjusted you're just being given bigger batter things to use them on the only time your weapons feel less effective is on purpose later enemies are armored requiring armor piercing weapons or shooting at specific weak points to steal due damage this means that while certain weapons make more sense in certain scenarios no weapon in the game ever becomes completely unviable so you can stubbornly stay with your favorite if you choose to deal with the complications this may have just been a weird thing that resonated with me but the game does this little bit of thematic slight of hand right from the moment you boot up the game having you go through a mandatory basic training section that highlights the individuality of your player it just reinforces the Assumption we all make when playing multiplayer games that our Avatar Is Us in the fiction of the world giving that player character a ship letting you name it and having glimpses at all the future customizations a player can unlock it really feels like the fiction of the game is tricking you into almost buying into the [ __ ] that's being pedal that you matter and this is going to be an effective weapon in the war only to shatter that concept completely on your first death where instead of having an actual revive system your avatar actually does permanently die and your revive is just another faceless hell diver with the same delusional grandios that even for a second right in the beginning you as a player might have unwittingly bought into it all leads into this interesting feeling of disposability has always been a part of multiplayer video games mechanically but hell divers brings that into the reality of the fiction as well which kind of forces you to Grapple with it in a way you might have not been expecting which is just your first taste of a larger cynical commentary the game will continue to lay on you hell diver know that dying for managed democracy is the greatest most honorable way to die whether you are evacuating class a Citizens or spilling your blood while extracting oil super Earth has its priorities you should be proud to die for such a noble cause needless to say satire is the biggest theme of the game it channels the energy of the first Starship Troopers movie Super Earth is basically an even more hammed up version of the Starship Troopers Federation with an overly satirical tone that makes the game oh so much fun to play I feel like I'm roleplaying and I've caught myself so many times screaming out for democracy while dying stupidly to bugs and Bots even the in-game dialogue from the divers runs with this energy now there's that entire debate over media literacy which of course the Starship Troopers movie finds itself being the topic of over and over again and I've seen hell divers too get the same treatment but I think it's safe to say that a crushing majority of players know that this game is satire they're just having fun fun with it the same way nerds have fun with the Empire from Star Wars I think this cynical playful tone is more a feature of Arrowhead as a studio rather than hell divers as an IP specifically even their original trailer for their first game Magicka had a tongue and cheek description of the game that was self-aware of its own tropes and generic setting hell divers 2 is very much in the same Spirit the studio admitted in an interview with PlayStation that you're pretty much playing as the bad guys here it just seems like the studio has some playing with the absurdity of certain tropes and fiction and when citing tabletop as an inspiration in specifically mentioning stuff like Warhammer 40K having a fascist overthe toop Galaxy confering humanity is not all that surprising but theming isn't the most inspiration Arad took from tabletop for hell divers 2 not even close one of the coolest aspects of the game is the live service progression of the war there are currently two active fronts at the time of recording this video there was only one the automatons were quote unquote wiped out but they're back with the new Fleet apparently the fights in their old sectors was a Vanguard Fleet and the main fleet has arrived and they are shockingly close to Super Earth which is we must repel them we must fight back so yeah you guessed it one of the fronts is against the automatons the other one is against the Monstrous terminated swarm in the command center of your Destro Destroyer is a galactic map showing where the battles are taking place the sectors the planets the amount of Hell divers on the ground a living breathing experience that is shaped by the victories and failures of the community don't even get me started on Mal Levon Creek which is just the equivalent of space Vietnam with its jungles and storms ion storms just a bunch of red robotic eyes looking back at you from the trees but hell divers 2 is incredible because it offers this immersive shared experience where you as the player along with everyone else can contribute to how the story proceeds in the game a major order comes in from high command General Brash wants us to set up termicide plants and their sector to Perma stop the bugs this was an actual Mission the players could have failed fortunately they did not but what if they did that would have greatly altered the course of the