Helldivers
HELLDIVERS™ is a hardcore, cooperative, twin stick shooter. As part of the elite unit called the HELLDIVERS, players must work together to protect SUPER EARTH and defeat the enemies of mankind in an intense intergalactic war. HELLDIVERS™ A New Hell Edition is a free upgrade for all existing owners and includes: 3 NEW higher difficulties beyond HELLDIVE! 13. “An Exercise in Futility”, 14. “The Definition of Insanity”, and 15. “The Inner Circle of Hell”. A NEW Stratagem – MGX-42 Machine Gun. A disposable one use machine gun with very high fire rate. All previous expansions (Masters Of The Galaxy, Turning Up The Heat, and Democracy Strikes Back). Up to 4 player local and online co-op on STEAM. Full friendly fire – “accidentally” kill your friends, again and again. Direct the full might of the military with a wide variety of Support Stratagems. Community-driven galactic campaign. A universe of worlds to liberate. 100+ hours of gameplay
Steam User 209
This is the only Helldivers available to buy and play in my country so that's an immediate thumbs up.
Steam User 108
I was curious after watching a lot of Helldivers 2 gameplay so I wanted to check and try the original myself, and I'm surprised at how good it is! Truly a hidden gem in the realm of it's genre.
Steam User 317
for anyone who wants to play helldivers 2 but:
-Isnt good at third person shooters
-Has a low end pc
-Dosent have 30 dollars
This game is perfect for you
Steam User 59
A friend gifted me this game (and it's DLCs) after I played the sequel, and I gotta say it's pretty darn good. It's an older game, but it doesn't feel dated. I enjoy that missions are much shorter than HD2, and Samples aren't as much of a pain or priority to collect. There's no common, rares or supers here, just "samples", and that's fine with me.
The only bad thing I can say about the game right now is that it's player base is significantly smaller than HD2, but that isn't the game's fault, just the cruel flow of time. It's much simpler than it's sequel, but I don't think that's a bad thing. Sometimes less is more. It's still got the Helldivers spirit.
FOR SUPER EARTH!
Steam User 68
If you are review bombing this game because of the sequel PSN situation, back the fuck off. While this game is not perfect and has its fair share of problems, it is still an immensely fun coop experience. Personally, this is one of the best games I've ever played with my friends, and it has a special place in my heart because of this. It doesn't deserve to be review bombed along with its sequel. We were all diving way before the majority of the internet knew what a Managed Democracy is, so have some damn respect please.
Steam User 25
TL; DR Helldivers is frantic chaotic and great; it is a game that shines in multiplayer, but which is also a lot of fun solo. Naturally, I hope that the servers will remain online for years to come.
Note: I have played with a lot of strangers and have never had any issues with finding a team, but I have also not found a single person purposefully ruining for others. Hopefully you would have the same experience.
Story
Super Earth, our home, is governed by managed democracy, a system so streamlined and perfect that you don't need to vote a computer does it for you.
But our way of life is under attack the aliens want nothing but our total eradication, Super Earth will not buckle, we will not give in, we will spread managed democracy until peace and prosperity reigns again!
Would you believe that this game is a satirical? Starship Troopers is one clear influence as evidence by several achievements being quotes from the movie. If you delve deeper and read the in-game news that preface and outro a frontline you will find other interesting things such as implying the entire war was based on a lie, and that they did not have the destructive weaponry Super Earth claimed, or that anyone who doubts Super Earth’s official stories on their Casus Belli are labelled “sympathisers”. I would say the game has a sort of sardonic wit and style, so I found myself enjoying reading the various entries backstories and the tactical information on your enemies.
With that said the writing is completely optional, there is no storyline or anything like that only the Galactic Campaign where you defend Super Earth's right to suppress protestors with SMGs.
Presentation
Helldivers has a remarkably diverse set of enemies, the three factions all have their own unique style from a cybernetic body horror to crustacean insects, and within each faction you can easily tell everything apart. It is very easy to know what you are fighting, so it is easy to know what tactics will be effective. You might have been able to confuse certain enemies, however, these are typically exclusive to different difficulties, and so they pose no issue when actually playing the game.
There are also themes for each faction, and yeah, they are also great, adding further personality to each faction and solidifying them as different experiences. There are variations with different intensities for each faction to accompany the added difficulties of higher drops which works really well, remarkably I have never gotten bored with the soundtrack, but my personal favourites are the high difficulty Illuminate or perhaps the boss themes.
There is also some variety with planets snow, volcanic, swamp, deserts of cities, but in all honestly all planets of a type look the same, which is not lovely, but it is not something I hold against the game either, luckily there are certain changes depending on the faction that controls it.
Since Helldivers can get very hectic it is a good thing that the developers tried to remedy that with aural and visual cues. Helldivers will call out when they are reloading, when they drop down, and the countdowns for stratagems are very explicit so you rarely get a tank dropped on your face if you are paying attention, but in war all kinds of things happen.
