Helldivers 2 is Vintage Xbox Live

Yeah, I realize I’m late to the party. Much like every other Xbox gamer, I only recently dived into hell with the recent release of the game on Xbox consoles. Eager to spread my democracy, I didn’t pay much attention at first to the rather scant collection of armor and tools at my disposal. I just wanted to jump in and experience the action I had heard so much about, for better and worse, over the past year. And man, was it old-school, in all the best (and worst) ways.

But first, allow me to lay the groundwork for the context in which this story will exist. I could have bought Helldivers II when it released for Playstation. I have a PS5. I also could have bought it for PC. But my Playstation has never been a multi-player experience. I have approximately four friends on Playstation, four of whom I never speak to, much less play with. The social aspect of that console has never existed. I started on Xbox Live in 2003, and the guys I met back then, when it was all just a big experiment, are who I’ve been gaming with ever since. They are one-console guys, even though I’m a multi-plat owner and always have been. My PC and Playstation have always been reserved for solo affairs, and relying on Nintendo to get with the 21st century when it comes to social options is an exercise in futility. So Xbox Live has been the platform on which we log in and bullshit, whether we’re playing the same game or not.

That said, where were we? Ah, yes. Ignoring Helldivers II for about a year and half. When the game released for PS5, I kept a keen eye on it, as it looked like it would be just up my alley. The only problem was that I would be playing with randoms. And I loathe playing with randoms. And in the case of Helldivers II, it is quite possible that’s what you’ll be doing, even if you don’t mean to. Despite this, I was intrigued. It looked cool, and the quite heavy Starship Troopers influence was a nod back to my high school years. It looked like something I could totally dig into. With friends. Friends who didn’t game on Playstation.

Then came the drama. Apparently there were some changes made to the game. Apparently people didn’t like those changes. Then, what came on as an overnight sensation appeared to be more of a flash in the pan. The popularity of the game seemed to just kind of drop off a cliff. Some blamed the developers for ruining their game. Some blamed the lack of content. There were even complaints about team-killers, who killed randoms for sport. Having not had much experience with the Sony fan-base, or their multiplayer tendencies, I can’t say that was a big draw for me.

So I watched from afar, content with the notion that I would probably never play the game unless I bought it on PC and magically found a group of people that I clicked with. Which is rare, because I rarely click. I’m not very clickable.

Imagine my surprise when the announcement came that Sony, of all companies, would be releasing Helldivers II on Xbox. I rubbed my eyes and did a double-take. Was this true? Sony? THAT SONY??

I can’t say I was excited. I’m not very excitable either. But it did cause my ears to perk up, and it did cause me to message a few of my long-time Xbox Live buds and see if they were interested. And of course they were, because we’re online gaming bros. We convince each other to buy shit we wouldn’t normally buy. It’s what we do.

It was announced about a month out, if I remember correctly. And we all agreed to drop the cash on it— it was kind of a no-brainer, considering it was at a budget price. So we did, and we waited.

The the time finally came, and we all jumped in at different times to get a taste, after which we all hopped onto the same ship on a Thursday night, to discuss what we were thinking, and figure out just what the hell we were supposed to do.

And so far, at the time of this writing we’ve played maybe ten missions, and I’m rocking a Level 4 HellDiver. And if I had to compliment this game in any way, I would say that it feels like it was ripped straight out of 2005.

No, I’m not kidding. I genuinely mean that as a good thing, and I also genuinely think that it is the main reason why this game has so much appeal, when there are dozens upon dozens of other shooters out there trying to compete with each other using the same tired, modern gameplay bullshit that we’ve seen time and time again.

As I’ve said above, I’m only a level 4. We haven’t even scratched the surface. We haven’t yet bumped the missions up to a difficulty which requires us to carefully manage our loadouts and coordinate our usage of stratagems to ensure we don’t get absolutely slaughtered. That’s coming, but we’re not there yet.

But it’s not the difficulty that gives it that old-school feel. It’s the feel that gives it the old-school feel. Ya feel?

The combat largely takes place from a third-person perspective, and pressing the L-trigger (I’m on Xbox, remember) will pull the camera into an over-the-shoulder view, while your Helldiver aims the weapon. Then, clicking the right thumbstick will pull that view in even further to aim down the sights. If any of you reading this were Ghost Recon fans back in the day, this will give you the warm fuzzies.