game as we currently see it there's a ripple effect to the major orders and how the players react to them you see there is a God who runs this game and his name is Joel he's basically the dungeon master of Hell divers 2 he is the Invisible Hand guiding the story of the game so far and how it develops but his decision hinge on the results of the players can we take a planet or not can we defend it or not now I'm sure that Joel has some bullet points on the direction of the game but it's incredible to see this DM player relationship where both play off the other to shape the story and progression of Hell divers 2 it feels alive plus you as a player feel like you're actually contributing to a bigger picture it's even elevated more with the back and forth between the devs and the player base on social media for example these flying bug enemies appeared in game but only for a few missions for a handful of players said players would screenshot these flyers and share on Twitter or Reddit going what in sweet Liberty is this while the official accounts for hell divers would be like uh the ministry of Truth has no comment on this or something of the sort how how awesome is that what a cool way to tantalize your players sometimes new weapons just show up out of nowhere sometimes it's new enemies sometimes it's Easter eggs in the background of the map and sometimes it is jel himself just showing up in your mission and blessing you with an exclusive attack vehicle truly incredible Chemistry Between the devs and the player base but going back to these mechanics these tasks require a massive amount of bodies thrown at them to accomplish with that in mind it makes sense that Sony would make hell divers 2 available on PC day one alongside the PS5 this is obviously part of a larger strategy from Sony in the last few years to expand their presence on PC now while they've been hoting their library of single player PlayStation games for a while now it's always been a couple years after the release to give them time to breathe and cultivate some sales for the PS4 and 5 releasing day one is different but of course hell divers is in a single player game it's a multiplayer live service where more players means more recurrent spending way more than you get from a few extra console sales it kind of goes back to what we talked about a few years ago with a potential end of multiplayer Focus exclusives since tapping PC Gamers for their wallets is too tempting an offer to refuse which brings us pretty well into the monetization strategy for this game I've never really been a huge fan of modern multiplayer live service games so many of them feel like the game is just an excuse to host a cash shop rather than the other way around the profit potential for these games are massive as huge hits like fortnite and Call of Duty war zone have proved but they also are a big risk for potential players since so many of these games are released in an attempt to chase the fortnite fortune and you only have so many players to go around inevitably the bulk of these games which do everything in their power to get you to spend as much money as possible on them by taking up all of your time will fail and be killed off taking all the money you've spent in game with them it makes it hard at least for me personally to get very excited about this genre at best I'll be constantly nagged and prodded to spend more money and have a subpar experience in game if I refuse at worst the game will be shut down and take all my progression and purchases with it luckily hell divers 2 seems to sidestep a lot of the nickel and Diamond that this genre is Infamous for yes there's a cash up yes there are multiple currencies and yes I know for a lot of people having those in a game makes them a non-starter I don't blame you I'm honestly with you more often than not however hell divers 2 currencies are almost entirely earned in game doesn't excuse their presence and in all honesty I'd much prefer paying $70 and having all the stuff unlocked purely through progression as opposed to getting an upfront discount on the game that's subsidized via inapp purchases but we all know that'll never happen there are four different currencies in Hell divers 2 medals samples requisition slips and super credits that's an addition to basic XP for leveling up your rank yeah that's a lot experience points are gained as you complete missions each Mission has a main goal and all difficulty levels above the lowest one trivial have subobjectives that give you even more XP once the mission is over the higher the difficulty of the mission the larger the map and the more subobjectives that populated however the mission time is always the same usually 40 minutes for most missions though certain missions have shorter times as well the faster you call in for extraction the more experience you get for wrapping things up quickly as you gain experience your rank increases allowing you to unlock more powerful strategems strategems aren't immediately available though each needs to be purchased using requisition slips this is essentially in-game money and you're granted it in pretty generous amounts after completing a mission as well as finding smaller amounts of it in cachets during missions themselves this currency isn't