Posted by When Helldivers 2 released, I thought it looked like a really fun game that would be a blast to play with friends. It didn’t take itself too seriously and leaned into being kind of ridiculous and over-the-top patriotic action game. Unfortunately, I play on Xbox. When I heard that Helldivers 2 was finally coming to Xbox, I was super excited. And I must say, it doesn’t disappoint. However, I want to talk about the newest update “Into the Unjust” and the new content that it brings since within a few weeks of playing the game, us Xbox players received a very controversial update.
The update is currently less than a week old, so there’s definitely room for improvements, but that being said, I can go over initial impressions. The Terminid faction is not my favorite faction to fight. They can feel really frustrating as they overwhelm you, and I often find myself in a situation of needing to reload while diving away because a horde of medium-tier enemies are bearing down on me. Some of their units also deal way more damage than it feels like they should (looking at you Spewers and Spitters). The new update does not make the bugs any more enjoyable to fight, at least in my eyes. Though I do want to admit that I don’t hate the new additions as much as others in the community do. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I really don’t mind the new Rupture strain. The Ruptures refer to a new subspecies of bugs with a Warrior, Spewer, and Charger variant. What makes the Rupture strain different is how they can burrow through the ground and jump out to attack you. I’m fine with Warriors, though I’ve seen a lot of complaints about their armor and how their attacks are kind of buggy when they sometimes hit you out of the ground without surfacing, but I don’t really struggle with them. I’ve found their jump attacks out of the ground pretty telegraphed and easy to dodge, which allows me to blow them away quickly. The Chargers aren’t nearly as bad as I was expecting, though I admit that part of that thought may be due to not encountering nearly as many as I feel like I usually do. My biggest complaint is with the Rupture Spewers because their bile/acid spewing attack tracks you now. With other Spewer type enemies, the spew beam is static once they do it. Rupture Spewers move and follow you, so you have to repeatedly move to dodge it. In a vacuum, this doesn’t sound awful, but this isn’t a vacuum. The problem is needing to worry about dodging bile/acid beams that deal way more damage than they reasonably should while needing to kite a swarm of little guys. And don’t forget the Rupture Spewers can and will hide underground to ambush you and run away the millisecond they’re done spewing. Overall, I don’t hate the Rupture strain nearly as much as others in the community do, but I can definitely see and understand the complaints that people have against them even if I haven’t directly encountered these issues myself. On a similar note, I’ve heard a lot about the game being buggy with this new update, but I personally have yet to encounter a lot of these glitches and bugs, so I can’t really comment on them.
In addition to a new strain of bugs, we have two new enemy types: Dragonroaches and Hive Lords. Dragonroaches are massive flying enemies that are basically Bile Titans with wings. I want to like Dragonroraches, and part of me does, but they’re also incredibly frustrating to deal with. They’re super mobile enemies that can spawn frequently, can be quite aggressive, and routinely chunk half of your health with attacks that are hard to avoid. No seriously, the breath attack often comes out of nowhere, starts damaging you before the particle effects actually hit you, and is in a wider radius than the telegraphed particle effects lead you to believe. It’s also not uncommon for two-three of these monsters to be flying around the map at a time. Something that I’ve come to realize is that the high-tier bug enemies (Bile Titans and Impalers) really aren’t that bad to deal with because they’re either fairly easy to avoid, leave themselves completely open to counterattack (looking at you Impalers), or can just be blown away by 500kg bombs like most enemies and bases in the game. The Dragonroach doesn’t play by those rules. Sure, it may leave itself open to counterattack after doing its big breath attack, but it’s still so mobile that your typical Orbital and Eagle stratagems may struggle to hit it. I’ve heard that more underused ones like the Orbital Railgun are finally beginning to find a niche for these guys, and I have effectively used the mechs against them, but nothing feels worse than being swarmed by Dragonroaches and having no stratagems or weapons to combat them. Sure, that can definitely be a skill issue on my part, but it really makes you realize how nice it would be to have that fifth stratagem slot. Though in my opinion the single biggest fix the Dragonroaches could use is a spawn rate reduction or cap so you don’t get screwed with never-ending waves of them. Now for the Hive Lord. So, I haven’t actually seen or fought a Hive Lord yet because my friends and I usually play on difficulty 6 and Hive Lords spawn at 7. We have done a difficulty 7 operation on the new planet, but we never saw the big worm. Conceptually, I think that they’re awesome. I love the idea of each faction having an ultimate boss unit like the first game, and I’m really happy to see the Hive Lords as the first ones. They look awesome and intimidating, and from my understanding they’re fairly balanced. That being said, they have horrifyingly large health pools which can be summarized by a really funny text channel conversation I saw online: “It survived the Hellbomb. What do we do?” I do think that it is a missed opportunity to not include a mission type where the goal is to kill one. They’re boss fights, so let us fight one and reward us for it. I get that they’re meant to be hazards more so than typical enemies, but I still want to hunt the worm.
