How Helldivers 2 Is Different From Other Typical Co-Op Multiplayer Shooters

Helldivers 2 is out now, and many players have begun to discover that this isn’t a typical co-op multiplayer shooter. In a sea of so many bland live service games that has you and three other players shoot bullet sponge enemies in hopes of getting loot with slightly bigger numbers, Helldivers 2’s hook is not that.

Rather, the core design of Helldivers 2 emphasise that when pressure is mounting up, in the heat of the moment you will eventually mess up. And from these little oopsies it can snowball into a FUBAR situation in hilarious ways.

There are so many design choices that the developers intentionally made that is annoying to some players. But there are all there to facilitate the dumbassery that can happen when everything goes wrong, which makes it even more satisfying when everything does indeed goes right.

Think of Overcooked!, the multiplayer co-op game where players are chefs in a non-ergonomic kitchen designed to test your multi-tasking skills, and the strength of your friendship. Helldivers 2 is closer to those multiplayer games rather than Suicide Squad Kills The Justice League, which is a typical looter-shooter. This is a co-op first game, designed around playing with other players, and intentionally designed to produce out-of-pocket shenanigans.

Here are some of the examples of the design choices Helldivers 2 uses to facilitate systematic chaos in play sessions:

• General
  • Friendly fire is always on.
    • More powerful weaponry and stratagems have a higher chance of causing friendly fire and accidental kills.
  • Plenty of enemy types designed to overwhelm you by engaging in melee distance which you are ill-equipped to handle.
  • Extraction requires calling an evac, wait for 2 minutes, then wait for a couple more seconds for the shuttle to land.
• Weapons
  • You have to count your bullets in a clip. When you reload you discard the whole clip including the bullets in that clip. You can carry a limited amount of ammo and must scrounge minor points of interest or call in a resupply.
    • There are weapons with rounds reload that don’t use clips, but reload is ridiculously slow and hard to do under pressure
• Visuals
  • The gorgeous lighting and mist affects block your sightlines. Thick fog can hide enemies that are actually really, really close to you.
  • Sunlight, and lack thereof, can also affect your vision of the battlefield.
  • The red goop vignettes, usually used in games to signify near death, is visible even if you have slight, not near-death damage, gauding you into wasting a stim heal (which are limited).
• Throwables
  • Any throwables, including grenades and stratagems, will drop on the ground if you ragdoll fall. So that airstrike stratagem that you wanted to throw could have fallen on the ground around your teammates.
  • Throwables will bounce off armoured enemies, which usually isn’t beneficial.
    • Grenades
      • You can overcook grenades and have them explode in your hand.
    • Stratagems
      • Some stratagems like airstrikes has a larger than expected area-of-effect, which can lead to accidental killings.
      • Stratagems require specific d-pad input that you can mess up and have to restart should you mess up.
      • Stratagems can stick on an enemy- which can be beneficial (orbital strikes will precisely land on them) or vice versa (the enemy swarms to you, putting you and your teammates within an orbital strike’s range)
• Drop Pods
  • Drop pods can kill if it directly lands on something.
  • Drop pods can land in awkward places, like on top of a cliff or into a lake.
• Terminals
  • Terminals are operated with d-pad inputs. Terminal objectives can include having to communicate/go back and forth, do pipe puzzles, find hot-and-cold spots. All while an enemy ambush can likely happen.
  • Lore text that you can interact to read is placed rather closely to terminals and other mission-important interactions so that you can often mispressed the interaction button.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. And the result is a genuinely unique multiplayer shooter. Fans of the original Helldivers know that most of these are present in the original game already, but there are definitely new players who are just discovering these quirks for the first time.

And to those new players who find these choices terrible or not fun, fair enough. If you’re expecting a Starship Troopers-esque game that plays to the usual AAA game conventions, Helldivers 2 isn’t it.

Arrowhead’s studio motto is “a game for everyone is a game for no one“, so they already have made the conscious decision to not cater to everyone. Not in the sense that Helldivers 2 isn’t providing accessibility options (the game has a few, including menu narration) or difficulty options (the game starts with the lowest difficulty first, you have to unlock Easy mode, which is one tier after). But in the way of what players expect how a fun game should be designed.

But if you choose to embrace the chaotic systems at place and have a good group of people to play with that are all okay with being a little mischievous (or full-on toxic, for those with a really, really tightly-knit friendship), Helldivers 2 is hella fun. When the server issues are all sorted that is.

Helldivers 2 is out now on PS5 and PC.