People who review bomb a game in hour 1 for matchmaking issues the dev hotfixed by hour 2 are soft. Gamers who preorder and then complain over an avoidable crash the dev offers a day 1 workaround for on Discord are weak. If you don't like or want to support preordering, good! Don't. If you do preorder, accept there will be lows and highs from participating in the zeitgeist. Most online games suffer bumps on day one with Helldivers 2 faring far better than most. What will ultimately matter after day 1 is if a game is good and fun at its core, and if it has legs. Everything else is the mewling of kittens, the cry of babies, the hot takes of filthy casuals.

So, is Helldivers 2 (HD2) good? I own thousands of Steam games and have been gaming since my Atari 2600, I have been playing this nonstop since release day, and my vote is yes. The game is very, *very* good on both the quality and fun scale. Does it have legs? Yes, for those who like this style of game.

Helldivers 2 is a 4-player PVE coop third person shooter (3PS) with a solid gameplay loop (pick planet, pick gear and infil, drop in, do missions, get out alive), strong shooting, movement and damage mechanics, attention to detail, comically big bombs, organically hilarious moments, and player and playerbase-wide progression via moving warfront. Our premade teams played all of day one in US East with 30 minutes of downtime, tops. Arrowhead Games released two hotfixes in the first 24 hours and we kept playing, even with version mismatches between players (some exited to patch, some did not). The devs already had a well-earned reputation given Magicka, the Gauntlet remake, and HD1, three definitive couch coop titles. They have nailed the transition to third person in a way that may surpass Risk of Rain 2.

• Chaos as a driver of gameplay and fun: Missions can be 10-40 minutes long with huge explosions, roving patrols that call in backup, effortless accidental friendly fire, and moments that will make you laugh. You will die, often, and at the hands of your teammates. The "strategem" mechanic of calling in a coded message and popping a beacon to deliver a weapon or orbital ordinance is unique, funny when it fails, and a gameplay challenge in itself that can be mastered in time. Running from bugs or bots to call in player respawns ("reinforcements"), having to stop to punch in the code, throwing the beacon and players dropping in to crush your pursuers is an adrenaline rush that will leave you and others cheering if you all pull it off.
  
• Quality of shooting mechanics: Controller and MnK are both treated well with raw mouse input and press-hold-long press keybind options. For MnK players you have a fixed center crosshair along with a waving, bobbing circle that reflects the gun's actual and current position. This can be affected by sway, recoil, weapon weight (spinning a heavy MG takes a moment even if you snap to aim), or obstruction. The mechanic adds additional challenge for MnK players while feeling fair, creating another layer of skills to develop. Visualizing recoil for example is easier in HD2 but more satisfying to handle than in other games that simply increase fire cone over time.
  
• Quality and density of experience: I also own Starship Troopers but the difference in quality from this veteran dev studio is palpable. Players can dive, crawl, crouch, resupply each other, heal others, operate 2-man weapons, and all with very smooth and synced animations. There are reasons to do all these things. The environment is full of cover and concealment opportunities. Stealth matters. Firing position matters. Loadout choices matter. Enemies can lose limbs and crawl toward you. Calling in ordinance feels stupidly good. Weapons are meaty. Sustained fire makes your soldiers throw out lines that are said only when holding the trigger down. Supports drop-in, drop-out coop, PS5 crossplay, and integrates well with Steam. The care and attention to detail is very high for a "AA" $40 price.
  
• A high skill ceiling: There are 9-10 difficulty levels that scale in interesting ways. Easier modes feel right with high enemy counts that have low health, making you feel like a Starship Troopers main character. Higher difficulties don't juice enemy health, they introduce entirely new enemies and retrofit older enemies to have new behaviors. In my experience, few shooters do difficulty levels smoother and better than the Helldivers series.
  
• Randomness: Procedural maps that scale in size and objective count based on difficulty, random and changing weather and time, choosing where to drop, roving enemy patrols and diversity of builds provide a huge combination of things that can happen in rounds.
  
• A sense of purpose: HD2's bite-sized missions that include infil and exfil, and whose results feed into a larger war all players participate in, provide a better sense of purpose and continuity than endless wave survival shooters.
  
• The community: Players committing to the bit of the game's theme add a layer of fun to all encounters. Players knowing that mistakes are going to happen makes things less serious and toxic. There's real depth here if you want it and take the time to scale the difficulty ladder. If not, it's still fun to fool around with friends.