“Into the Unjust” sees the forces of Super Earth investigating the Hive World Oshaune to research the Gloom–the mysterious Terminid spore clouds. Oshaune is ROUGH. In the vast majority of operations pre-update, my team succeeds and (usually) extracts. Oshaune routinely brutalizes us in ways we never expected. It’s hard. But why? I keep coming back to that question and wondering, “Why is Oshaune so brutal?” Let’s break it down. First up is the environment. Oshaune can really be divided into three biomes. The first is standard desert terrain. It’s nothing special, so it’s not crazy hard or easy, but feels like more of the same. Next up is the water. Water is awful to fight in because it slows you down and can go from annoying to fatal very quickly. It also hinders your ability to dive out of danger. I have straight up lost extractions because the extract zone was on a tiny island surrounded by water and we became instantly overrun and just couldn’t do anything to establish a foothold. Overall, I hate the water because it puts you at such a disadvantage that fighting in it becomes nearly impossible. Last up are the underground tunnels. The tunnels are tough, and arguably the most dangerous parts to navigate. I hate fighting Terminids in city locations because the streets are so claustrophobic and tightly packed together that it’s very easy to get overrun quickly. That’s the tunnels on steroids because at least in the cities you can call in stratagems to blast away nests or clean up bug breaches. Not underground. The toughest part about fighting in the tunnels is that you cannot rely on stratagems. Overrun and need something to cover your retreat? Too bad. Trying to fight through heavy resistance and need something to help you establish a foothold? Do it yourself. The sole benefit in my experience is that high-tier heavy enemies are rarer underground than on the surface. I have seen them underground, but they seem a lot rarer than usual, probably because Arrowhead wants the focus to be on the new tough enemies.
Finally, Oshaune features a handful of new objectives, and they can be quite frustrating. I’m not 100% sure how many objectives there are, but I’ve personally encountered four. I’ll rank them in terms of difficulty and enjoyability. First up is restarting the pumps. It’s an easy objective. Sure you can still get overrun if you’re not careful, but restarting the pumps feels like a victory lap more than a challenge. Next up is nuking the nursery and destroying the spore lung. Both of these objectives require you to go into the caves, which can exact a heavy toll if you’re not absolutely prepared and ready to handle the bugs. Last up is escorting the truck and getting oil. This objective is tough because it’s very easy for the truck to get destroyed. I’ll use my first ever run with the truck as an example. My friends and I loaded into the mission and secured the vehicle. It took me a minute to realize I was the one driving it, so I started moving forward. I got stuck in the water, so my buddy took over as driver and was able to get the truck moving again. Our other friend died, so we called in his respawn. He landed his Hellpod on the truck and tipped it over. The truck promptly exploded and we failed the mission. The truck is annoyingly fragile and can really feel like a chore to escort.
A new Warbond, “Dust Devils,” just released with the update as well, but I’ve unfortunately been unable to complete much of it. I did get the Coyote assault rifle, and it’s a pretty fun gun. One of my friends is a lot further in it, and he loves the speargun and expendable napalm. Apparently the solo silo is a bit underwhelming, but 3/4 of the big additions being really strong sounds like a good deal. Plus the armor looks cool and has a pretty good passive effect.
“Into the Unjust” is a controversial update because of its crazy difficulty spike bordering on unfair and broken at times. And honestly, I’m not sure what to think about it. Helldivers 2 isn’t an easy game. You’re expected to die a lot as you get better gear and build up your armory. Above all else, “Into the Unjust” is a loadout check. If you don’t have the right weapons and stratagems, you’re going to have a bad time. Even with the right gear, it can be super frustrating. Not having access to stratagems underground can be brutal because you know you won’t have them, so you don’t bring any Orbitals and Eagles. Instead, you bring things you can call down outside and equip on your person to progress through the tunnels. Then when you get outside, you get overrun and you just don’t have anything to handle the never-ending hordes and the constant stream of Dragonroaches. I genuinely can’t tell if it’s poorly designed or meant to force you to coordinate closer with your team than ever before. “Into the Unjust” is hard because it requires your team to be prepared and essentially min-max your loadouts. It’s hard because the terrain is actively unfair and forces you to fight the enemy faction that’s at their deadliest up close and personal and in large numbers in that exact scenario while also restricting the tools in your arsenal. It’s hard because the new enemies present themselves as massive problems on top of the already deadly army of bugs trying to claw your face off so you have to balance combat threats differently. It’s hard because you’re invading a Terminid home world, and they aren’t going to make it easy for would-be conquerors, so the only way to succeed is to bring your best equipment, and the best soldiers Super Earth has to offer.
Broad Scope Entertainment 