Helldivers 2 Review (PS5) | Smash Jump

Nine years after the release of the original Helldivers, Helldivers 2 has taken the world by storm, becoming the most-played game on PlayStation. While the game is overflowing with charm and engaging mechanics, there is one question left to ask. Are you ready to join the Helldivers?

The Story of Helldivers 2 is a simple one. Taking place 100 years after the first game, the Helldivers must once again fight the bug menace and the new Automaton threat in a two-front galactic war. How this war will progress is up to the player base and the developers, as it is a living conflict with battle lines moving back and forth as players complete missions. Right now, we can only guess how the war will unfold, but one thing is for sure. Super Earth needs you now! The entire population has been mobilized to defend Super Earth and spread managed democracy to the galaxy. Join the fight and become a Helldiver today!

The gameplay of Helldivers 2 is just as simple. You play as a Helldiver with limited ammo, health, and respawns. You can play with up to three other players, with your lives increasing as more people join, topping out at 20. Your main objectives are shown in the mission briefings and on the map, which you can see anytime by pressing the touchpad. All players can access stratagems, which is Helldiver’s signature mechanic, allowing you to call down things like a machine gun or a 500K bomb dropped by a jet. All stratagems have a cooldown, with some of the most powerful having limited uses. Keep in mind friendly fire is on at all times for all stratagems and weapons, so coordination is important if you don’t want to kill your squadmates. Usually, this would lead to frustration as your oblivious squadmate drops napalm on your head, however, because respawning is quick and you can collect all your gear from your body, the consequences are much lighter than in a game like Counter-Strike.

Enemy verity is also excellent, with the two enemy armies having more than 20+ different enemy troop variants to fight between the main factions. The Terminids focus on overwhelming the player with numbers and killing them in melee combat, while the Automatons focus on ranged attacks and heavy armor. The Two factions are very different, with some stratagems being useless against the Automaton army but incredibly effective against the bugs and vice versa.

Helldivers 2 has repeatedly blown me away with how beautiful it looks. The art style is simple, focusing on sci-fi aesthetics reminiscent of Starship Troops, but it is executed expertly. The lighting in this game dynamically shifts, with explosions and lasers lighting up the sky as the player traverses the map.

Even outside combat, the planets you fight on range from harsh winter tundras to thick jungles. Thick fog can obscure your vision and light up red with incoming laser fire as an Automaton tank tries to spray you down. All of the little details in Helldivers 2 come together as you play, making it a sight to behold in motion in a way still images and screenshots can’t capture.

Helldivers 2 runs at a solid 60 fps on the Performance Mode and 30 fps on Quality. The game has had issues with server crashes due to the number of players online at once, but as of this review, most of the server issues have been ironed out. Crashes are rare, but unfortunately, several glitches persist. Armor values are still broken, making everything but light armor useless, and disconnects are common. It’s a much more stable product now than at launch, but it’s not free of frustration.

Helldivers 2 is the best game of 2024 so far, only being held back by the fact that the small team at Arrowhead Studios was not expecting so many players to flood the servers at launch. Since then, the significant issues have been fixed, and it is clear that Arrowhead is committed to continuing to fix technical problems as well as adding new content like mechs. Its combination of tactical gameplay, explosive battles, and hilarious friendly fire, all for the highly patriotic price of $40, is impossible to pass on.