Helldivers 2 | Fully Ramblomatic

Second Wind

The majority of this video was created  before Sony pulled that stunt last week with  

the mandating Playstation account linking to  play Helldivers 2. Since the matter warrants  

mentioning, it will be addressed in a short  addendum at the end of this review. Thank you.

[Intro Music]

Ah, I know what you're thinking. "Yahtzee,  voluntarily reviewing an online multiplayer game?  

Has the seven-headed beast risen from the ocean  already? Or did every single player game in the  

world spontaneously combust last weekend?" Well,  you're more likely thinking stuff like "what's  

for lunch," and "is he really still making these  videos, talk about peaking too early." But yes,  

unusually for me I've been playing Helldivers  2. Not liking online multiplayer is something  

I've long come to terms with about myself. I  prefer games with a rewarding narrative focus,  

and live service multiplayer games are usually  emotionally numbing skinner box grinds,  

and let's not forget that random human beings  rank slightly lower on my preferred companions  

list than an uncontrolled electrical fire. But  recently I was obliged to play a bit of Helldivers  

2 alongside my Second Wind colleagues as part  of our 12 hour charity stream, so take note,  

that's how you get me to play a live service  shooter these days: one, for charity, two,  

let me do it with my mates so if the stress gets  too much I can shoot Nick in the face a few times.  

Failing that I guess you could try holding  a gun to the head of one of my loved ones,  

but even then I'm gonna need to see  the calibre before I make a decision.

To my surprise, I had rather a lot of fun playing  Helldivers 2, which made me suspicious. As I say  

I was playing with friends, and "fun with friends"  is bullshit praise. That just means you like your  

friends. Plenty of horrible things in this  world are fun with friends. Like bad movies,  

or pissing on a sleeping cat. But I was  appreciating Helldivers 2 even when I  

wasn't shooting Nick in the face, I mean, yes,  it's a skinner box live service grindathon,  

but it doesn't pretend to be anything else. See,  other live services like Destiny 2 or any given  

MMORPG, always present themselves with a certain  big-bollocked lack of self-awareness. You are the  

hero, you are fighting the important fight, gosh,  I can scarcely get past you in the corridor with  

the sheer bigness of your bollocks, but that  never comes across while actually playing the  

game. While playing the game I feel like a  single ineffectual frozen pea in a great big  

bag of frozen peas, most of which are bigger  and have better gear, and completing missions  

doesn't feel like I'm achieving anything  that isn't getting instantly reversed.

All of that is still true of Helldivers 2, but  the difference is, it makes sense in context,  

too. The game kicks off with a very  Starship Troopers-inspired - ooh,  

if I minced these words any harder I could top  it with mashed potato and call it cottage pie.  

It literally is Starship Troopers, okay?  A totalitarian future Earth fighting a  

high-tech war against alien bugs on a distant  planet we've got no more business on than does  

a double decker bus in a swimming pool,  using bombastic state media to blind its  

citizens with promises of glory and appeals to  patriotism so it can have a neverending supply  

of dumb recruits to throw into the meat grinder.  "Rip off" is a harsh phrase but you know what,  

considering the irony of Starship Troopers went  over so many people's heads the first time,  

probably wouldn't hurt to give it a second  crack. So you go through about ten minutes  

of training in which you shoot some aliens that  have essentially been pinned to the floor, get  

massively overpraised by a prerecorded voice then  shot into space in the hope you'll actually take  

out a few of the fuckers before they dissemble  your protein for the brood maggots. But this  

is where we deviate a little from the Starship  Troopers template, because when you arrive the  

game goes "Hi! Here's a free spaceship just for  you. Go join a battle. It doesn't matter which."

While Starship Troopers is about a fascist state  instigating forever war as a way to control its  

own population, Helldivers feels more like  what happens when human society has run out  

of shit to do. Clearly there's no scarcity if  they're handing out free spaceships and can  

drop limitless amounts of ammo and airstrikes  for any random soldier with enough remaining  

fingers to work a touchtone phone, apparently the  human race is now just roaming the galaxy picking  

fights for want of something to do, achieving  bugger all of consequence except for killing  

all the buggers. Feels weird to say, but I guess  my tolerance for live service grinds increases  

when I feel like the story isn't bullshitting me.  Thanks, Helldivers 2, in return I won't bullshit  

you. I'm going to play your Skinner box grindathon  gameplay with a podcast on to keep my brain alive,  

please extend my apologies to your music composers  and voice actors who spent all that time in  

the studio trying to convincingly scream like  they're getting impaled on a pedipalp. Pedipaled,  

perhaps. And as a Skinner box grindathon  Helldivers 2 will certainly do the job.

You get inserted into an open-ended map with a  buffet of objectives to complete before making  

for the extraction point while getting harassed  by endlessly respawning enemies, and I quickly  

learned that relying exclusively on the guns  you carry with you is an excellent way to have  

to spend every evening picking antennae out of  your bumhole, and a smart player relies on calling  

down airstrikes and support weapons with a rather  neat little dial-a-war-crime system that creates  

very effective moments of panicky desperation  as you attempt to calmly enter the code number  

for an orbital strike while fencing a forest of  slashing monster claws with your one good leg.  

So at first I was trying to see if Helldivers  2 works as a single player game. Short answer,  

no. Short, profane answer, fuck no. Oh, you can  certainly start a mission by yourself with random  

pubbies blocked but like an Alzheimer's patient at  a bukkake shoot you won't be able to get anything  

achieved before getting blindsided by another  dick. I tried dropping the difficulty down to  

easy once I'd found a spare dummy to suck on, but  the eventual mission rewards were so insultingly  

small it felt like being given a nem-nem for  going poo-poos in the toilet like mummy asked.

And saving up to buy a new cape with two  stripes instead of one isn't much of a way  

to track progress but it's all we've fucking got.  So I held my nose and tried playing with pubbies,  

and swiftly learned that the other thing to be  said for playing with friends is that your friends  

actually talk to you, saying things like "enemies  to the west" and "please stop shooting Nick in  

the face." Pubbies, meanwhile, are here to make  premium currency, not social connections, and will  

fall into one of three categories: the massively  higher level twat who runs off to complete all  

the side objectives by themselves with their fancy  pants high level airstrikes with rear spoilers and  

fuzzy dice, the clueless twat who keeps calling  down airstrikes right on my previous body I'm  

desperately trying to recover my decent equipment  from, and the furious twat who keeps shooting me  

in retaliation for calling down airstrikes  on their previous body they're desperately  

trying to etc. So I doubt I'll play any more  Helldivers 2 in my spare time, but damn it if  

I don't appreciate the tightness of its design and  the degree of immersion storytelling that conveys  

its intended themes through gameplay. Namely that  human beings suck ass, massacring aliens in their  

own environment is stupid and really hard, and  Nick's face makes very amusing noises when shot.

SHAME THEY FUCKED IT UP