Danger Danger: How Helldivers 2 Makes you Feel Like a Hero With Good Mechanics and JUST Enough Difficulty

March 9, 2024

A friend recently bought me a copy of Helldivers 2, and while I have to set every setting as low as possible because my seven-year old PC is finally showing its age, I still get a consistent enough frame rate to play it with friends, which I have been doing, and recently I had an experience that solidified it in my mind as going from good to great.

Let me set the scene.

During a mission, a swarm of robots descended on us, and in a mix of chaos and inexperience, I got separated from my teammates. Realistically, the thing to do here is eat the loss and let them respawn me; all my gear was ready to be redeployed, nothing I had was particularly valuable, the logical for a total rookie, solo, in a messy soup of a fog of war, with very little ammo left, one healing item left, only two grenades left, and resupply on cooldown, against three walkers and a swarm of killer robots, is to just punt and rejoin the team.

I did not do the logical thing.

I knew I was faster than the bots if I sprinted, so I ran behind rock cover, dropping a grenade to blow through a couple of them as I did. Because I was faster, I came up behind them and made use of what little machine gun ammo I had left to take out a few more of them. As it ran dry, I took a near-fatal shot, so ducked back into cover to use my last heal. At this point all I have is one grenade, one clip for my rifle, and my secondary pistol, to try and take out three walkers and about a dozen robots.

I manage to get one of the walkers and a couple bots with the grenade, and at this point I realize the little rock formations I've been using to keep myself alive are taller than the walkers. If I get on top, I can shoot through their armor and take out the pilots. I manage to do just that, burning through what was left of my rifle's ammo. At this point though I'm feeling good; I've taken down two of the three walkers, and while all I have is my little pistol, if I can keep playing cat-and-mouse, I can take them out with that.

Then as I move to take out a couple of the bots who were accompanying the walker, I see the third one, at an angle where I can't get to its unarmored side but it can get to me.

I decide to leap off the rock and hope that diving will get me behind the walker. The gamble pays off, and in a burst of machine pistol fire, down goes the last walker! Unfortunately, between the fall damage from jumping off something that high, the walker shooting me as I took it out, and the footsoldiers shooting me as I fell, I'm in bad shape, nearly dead. I load my pistol's last clip and figure that's probably it, I can take out a couple of them but I'm in no shape to take out all of what's left with as little health as I have.

I unload what's left in the pistol, taking a few down, but the robots close in, and the last couple shots empty out, leaving me with no resources other than pistol whipping the robots with sword arms. It was a good fight, but that's that.

And at the last moment in swoops one of my teammates, finally able to reach my position. They take out the last few bots, give me a fresh set of ammo and healing from their backpack, and we rejoin the rest of the team to evac to safety.

It felt fantastic.

The panic of realizing I was on my own with no resources, the thrill of outsmarting the AI and slowly picking them off, feeling like Rambo as I take out walker after walker with a pistol and a grenade. The low of realizing I'm dead as my last reserves run dry, only for the elation of my teammate to come in and pick me back up.

Artist's reendition of the author, who definitely has a point here and isn't just telling a war story.

How about another one?

This time I'm the veteran. Not by much, I'm only level 8, but the lobby of randos I'm playing with are level 4 at max, so I'm the old man by default. Mission's going well enough, until the kids ignore the ping I put out to go to the side objective and run straight into a bot base without me. I see their health bars going crazy up and down, check the map, and realize they're all alone surrounded by a swarm of killer robots.

So I do what any proud parent would do and haul ass towards them as fast as my jetpack will let me. I see one of them being chased by killer robots he's too injured to outrun, and I pick them off over his shoulder one by one because shotguns actually have range in this game. While he's healing up and reloading, I head in to save the other two, unloading machine gun fire into robot after robot, thinning them out and drawing their attention. As I run from building to building, jetting around to avoid chainsaw after chainsaw from the melee robots, the rookies have reloaded, and are back into the fight.

