Posted by In spite of its popularity and past successes, Helldivers 2 finds itself in yet another controversy. Between community frustration with the game’s sandbox, poor communication and PR from the developers, and a controversial warbond, the game’s in a tough spot in online discourse. What I wanted to do today was simply review the new warbond and content drop, but before I do that, I wanted to touch on the controversy. In my opinion, most of it is ridiculous and overblown; it’s a very vocal group of players who have nothing better to do than cry about a game they don’t actually like, and think that they’re entitled to having the devs always cater to them. Is balance in the game questionable? Yes. I won’t pretend that it isn’t. I saw a lot of changes in the patch notes that I didn’t like, but some of them aren’t as big of a deal as they looked at first. Here’s my personal favorite example: Hive Guards had their heads increased to heavy armor but their main health pool was reduced. On paper, that sounded awful. In-game, I barely noticed it. All I had to do was aim my shots better. The online discourse surrounding the current state of the game is ridiculous and absurdly toxic. While I do think that some of the critiques are valid and warranted, not all of them are, like with the state of mechs and sentries. I don’t think mechs were nearly as bad as people thought they were pre-buff, but of course I’ll always take a buff to them. They do feel better to use and can last longer than before. As for sentries, they may die faster, but a quarter of a second doesn’t make that much of a difference. Another controversy surrounds the inclusion of the Lumberer mech behind the warbond paywall when all other vehicles have been free. Should we have gotten the Lumberer for free? I mean, I would never say no to getting stuff in-game for free. However, I’m not going to pretend that the paywall is egregious, especially when Helldivers 2 lets you farm the premium currency used to buy warbonds. Is it a bit of a grind? Yes. Is that fine? Yes. Are there alternatives (like buying it for $10)? YES. Now onto the warbond.
I like “Exo Experts.” I think that it’s a really solid warbond. The new Gallant SMG is decent. It’s a medium penetration gun with an absurd fire rate. Truth be told, that’s my biggest complaint with the weapon. It burns through ammo so quickly that I quickly dump the magazine into two or three enemies, then need to reload. You can get a larger magazine for it, so that may be worth investing in. Another possible solution would be changing the firing mode off of automatic. Another strength of it is its very high accuracy. The other new loadout weapon is the Missile Pistol. It’s ok. The Missile Pistol is a pretty high damage sidearm that has both a guided and unguided mode. The guided mode automatically locks on to big enemies, but if you want to hit smaller enemies, you will need to aim it yourself. I need to use it more, but my main issue so far is that its ammo capacity is just too low. You get a total of four shots with it by default. It takes two shots to kill a Charger. As a result, it CAN be strong, but you will be scrounging for ammo a lot. The armor passive, Oxygenator, increases your speed. The armor sets in the warbond are heavy and light, and the only experience I have with this armor is on the light set. I actually really like it. I don’t think it’s an absolute top tier option, but it’s far from bad. The speed boosts are noticeable, and I definitely intend to use this armor for a little while. Moving to the stratagems, we have three. The first is the Bullet Storm expendable machine gun. It has a pretty short cooldown timer, and every time you call it in, you get two of them. Each one has 300 rounds, a fire rate nearly identical to the Gallant, and very good accuracy. The only downside is that it is light penetration. I can definitely see this thing being a monster against bugs and squids when paired with an explosive primary. The Lumberer mech makes its return from Helldivers, completing the original mech trio. I really like it. It sports a flamethrower and an anti-tank cannon. It’s a lot of fun to use, pretty effective against the bugs, and feels fairly durable after the recent mech fixes. The other new mech is the Breakthrough, and this one has a big riot shield and a rotary shotgun. It’s similarly very good, though I can’t deny that it has a big design flaw: it wants to be up close and personal. Mechs are most effective agains the bugs because of how melee oriented they usually are, so you use the mechs to delete them from a distance. The Breakthrough requires you to be in melee range, especially if you want to use the shield. This will lead to the mech taking more damage more quickly than the others. You also do have to manually reload the shotgun, which is honestly more strange than anything. Overall, I think that “Exo Experts” is a strong warbond that I would recommend picking up.
The update added in a new spore Bile Titan variant, and buffed the Spore Burst strain. The new Bile Titan is fine. It is worth noting that it’s tankier than its regular variant, which feels like kind of a weird decision, and intentional power creep. I don’t know why they decided to make the variant stronger, but it’s not too big of a deal. I do, however, hate the new changes to the Spore Burst strain. Their gimmick was always that they would release a cloud of spores on death. Now, the spores buff the speed of every bug it makes contact with. This is not a minor speed boost. They will outrun you, even in fast gear. They become so fast that their models stutter and move in janky ways that don’t seem intentional. It’s almost unplayable. Each difficulty feels like it jumped up two levels. I regularly play level seven. Against the buffed Spore Burst, we were getting wiped every single mission due to constantly being overrun by so many enemies it felt like we were on difficulty nine. We then swapped to a normal bug planet and had two deaths over an entire mission. When playing solo, I had to drop it down to difficulty three, and even then I would get overrun and annihilated sometimes. Another big issue I have with the changes is that it feels like the spawn rates are borked. There are just too many of them, and the increased speed only amplifies the difficulty to absurd levels. I’m not exaggerating when I say on difficulty seven there was almost zero downtime between engagements where you could actually progress the mission objectives. I think that the Spore Burst bugs buffing each other CAN be a good mechanic, but right now it needs a serious tweak because it’s overtuned to the point of being nearly unplayable. A simple reduction in spawn rate or speed would suffice in making the strain more playable.
Lastly, the update added in a new biome: deciduous forests (and desert oasis but I don’t think we’ve gotten to the planet with this biome). The purpose of it is to look pretty and idyllic, and it is. The maps are very pretty and feel fine to traverse. My biggest complaint is that of course you’re forced to fight the revamped Spore Burst strain here. I look forward to playing on more of these biomes with more enjoyable enemies in the future.
Overall, I like the most recent content drop in Helldivers 2, but I can’t deny that it needs some tweaks. I honestly think that the game is in a better state than a lot of people think. Can it be made better? Of course. But I think that complaining online and review-bombing the game is childish and unproductive, especially when I look at the state of the game and can’t help but ask, “what are we complaining about and trying to get fixed?” The game’s monetization is NOT predatory, and we still get plenty of free content. The game is also live service, which means it does need an income stream to maintain, and having the backing of a major corporation like Sony can be both a blessing and a curse (*cough* Concord debt *cough*). Feedback is necessary to improve the game, but there’s a big difference between constantly complaining and giving constructive criticism.
Broad Scope Entertainment 