Recent reviews by Das💀Neko

Alright, my concerns has been addressed and the PSN account requirement has been dropped, for now, So I am changing my review to reflect the game as it should be without nonsense 3rd party account requirements.

Helldivers 2 is a game that got almost everything right, and most of its problems comes from its own success rather than bad design. Things like server capacity not being enough for example. It has also been patched into a better state at a steady rate which has addressed most of the old issues to date.

While its live service model is not ideal, it does mean we get a steady stream of content and more importantly it is one of the least intrusive examples I have seen. The premium currency is available to be collected in game in a reasonable rate and the new equipment you get from each battlepass is somewhat balanced so they are not strictly required.

Its also worth talking about the battlepass itself. In most games the battlepass expires after a certain timeframe meaning you cant go back and unlock what you missed the first time. That is not the case here. All players have access to all the battlepasses, assuming you first pay the 1000 super credit cost to activate them which might take around 30 hours of playtime to collect with normal gameplay.

As for the gameplay, it is decently engaging but also I feel that it is not hard enough. I am not part of the majority in this experience however and most people I have talked to say that the game can randomly go from easy and relaxing to impossible within the span of minutes. This random difficulty spike has been one of the biggest complaints I have heard.

Aside from that we are currently looking forward to major additions to the game, namely a 3rd enemy faction as well as vehicles. It is also worth mentioning that the developers of the game has been extremely receptive to player feedback and if that continues to be the case I predict this game will become really great over time.

As I write this review I have played around 14 hours and with that I have completed the game and all the achievements including the ridiculous 10 million block one.

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This game is the foundation for what I think all incremental games should strive for. Namely, number goes up along with a simple but satisfying gameplay loop. It is inherently limited to a linear progression however which is not necessarily as interesting but it works if nothing else.

For the price (5,45€ at the time I bought it) and the very enjoyable gameplay I am willing to recommend this despite its many problems. Before you buy however you should know that it is a fairly short game which a motivated person can clear in a day or two with limited replay value but I think the experience is unique enough to be worth it.

Some words of warning however, this game has brought my PC to its knees and I can no longer mine several of the planets because the lag gets so bad that the game freezes. This is a late game problem and if this worries you then I recommend using the [Orbital lasers] sparingly since using 10 of them at once makes my game unplayable for a short time and dont upgrade the [Micro Drills] at all because they can and will multiply uncontrollably until your PC cant handle it.

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With that I give this game my recommendation. Buy it, play it, enjoy it and then move on.

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Now onto a more in-depth analysis of what I think this game does right, what it does wrong and some suggestions.

The user interface is inconsistent and ranges from really good to atrocious. The skill tree is an example that I really like although it has problems selecting nodes at the edge of the screen sometimes. I also like the orbital map but it could use a side bar with quick access to each planet you have access to since selecting some of the moons can be annoying. The stage selection for the sun is a really good idea but the UI needs to be redone because holy hell is it buggy. I also feel like there is a missed opportunity for all the other planets to get new versions based on the stage of the sun which can extend the game by several more times with new content.

The rest of the UI in the shop is a mixed bag. Most of it is really good as long as you dont have to scroll the screen at which point it becomes miserable. Consider having pages you can flip through with a button rather than scrolling the actual screen as a simple but functional fix rather than redesigning the entire UI. The dropdown menu for the prestige of planets is also horrible and becomes laggy once you reach a high enough number (I am at 2500 as an example) and really hard to scroll through.

While in a run I also think the UI is bad at giving good information. A specific example is the problems experienced by Wanderbots on youtube where he misunderstood game mechanics and thought that destroying planet cores made the rest of the blocks weaker. While you can argue that it is his fault for not really absorbing the information he read when buying upgrades it is important to point out that many players do not learn by reading the descriptions and rather learn by experimenting. As such going to the core and destroying it to lower the durability was not only repeatable and gave observable results but made sense to him rather than the actual reasons which was his depth bonus irrespective of the core itself.

To help make the game more readable I propose three changes. First of all is showing your current drill damage with all the bonuses applied. This is to make it more obvious when and how much something improves your damage so it becomes harder to confuse cause and effect. Secondly is a new health bar, far too many players (including me for a very long time) confuses health drainage to increase in maximum health because it shrinks the bar. There are a few ways you can resolve this but I propose you include a "scale" inside the health bar like in games such as league of legends. That way it is easier to see the health bar getting bigger rather than just your health getting smaller by the movement of the scale alongside the health.

Lastly on the UI, there should be an end-of-run screen that allows you to see how much damage your different weapons did. It is important to give the player a more objective way to judge the effectiveness of their weapons.

Then lets talk about the performance issue. There needs to be an option that limits the number of [Micro Drills] there can be at any one time. Additional [Micro Drills] over that limit can either be put in a queue or alternatively give the current drills bonuses based on how many drills above the maximum you are. Could even be a new upgrade you can purchase to increase the bonuses they get but lets move on.

While pretty much all of this game is bare-bones and at times only has functional features that I would consider placeholder, I think that this game has massive potential if given the development and polish it deserves, potentially in a sequel where the developer can take everything that has worked and expanding on it. For example, they introduced crafting but only made one item a multi stage craft that requires other craftable items to make and only 5 overall. This can be expanded and should in my opinion have a much more expansive tree of craftable items that requires other craftable items.

I am also somewhat disappointed in the weapons, namely the feebleness of the equippable laser. The orbital laser is fine, if a bit laggy, but the equippable laser should have a lot more potential. It is basically a steriotype to have a powerful death laser in space and considering how badly it compares to the other weapons in the end game is a shame. The developer could definitely have leaned much more on the laser and given it flashier abilities such as upgrades for more beams and whatnot. In contrast I think the [Caustic Gas] is a very boring skill in its current implementation and might even be better to be removed entirely unless it is reworked. I just never felt it did anything and it just hung around the core all the time being useless.

The enemies on the grass planet was a good addition but the developer could add more variety and also a ramp-up in difficulty with perhaps a boss or something to truly put you on the clock. As it is, I can basically just ignore them. At the very least they need a range ability to start applying pressure a minute or so into a run.

But that is about it for now. I could talk for a few more hours if I was allowed but even this is far too much.

While I have played this game and also followed content about it on youtube to a large degree I can not with good concious recommend it in its current state. While the game itself is brilliant the EULA is not. The amount of liberty the company behind it takes with your private information can only be compared to how a data mining virus strips your computer of anything worth knowing about you and for equally shady reasons.

It is to the point where I am going to report this game to Avira (my anti virus provider) as a malicious program and if you asked me then the only way I would recommend playing this game is with a pirated version without an internet access which is really sad because its such a great game.

The worst thing I can say about payday 2 is that you require good people to play with and that indevidual skills are somewhat diminshed by relying on skill upgrades. Outside of that there are a lack of guns for the early levels meaning the different "classes" cant play to their strenghts until they unlock the guns required.

Otherwise its a game of a kind. Without competition this becomes a very interesting game for everyone that want to mow down cops and steal gold from banks.