Helldivers

If we are going to be completely honest when it comes to free games that the PlayStation 4 provides every month, most of us know that the games you download, play for a few hours (if that), then they are either just extremely boring or repetitive. Most of the time I end up deleting them from my hard drive and they sit in my library, never to be played again. This month, however, one such game has dragged me in so deep that I have been constantly playing it at least every other day. This game is Helldivers.

To start, Helldivers is a top down twin stick shooter style of gameplay. As with most free games there isn’t a whole lot of information revolving around the story. Basically you start out as a soldier for your home planet, named Super Earth, and every young man and woman must enlist and serve time as a soldier to not only defend the planet from invaders, but to try and spread democracy throughout the game’s universe. The 3 main enemies in the game are the cyborgs, illuminate, and the bugs that try their best to kill as many Super Earth soldiers as they can.

Now why would a game that sounds so simple be so grasping and addictive? The reason it truly got me is the fact that there is so much content to be unlocked and discovered. I have been playing the game for a few weeks now and I still am nowhere near close to unlocking everything that the game has to offer. Speaking of which lets dive into what you are capable of unlocking.

First off there is a wide variety of weapons that you can unlock and choose from, ranging from the simplest of handguns to varying degrees of assault rifles and even rocket launchers/grenade launchers. The bigger the weapon the harder it can be to be able to control the spread of damage that the gun outputs until you unlock research points to upgrade the guns stability, magazine, or even melee power with bayonets. Along with the guns is what is called stratagems. These little orbs come in 4 variations: Offensive, defensive, supply, and special, each with their own specific uses for different tasks. You have to input a certain code variation with the D-pad on your controller (like a grand theft auto cheat code) and then you can call in the support that you desperately will need, especially on higher-level planets with increasing difficulty. Last thing you can unlock through leveling up is your characters aesthetics; being the helmet, body style, and your helldiver cape.

The planets you can visit all have a different feel to them, as well as varying biomes. These range from desert, forest, volcanic, and snowy planets from what I have discovered so far. Each different enemy faction also has different styles of planets; for example the cyborgs have machinery around their planet whereas the bug planets look like something you would see from a bugs life with bugs’ nests everywhere. I haven’t quite made it to the planets at the end of the system where the difficulty is maxed out so I can’t tell you what those are like but on the planet selection those planets are like Jupiter in our solar system, maximum size.

Along with a single player campaign mode there is a multiplayer mode that I have to say at this point in time is extremely disappointing. Whenever Andrew and I attempted to join each other the first time it failed 3 times in a row to connect us, resulting in both of us having to restart Helldivers and then it finally allowed us to connect. Upon further investigation of the multiplayer we realized that many other people were experiencing the same problems, claiming that the multiplayer was so broken many people gave up on the game completely. Whereas I have not totally given up on the game it is extremely difficult to keep my interest there because once you get past level 4 difficulty is it near impossible to play the game by yourself since monsters become too strong for one person to handle alone. Lets say no one is playing this game on your friends list and you want to play with other people, you can either step into the multiplayer section of your ship lobby and attempt to join someone else (keep in mind I tried this and it took about 10 tries until I finally was allowed to join someone else’s game) or you can join a solo game, set your privacy to open, and throw a stratagem called the SOS to attempt to bring others. I have never tried this but seeing as how many problems the multiplayer has I can’t see this being too successful, especially if you need help immediately. Once they fix the multiplayer issue I see this game taking off way more than it is now, because honestly this is the only problem I see with this game at the moment.

In conclusion, the game is a super fun top down twin stick shooter with great-animated graphics, especially for a free Indie game that all people with PlayStation Plus Membership can obtain before the end of February. The story is simple yet effective enough to keep the player entertained and the characters have enough different clothing styles to keep your player unique from others. If the multiplayer was not messed up so bad I would rate this game almost a perfect score, but unfortunately I have to take away quite a few points because that is such a big part of advancing in the game.

Score: 7/10

Trophy Difficulty: Medium, most trophies I have acquired I have gotten just through playing the game and leveling up. Some others may require a few tries but nothing is too daunting.

Recommendation: If you like top down twin stick shooters I would highly recommend this game. If you like Indie games I would recommend it highly. If you have PlayStation Plus Membership at the very least put it in your library before March to get it for free.

*This game was played and reviewed on the PlayStation 4. It is also available on PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and PC.