• Transition from a $5 game on sale with DLCs to a live service game: It remains to be seen how the 'warbond' battle pass system will hold up but it's started more fairly than most shooters. Premium currency is earnable just by playing (like Hunt) and the non-expiring BPs are similar to DRG and HALO Infinite. For veteran HD1 players this is an improvement over paid DLC that was required to handle certain mission and difficulty combos.
  
• More content: It's already been promised by Arrowhead but more biomes, introducing mechs and vehicles, more mission types and leaning even more into the story and humor of Super Earth will only help the game grow and remain interesting for hardcore players.

You may be interested in Helldivers 2 if you know and enjoyed any of these titles:

• SEAL Team (EA, 1993): HD2 is reminiscent of a seminal and forgotten 3PS simulator. SEAL Team similarly brought a small squad into an open map where proning and calling in air support to fight AI was a key feature of the game, and a fond memory.
  
• Mass Effect 3 (BioWare, 2012): Mass Effect 3 featured one of the earliest third person wave survival shooters that attempted to tie the mode into the game's story and had an "end" (surviving and extracting).
  
• Deep Rock Galactic (Ghost Ship Games, 2020): DRG's fun-focused horde shooter credentials are legendary and players who enjoy that should enjoy HD2.
  
• Killing Floor 2 (Tripwire Interactive, 2016): KF2's gameplay loop of an escalating risk over enemy waves and fighting to manage ammo and resources feels similar.
  
• Hunt: Showdown (Crytek, 2019): While HD2 lacks the PvPvE player fighting component of Hunt, the idea that a mission starts and ends with escalating risk centered around an objective, moving through an open outdoor map while other groups roam the same map, choosing to go loud or stay hidden, and making a plan to extract after (or before) doing what you set out to do is very much here in HD2 as well. Hunt can often end in you limping home in failure. HD2 doesn't offer the same risk of failure in losing your hunter, but let's be honest - Hunt doesn't anymore either, at least during the Tide of Shadows winter 2023 event.