The voiced callouts are the best and most fun, I really like how they shout out their hatred of the enemies of democracy as they are firing, and being able to quickly and easily communicate within the game and its four basic audio emotes is cool, but sometimes people do not ”stop” when you ask, them and so they get a face full of lava.
You are also given customisation options to differentiate your own helldiver from the masses. I always love this in games so of course I love it here, but it's not all sunshine and roses, it takes a while to unlock all options and a lot of the cooler armour pieces are DLC.
Gameplay
The key to defeating the alien scum that threatens Super Earth is acquiring contribution to the Galactic Campaign. As players collect more and more we push our enemies further away from our home world and closer to theirs, eventually we can launch an invasion and hopefully deal with them for good, but if we do not collect enough contribution they will push us back, and if Super Earth falls then all will be lost
So completing planets, especially on higher difficulties, is important to winning but so is defending regional capitals so as to stop their advance. It helps that the city centres are the most fun missions in the game, at least in my opinion.
Regardless once you have a planet you can choose to do drops, each one has a selection to choose from but on your standard planet you will need to compete them all to gain contribution. Once done you can choose your loadout from a large selection of weapons with different benefits and drawbacks as well as powerful perks and game-changing stratagems. You get missile strikes, heavy weaponry, vehicles, and various defensive measures. If you are in a team you may want to coordinate your equipment, but unless you are playing at the highest difficulties or if you are bad, it will not make a major difference as long as you use something that is somewhat useful.
Once planetside you will need to make a lot of decisions, which objective to tackle first, what route do we take, do we circle around the patrol, do we kill them? And many more.
It is often the case that you will try and kill patrols before they sound an alarm otherwise you will quickly be swarmed with enemies, both options are fun but ideally you will actually complete the planet and to do that it is best to have good synergy and a common goal with your team. Certain players are definitely sample-addicted and will beeline towards any research they see, and since you share a screen that can be annoying, but it only rarely jeopardises the mission.
There is also a lot of variety in the actual drops, you always get a selection of different missions and they require you to do various things, from assassinating a target, disarming mines, escorting someone, defending missile launchers etc.
Failing a mission does not mean that everything is lost, as long as you evacuate you will receive all research you collected (used for upgrades), however a low number of deaths, no failed objectives and full evacuation is required for full contribution. Since each criteria corresponds to a third of the contribution it might be useful to destroy the objectives yourselves if you have already failed one, so as to make the run faster and not waste valuable resources, or lives.
Added to this is the differences between factions against the Cyborgs it is hard to fully stealth so it turns into a tactical strike in a warzone, against the Illuminate it feels more like a special operation in hostile territory while the last one is a bug hunt. I enjoy all of them and I enjoy fighting all the factions, I love the variety and it has kept me interested in the game.
Worth noting the differences between KBM and a controller, I have used both, but all my PC playtime is with a keyboard. A lot of people agree that aiming is more precise with a mouse, but it is called "twin-stick-shooter" so it is not like a controller is useless.
The more important difference is grenades and stratagems, with a mouse they land exactly at your cursor, provided your throwing arm is strong enough, but a controller is more flexible, you can throw grenades or stratagems off-screen, which can be the difference between calling in an artillery strike next to you or on a group of enemies. Ultimately it is down to preference, but they are also best suited for different things.
Steam User 58
This game is better than HELLDIVERS 2.
YOU MUST BUY THIS GAME NOW! Get it on sale or even get it full price because it is 100% worth the purchase.
I got this game after playing many hours of HELLDIVERS 2 because I wanted to see what the first game was like and I was blown away. Here we have:
● A funny story on global warfare with lots of in-game storytelling and a terminal with a encyclopedia full of lore.
● A very diverse arsenal - We have lots of great weapons in this game that can be upgraded. The stratagem weapons are all very good, none of them are useless.
● Amazing stratagems - Your stratagems can be upgraded too and all of them are good.
● 3 Fun and engaging enemy factions and boss fights.
● A community-driven galactic war, every mission counts and you can win or lose wars.
● Unique armors and capes for in-game events.
The cooperative aspects of the game makes it very hardcore, you cannot go by yourself and stray away from your team because the screen is shared between everyone, you will dive together or you will die together.
This game is not easy, it is brutal and can be overwhelming at first but it gets so much easier if you play with other Divers.
The balance in this game is very good as no weapon or stratagem is useless, their usefulness depends on which faction you're fighting.
The only negative thing I can say about this game is how small the playerbase is, but you can still find many dedicated players diving 24/7.
This game has everything I want in HELLDIVERS 2. HELLDIVERS is amazing, genuinely one of the best co-op video games I've ever played.
Quit reading this and buy the game already!