available as a real world purchase and it's given at a really healthy clip that even playing after a handful of missions you'll have enough to start unlocking new strategems since the most expensive strategems are gated behind level requirements and levels are gained by clearing missions the progression is balanced really well that you almost always have enough slips to make a purchase when it unlocks and you'll only have to run a few missions to grind out more if something is Out Of Reach this feels totally fine to me most other items outside strategems like armor sets weapons and smaller things like emotes are unlocked via Metals which you earn from completing missions and finding in drop pods littered throughout Mission Maps it incentivizes exploring the area instead of just beining for the objective and eving this also plays well with the timer system in the game we already touched on obviously scouring the the map for extra goodies takes time of course time in Hell divers is a resource all its own the longer you Linger on a map the more intense enemy resistance becomes and the less time you have to complete your main objectives so there's always a bit of pressure that affects decision- making again this concept of giving you just a bit more friction than you'd expect or be comfortable with is prevalent through the entirety of this game's design the problem with all of this is that what starts as a pretty healthy uptick and customization quickly begins to slow as you progress getting two to five Metals permission is great in the beginning but just skimming through the war bonds you need to unlock dozens of them per unlock and hundreds to move on to the next tier to offset this rewards from Mission completion points are given multipliers on higher difficulty increasing the base XP recck slip and meta rewards for the higher up the difficulty ladder you climb in addition to the main war bond where most of these unlock there's also premium war bonds that require super credits to unlock an access super credits can be earned in game but at a very slow pace this is the premium currency that the game wants you to buy with bundles ranging from $2 to $20 again not the worst and accessing a premium war bond still requires medals to unlock its content but this is still in essence pay to win or at least pay to acquire locking entire progression trees behind what is effectively if not strictly a pay wall having bitten the bullet and locked both current premium war bonds at the time of writing though there will probably be a third one out before this video is posted I will say however there's nothing in them that I've unlocked so far at least that feels game breakingly op in fact I prefer all the items in the free war bond to anything I've unlocked in the premium one so far so while I don't like the system on principle in practice it feels negligible the last items are samples these are another collectible that can only be found by scouring the map during missions these are used to unlock research on your Super Destroyer the ship that actually launches all your strategems during missions by upgrading the ship you can make certain strategems more effective in certain ways like orbital strikes being able to be called in faster or fire a second volley air strikes being able to call in more quickly and refuel quicker you get to choose which areas you want to focus on depending on what benefits your play style most but they all cost samples to upgrade samples come in three Rarities common rare and super the latter two appear only on higher difficulty missions so if you want to have your strategems and be most effective you have to play on some of the highest difficulties and and spend more time on these difficult Maps combing through them looking for the samples these two systems make Co-op play not strictly mandatory but highly recommended there are people soloing the hardest missions in Hell divers 2 but I'm certainly not one of them even just playing with a second player let me jump from difficulty 4 to difficulty 7 and actually have an easier go of it squat up with three of your friends that are all pretty competent and in a group chat to coordinate now you're cooking with gas speaking of somebody who generally prefers playing games by myself I found cop way more rewarding than soloing so if you actually prefer multiplayer by default you're going to love hell divers 2 they really isn't much to complain about in Hell divers 2 aside from some admittedly nitpicks with one glaring exception that isn't necessarily a problem with the game itself but we'll get to that the first nitpick comes from the repetitive nature of the environments the Galaxy is full of different biomes on a different planets which is nice it's what's scattered throughout those biomes that are the issue tiles sets for points of interest are way too overused in my opinion it's bizarre to warp to the other side of the Galaxy drop onto a completely different planet only to immediately stumble into the exact same ruin settlements with the same layout of items that the planet I just jumped from it really hurts the feeling of exploration and Discovery and wanting to explore a new planet and see what's on there when every planet in the galaxy not only has the same rock