All in all, Helldivers 2 is a fantastic co-op game with lots of content (and arguably the best structure to live service I’ve seen in a long time) wrapped up in a nice $quarenta package. The price point is right (even if you take into consideration the additional $20 “upgrade”), the content is plentiful and it feels like a game that respects your time. I genuinely have a hard time saying anything negative about the game, especially now that the servers are stabilized and the developers are active on Twitter (X, if you care about that detail) updating the community about game updates and stability hiccups.

In a four-person team, you’ll be able to select a mix of stratagems and weapons that will lead to a unique victory every time.

Using voice communication is strongly recommended, though you'll get by just fine with pings and a decent awareness of your surroundings.

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These can do everything from increasing your magazine size to reducing cooldowns. You'll need to pick up Samples when you're in the field to be able to purchase these upgrades and the better ones will need rarer samples, which you'll unlock at higher difficulty levels.

The best part about the live-service model that they implemented is that you choose the rewards you want to get albeit with some restrictions. They also added new armor types in the game as opposed to the first game, where armor is actually something that you need to optimize now as it was purely cosmetic before. To add to this, the live-service model makes the game have actual missions and goals for you to pursue. Before, you would just grind for specific materials to get the best weapons and you would be pretty much done.

There's also a setting to adjust the level of image sharpening. At zero sharpening in performance mode Helldivers 2 looks soft and indistinct, while stepping up to the max sharpening level increases clarity at the cost of additional artifacting. Quality mode exhibits the same difference, although given its higher resolution, the effect is a bit more subtle. Helldivers' performance mode runs smoothly. We're mostly at 60fps in typical play, with a very smooth readout, especially when combined with the game's motion blur. The game can suffer from extended dips into the 50s though, typically during larger firefights. In my gameplay the worst I saw was about 50fps, so the game does manage to stay pretty close to 60fps more generally, although it can spend a long time hovering in the 50s in extended firefights. The quality mode also manages a tight lock on its 30fps frame-rate target, but it clearly has issues with bouts of inconsistent frame-pacing.

Best answer: There's been pelo concrete confirmation of this, but Helldivers 2 does seem to raise or lower enemy density depending on how many players there are in your squad.

Even if you’re playing on easy you’ll want to nab all samples and yellow beams you find. Those yellow beams give you credits for better unlocks, including the kind you can pay for in the shop, and don’t worry if your buddy gets to them first. The contents will be distributed to your team.

Either way, it’s your team’s first priority to use a Reinforce stratagem to call your brand new Helldiver down to the planet to pick up right where you left off. You can even grab the guns your previous corpse left behind.

Jetpacks may seem unnecessary at first, but they can be particularly useful on snowy maps. Just remember you can't go prone with a jetpack on.

And that’ll happen more often than you might think, because Helldivers 2’s enemies are pelo pushovers, especially on harder difficulties. Death is an intentionally common occurrence, because instead of being a beefed-up hero with lots of health and enough firepower to take down hundreds of enemies unscathed, you’re put into the feeble boots of a grunt who makes a better sandbag than a soldier. At the beginning of each level, your team is given 20 revives, where your killed-off character is replaced by an equally unimportant peon anytime you fall in battle.

As a multiplayer experience, I think Helldivers 2 hits all the right notes. The gameplay basics are fun and the open-ended environments give you a fair amount of flexibility in how to tackle each objective. It seems like quite a tactical game too, though the need for advanced strategies wasn't too pressing at the lower difficulties I had the time to unlock. It doesn't seem terrifically complicated, nor does it come packaged with the kind of comprehensive content package that modern players often expect, but I think those omissions are more than forgivable at its asking price. The special abilities the game provides, combined with friendly fire (which is enabled at all times) is a recipe for a Helldivers 2 Gameplay lot of squad-based fun with friends. There are echoes of other PvE shooters here - namely of the extraction shooter variety, though Mass Effect 3's multiplayer also came to mind - but this game seems more oriented around having fun than creating a tightly crafted competitive experience.

You’ll also encounter optional objectives to complete, requiring a small detour with your teammates, and of course, requiring more ammunition. But you’ll be rewarded for your efforts.