Likewise, holding down the X-button will allow you to pull up a HUD that allows you to select your fire rate, scope zoom, and flashlight. Again, being able to click between full auto, three-round burst, and semi-auto is a feature we don’t see much in games today.

On top of that, there is a heavy reliance on cooperation. The stratagems can sometimes have pretty complex button combinations, and unless you have a buddy watching your back, you might get sniped before even dropping that Hellbomb. Other actions like aligning a satellite dish while another player calls out directions requires a level of communication reminiscient of older online multiplayer games.

There are communication options like push-to-talk that further invoke that Xbox Live, pre-party chat vibe.

There is a lobby system, namely the Helldivers’ ship, from which missions are selected. No voting in this democracy— the party host is the one that controls the mission map, and chooses which mission the team is partaking. Yet another reason to choose your teammates wisely.

Even the overall map, which shows a galaxy in turmoil, has a running tally of the current status of the planets, with battles flaring up and fizzling out over set time periods. The success or failure depends on the efforts of all playing the game. It’s all very reminiscent of a game like Chromehounds or the “galactic readiness” of Mass Effect 3.

Another great old-school design choice is that, while there are collectibles to be found in the game, they come as additional currency or weapons that can be temporarily equipped. There is no “loot” per se, and I for one am glad for it. I am getting rather tired of the looter-shooter genre, or the collecting of a thousand different crafting materials. The game lets you focus on the mission at hand, and if you want to scavenge around for some additional Samples, or destroy some optional outposts, so be it. But nobody is wasting time in menu screens equipping random shit or trying to sort through a hundred stacks of whatever. And I appreciate the hell out of that.

As great as this all sounds, there are some aspects of this old-school feeling that aren’t so great, and there was a reason these things were abandoned. For example, back in the good ol’ days, we had instruction manuals to explain all the little things that a player needed to know. They might be control toggles and such that needed to be described and laid out, but didn’t necessarily require the extra resources to put it into the game. But we don’t have those instruction manuals anymore, and while there is a tutorial mission in which we are taught the basics of using stratagems in order to “earn our cape,” it’s pretty bare-bones and there was practically no explanation of anything else in the game.

We had played multiple rounds before we slowly began to figure out what the indicators on the mission map displayed. We had no idea what the currency was for. We didn’t even know how to unlock more weapons and armor, since that screen is paired up with all the Battle Pass type microtransactions. I’m not the type to spend real money on in-game bullshit, so I instinctively scrolled right past that screen. It wasn’t until we had leveled up several times where we began to really ask “wtf” and start digging for extra weapons.

There were other instances, when we were mid-mission, where we just didn’t know what to do. We’d get to a satellite array or a radio tower, discover a computer monitor, and essentially have to figure out just what it was asking of us, all while coming under fire from attacking enemies. I get that it could be deliberate, as part of the experience, but it can be immersion breaking when you’re just getting frustrated, not because you don’t know what to do, but because you don’t know what the game is asking of you. Those can be two different things.

I played several missions with a marksman rifle before we even realized we could hold the X button and choose our scope magnifications. I couldn’t help but just shake my head at that point.

So far, it’s a slow burn, but we are playing on a very, very low difficulty level. We have practically nothing unlocked yet, as far as extra stratagems go, or even additions to the ship. But we’ll get there.

I’m pretty happy to see the game has gotten quite a bump in player count since the release of the Xbox version. That proves there is a market for games on Microsoft’s console— one that a certain subsect of people keep insisting is “dead.” I’m also glad that it’s seeing the popularity despite the fact that it doesn’t have any of the gimmicks that publishers insist a game “needs” in order to be successful. No crafting bullshit, no battle royale, no open world, etc.

It still remains to be seen if the game will hold up over time. It seemed to have a pretty steep fall-off on Playstation, but I don’t know if that was attributed to the unpopular changes from the 1.0 release— something we will never experience. All we know is the game as it exists right now. Will they continue to make unpopular changes? We’ll see. Now that the game is on all three platforms (Nintendo doesn’t count) it has all the potential to continue to grow, as long as the developer support it.

It’s also enjoying about a one-month head start before the fall gaming madness, when we will see the release of both Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty Black Ops 7.

I guess we’ll find out.