formations crash shits and outposts but also that all the Collectibles are always in the same location in each of those areas as well exploration quickly devolves into Crossing objectives off a list as you end up knowing exactly what you're going to see and where to find it before you even arrive in the area proper this doesn't seem like it would be too hard of an issue to solve going forward though all the mission maps are randomly generated so if Arrowhead could create some additional landmarks and add them to whatever algorithm they're using to generate these maps that could go a long way to keeping things fresh the Galaxy map is massive and this game seems popular enough to keep chugging along for years so I'd really like this issue to be addressed so the novelty of exploring can stay fresh there are also some minor issues with certain collisions sometimes enemies will clip through certain objects it seems like you have to be dead on with grenade tosses to actually get them in bug holes and Bot reos to blow them up and sometimes bullets from your massive World destroying heavy machine gun will be stopped dead in their tracks by like leaves on a tree and stuff in Jungle biomes which doesn't seem like the intended effect again nothing in here is game breaking but even a little extra polish will help Elevate the Cinematic feel even further the biggest problem with this game though is something that's not even directly connected to the game and is only a problem on the PC version the game uses a particularly unpopular anti-che solution called n protect game guard and protect on PC is an overly heavy-handed Andy cheat implementation and a massive Mark against the game in my book it's up to you if you'll care but I think it's important to clarify what this means if you aren't aware n protect game guard is a kernel level anti-che that's rather Infamous in the PC gaming space it by definition has access to everything on your system in order to make deploying cheats or exploits in the game as difficult as possible for potential cheaters the problem is of course you know have a piece of software with root access to your entire system which is in and of itself a security issue it's also notoriously difficult to uninstall with a lot of users having difficulty removing the software even after uninstalling the game it's bundled it's also one of the few anti-che systems has no interest in adding Linux compatibility so Linux support not looking great I think they got it running on the steam deck valve probably did a lot of heavy lifting there don't have a steam deck so I'm not entirely sure don't quote me on it the software also has a reputation for just being really unstable causing not just the game it's attached to but other programs on your computer to misbehave considering the fact that the single biggest complaint about hell divers 2 is that the game crashes a lot it's hard not to look at game guard and assume a lot of the game's instability issues may not be the game's fault but end protect you got to ask if any game regardless of quality is worth giving what n protect demands I unfortunately wasn't aware of n protect's infamy before getting the game knowing what I know now I probably would have gotten hell divers 2 on PS5 instead Peter lingren the technical director at Arrowhead took to Reddit to explain why the team decided to use n protect on the PC most of the explanations here were pretty boiler plate but with the most compelling in my opinion was to ensure the galactic War wasn't messed up as we've mentioned earlier the galactic war metagame and Joel are integral to the overall progression of this title so I can see the angle here but I still think that there are better Solutions than a root kit a lot of the community shares my frustration just make sure you know what you're installing before pulling the trigger on PC hell divers 2 is one of the most fun video games we both have ever played a lot of people have said that this game feels like a return to form from multiplayer bringing back some of the most fun we had from 2004 to the mid-2010s now it's hard to disagree with that take hell divers 2 feels like a diamond in the rough a game that's somehow a live service that never feels predatory that uses its always on nature not as a way to funnel you into a cash shop but funnel you back into the fry its Galactic war is always evolving and giving you something to do both as an individual player and as a collective Community Guided by the Invisible Hand of Joel in ways we can't ever anticipate this is what modern gaming could be and I'm glad to be around to experience it with my friends so for this diver I wait with great anticipation to see what the future holds for hell divers 2 It Feels Like The Best Is Yet To Come and I would not be surprised if there is a defense of super Earth Mission a valiant last stand against multiple factions attacking Earth at once with hundreds of thousands of players teaming up to protect the home of democracy I have not had chills like this since Halo 3 folks we are so back [Music]

Channel: Saberspark 64

Views: 47,370

Keywords: video games, gaming, saberspark, tom oliver, saberspark 64

Id: xZfS8rD_pW4

Length: 43min 46sec (2626 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2024