We take out what we can, but we're all low on resources and need to resupply, and the bots just called in a dropship. I know we're dead if we try to stay and fight. I order everyone to back off on mic. They do, and once they're all clear, I call down an orbital strike on my position, then run like hell to try and get to a safe distance. I hear and see the explosion behind me as I clear the fence of the encampment, and as we recollect and resupply outside of the smouldering remains of the bunker, I know that I escaped getting vaporized myself by inches.

Just with a few days of extra gameplay knowledge on them, I managed to come in and turn a situation that was about to drop three of them into a fight we won by the skin of our teeth, in as dramatic a fashion as you could.

Another artist's reendition of the author, who totally absolutely is going somewhere with all this.

Just one more?

I'm solo on this one, going hunting for rare, dangerous bugs. The first one was hell, and I only got out of there alive because of a railgun I looted off of a destroyed outpost. Hunting the second one has taken most of the time left in the game, but I manage to find it with five minutes left. Still counting on that stolen railgun, I cat-and-mouse the charger, using my jetpack to get good angles and blast it with the railgun. I'm low on shots though, so I get an idea. Remembering my rescue of the rookies above, I call an orbital strike on top of my head, and haul ass as far from it as I can. The charger, incapable of understanding English and unaware what "Orbital Strike" means, continues chasing after me.

Right into my gunship's bombardment.

Mission's not over though. Even with the main objective finished, I still need to get back to the evac point within the next two minutes, and killing the big guy made a whole swarm of the little ones mad.

I try to take out a few of them while I'm running, but I can only do so much solo with a shotgun, especially since I left my trusty machine gun behind and I do not have time to call for a new one and wait for the drop in the middle of an open field. So I come into the LZ so hot I'm on fire, a whole level's worth of bugs chasing me. I try to clear them out so I can call for my ride home, but there's too many of them for me to punch in the escape code. As the mission timer ticks down, I realize I'm in serious trouble, when I have an idea.

I jetpack up on top of one of the buildings near the extraction point. The bugs can scale the walls, but I just need enough time to make a quick request. Seconds before the timer runs out and locks off supply drops, I request a new machine gun, throwing it across the landing pad because I know the bugs will be swarming my little rooftop by the time it's here. The request goes down, the bugs get to me, and I jump off, tanking the damage with my last healing stim. As the game calls in its "Last call" evac you get when the timer runs out, my shiny new MG lands, and a moment later I'm grabbing it. I turn around, open fire, and spray every round it has into the dozens of armored bugs chasing me. It's nowhere near enough to clear them, but it's enough to get me the breathing room I needed. With that extra space, I'm able to reload enough shotgun shells and recharge enough stamina to keep my distance for the last 90 seconds before the shuttle gets there. It lands, giving me a hard limit of 20 seconds before I get left behind, so I toss my last grenade to clear a space for me to land, fire up my jetpack, and leap over the swarm, sprinting to the extraction shuttle and getting out with three seconds left in a mission I had no right surviving.

Artist's reendition #3 of an author who should REALLY get to the point already.

I have mixed feelings about having so much fun and feeling so badass in a game that is clearly satirizing, amongst other things, the romanticism and lionization much of the world has for war and conflict, but that's for another post on another day. What I want to highlight here is that Helldivers made me feel more amazing than I have in a multiplayer shooter in YEARS, and it didn't do it by giving me a big loud gun or letting me effortlessly mow down a swarm of enemies. It did it by doing the opposite; enemies are dangerous and numerous in this game, and you are squishy. Your guns are solid but not earth-shattering, your health pool is small, and all your resources are limited. Helldivers makes you feel badass and gives you dramatic moment after dramatic moment, not by making you an unstoppable beast, but by making you a normal soldier who's in over your head, but can prevail by being smart with your usage of terrain, utilization of your limited resources as effectively as you can, taking gambles, and deciding to try and make something out of nothing because the game's odds give you a chance, and unlike a lot of popular multiplayer games right now, the stakes for a lost gamble aren't so high that taking risks feels like a bad play.

I adore story-heavy games with beautiful cinematic cutscenes, but the one thing that video games can do that movies and books can't is actually put you directly into the shoes of the character and engage with the tension and drama firsthand through gameplay that creates those dramatic moments organically. Drama through gameplay is game design at its finest, and Helldivers is a masterclass in it.