People who review bomb a game in hour 1 for matchmaking issues the dev hotfixed by hour 2 are soft. Gamers who preorder and then complain over an avoidable crash the dev offers a day 1 workaround for on Discord are weak. If you don't like or want to support preordering, good! Don't. If you do preorder, accept there will be lows and highs from participating in the zeitgeist. Most online games suffer bumps on day one with Helldivers 2 faring far better than most. What will ultimately matter after day 1 is if a game is good and fun at its core, and if it has legs. Everything else is the mewling of kittens, the cry of babies, the hot takes of filthy casuals. So, is Helldivers 2 (HD2) good? I own thousands of Steam games and have been gaming since my Atari 2600, I have been playing this nonstop since release day, and my vote is yes. The game is very, *very* good on both the quality and fun scale. Does it have legs? Yes, for those who like this style of game. Helldivers 2 is a 4-player PVE coop third person shooter (3PS) with a solid gameplay loop (pick planet, pick gear and infil, drop in, do missions, get out alive), strong shooting, movement and damage mechanics, attention to detail, comically big bombs, organically hilarious moments, and player and playerbase-wide progression via moving warfront. Our premade teams played all of day one in US East with 30 minutes of downtime, tops. Arrowhead Games released two hotfixes in the first 24 hours and we kept playing, even with version mismatches between players (some exited to patch, some did not). The devs already had a well-earned reputation given Magicka, the Gauntlet remake, and HD1, three definitive couch coop titles. They have nailed the transition to third person in a way that may surpass Risk of Rain 2. [H1]What Helldivers 2 does right[/H1] [list] [*] [b]Chaos as a driver of gameplay and fun:[/b] Missions can be 10-40 minutes long with huge explosions, roving patrols that call in backup, effortless accidental friendly fire, and moments that will make you laugh. You will die, often, and at the hands of your teammates. The "strategem" mechanic of calling in a coded message and popping a beacon to deliver a weapon or orbital ordinance is unique, funny when it fails, and a gameplay challenge in itself that can be mastered in time. Running from bugs or bots to call in player respawns ("reinforcements"), having to stop to punch in the code, throwing the beacon and players dropping in to crush your pursuers is an adrenaline rush that will leave you and others cheering if you all pull it off. [*] [b]Quality of shooting mechanics:[/b] Controller and MnK are both treated well with raw mouse input and press-hold-long press keybind options. For MnK players you have a fixed center crosshair along with a waving, bobbing circle that reflects the gun's actual and current position. This can be affected by sway, recoil, weapon weight (spinning a heavy MG takes a moment even if you snap to aim), or obstruction. The mechanic adds additional challenge for MnK players while feeling fair, creating another layer of skills to develop. Visualizing recoil for example is easier in HD2 but more satisfying to handle than in other games that simply increase fire cone over time. [*] [b]Quality and density of experience:[/b] I also own Starship Troopers but the difference in quality from this veteran dev studio is palpable. Players can dive, crawl, crouch, resupply each other, heal others, operate 2-man weapons, and all with very smooth and synced animations. There are reasons to do all these things. The environment is full of cover and concealment opportunities. Stealth matters. Firing position matters. Loadout choices matter. Enemies can lose limbs and crawl toward you. Calling in ordinance feels stupidly good. Weapons are meaty. Sustained fire makes your soldiers throw out lines that are said only when holding the trigger down. Supports drop-in, drop-out coop, PS5 crossplay, and integrates well with Steam. The care and attention to detail is very high for a "AA" $40 price. [*] [b]A high skill ceiling:[/b] There are 9-10 difficulty levels that scale in interesting ways. Easier modes [i]feel[/i] right with high enemy counts that have low health, making you feel like a Starship Troopers main character. Higher difficulties don't juice enemy health, they introduce entirely new enemies and retrofit older enemies to have new behaviors. In my experience, few shooters do difficulty levels smoother and better than the Helldivers series. [*] [b]Randomness:[/b] Procedural maps that scale in size and objective count based on difficulty, random and changing weather and time, choosing where to drop, roving enemy patrols and diversity of builds provide a huge combination of things that can happen in rounds. [*] [b]A sense of purpose:[/b] HD2's bite-sized missions that include infil and exfil, and whose results feed into a larger war all players participate in, provide a better sense of purpose and continuity than endless wave survival shooters. [*] [b]The community:[/b] Players committing to the bit of the game's theme add a layer of fun to all encounters. Players knowing that mistakes are going to happen makes things less serious and toxic. There's real depth here if you want it and take the time to scale the difficulty ladder. If not, it's still fun to fool around with friends. [/list] [H1]What Helldivers 2 might do wrong[/H1] [list] [*] [b]Transition from a $5 game on sale with DLCs to a live service game:[/b] It remains to be seen how the 'warbond' battle pass system will hold up but it's started more fairly than most shooters. Premium currency is earnable just by playing (like Hunt) and the non-expiring BPs are similar to DRG and HALO Infinite. For veteran HD1 players this is an improvement over paid DLC that was required to handle certain mission and difficulty combos. [*] [b]More content:[/b] It's already been promised by Arrowhead but more biomes, introducing mechs and vehicles, more mission types and leaning even more into the story and humor of Super Earth will only help the game grow and remain interesting for hardcore players. [/list] [H1]Games Helldivers 2 reminds me of[/H1] You may be interested in Helldivers 2 if you know and enjoyed any of these titles: [list] [*] [b]SEAL Team (EA, 1993)[/b]: HD2 is reminiscent of a seminal and forgotten 3PS simulator. SEAL Team similarly brought a small squad into an open map where proning and calling in air support to fight AI was a key feature of the game, and a fond memory. [*] [b]Mass Effect 3 (BioWare, 2012)[/b]: Mass Effect 3 featured one of the earliest third person wave survival shooters that attempted to tie the mode into the game's story and had an "end" (surviving and extracting). [*] [b]Deep Rock Galactic (Ghost Ship Games, 2020)[/b]: DRG's fun-focused horde shooter credentials are legendary and players who enjoy that should enjoy HD2. [*] [b]Killing Floor 2 (Tripwire Interactive, 2016)[/b]: KF2's gameplay loop of an escalating risk over enemy waves and fighting to manage ammo and resources feels similar. [*] [b]Hunt: Showdown (Crytek, 2019)[/b]: While HD2 lacks the PvPvE player fighting component of Hunt, the idea that a mission starts and ends with escalating risk centered around an objective, moving through an open outdoor map while other groups roam the same map, choosing to go loud or stay hidden, and making a plan to extract after (or before) doing what you set out to do is very much here in HD2 as well. Hunt can often end in you limping home in failure. HD2 doesn't offer the same risk of failure in losing your hunter, but let's be honest - Hunt doesn't anymore either, at least during the Tide of Shadows winter 2023 event. [/list]