Recent reviews by ANTICOGNITION HYPERFRACTAL

Yo dawg, Did you wanna fight for FREEDOM, DEMOCRACY, AND THE SPACE-AMERICAN WAY?!

Well, then this game is for you! With a neat satirical backstory, HELLDIVERS puts you as a member the elite titular taskforce, designed to be (literally) dropped behind enemy lines and ♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ Up.

With and interesting mechanic of being able to call in Stratagems via the radio, there is a twist to the usual "Airdrop inbound" mechanic quite a few shooters use. You see, you want that extra ammo pack or auto turret? You gotta put in a code, Contra style. Granted, the code is given to you on the bottom of the screen benath your mini-HUD (more on that later) but the catch is you gotta put it in quickly whilst being under heavy fire from deadly Cyborgs, or Space Bugs.

Now, the real bread-and-butter of of this game is the co-op factor. Don't get me wrong, you CAN play this solo, however it's gonna get really difficult. Like i said before, you are LITERALLY dropped behind enemy lines, so it's juts you, your team, and whatever stratagem beacons you packed in your bag. When playing Solo, you get a certain amount of Auto-Reinforces, which means if you die, you can get dropped right back in. You start out with just one, but you can earn more via completing objectives, holding a maximum of two. When playing cooperatively, however, you have to call in a Reinforce Beacon, of which you have unlimited uses, but it is on a (albeit short) cooldown, not to mention the whole, y'know, deadly Aliens/cyborgs shooting at nearly the whole time. One of the more well designed things about this game is that, like a lot of other good coop games, you can see the status of your team on the bottom of your screen. This show information such as what weapons are equiped, how much ammo in reserve, how much in the mag, etc. if you die, that information disappears and it just shows your name with a little skull next to it, and pressing any button will wiggle the icon and put the words "request to reinforce" above it. Expect to see a lot of that in game.

As for how difficult/challenging the game is, it can be pretty tough, especially going solo. Because you are meant to be infiltrating enemy strongholds, there is a sort of "stealth" mechanic about it. And yes, that's in quotes for a reason. When you first drop in, the enemy is unaware of your presence, but there ARE enemy patrols about, especially around objectives. When an enemy spots you, you have about 1-2 seconds to kill them or stun themk to keeo them from sounding the alarm. When the alarm is sounded, all hell then breaks loose. Bigger, badder enemies start spawning and depending on the difficulty rating of the mission, some of them are heavily armored and definitely require team ccordination to take down. You can run, and the alarm will reset, but be wary of that area, because baddies don't despawn, only respawn.

As for the difficulty itself, there are 12 difficulty ratings in game from level 1, "a dive in the park" to level 12, "hell dive." Difficulty does not affect base damage or rresistance, so you can take your dinky little lvl 1 rifle into a lvl 12 zone and still hold your own for a little bit. What difficulty DOES mean, is that Bigger enemies will spawn, and once you get up there, you're REALLY gonna want some anti-tank weapons to take on those guys.

Now as i said before, you CAN technically do the whole game solo, but like i said previously, you're gonna want some AT weapons/stratagems to back you up. the highest i would feel comfortable doing solo is maybe lvl 6, and that's at the very max level, but then again, i'm a casual skrub who needs to Git Gud.

Adding on to the coop factor, the game has several sectors and battles in overall "wars" in which we fly to space and wreck alien house. To determine victory, every time a player/team finishes a mission, it adds "influence." The higher the community influence, the further you push in that Factions sector of space, the further you reach the Homeworld, which has many more baddies, but quite a bit of good loot and exp.

As for leveling itself, it doesn't quite work they way most games do. Yes, as you kill things and complete missions you get exp, but that really only unlocks "perks" which are usually passive buffs to your character, such as faster sprint speed, faster stratagem deployment/racharge, etc, and also the occasional gun.The way you earn upgrades for your weapons/stratagems is by collecting SCIENCE! now where do you get science? well, during a mission you can find glowing yellow "research samples" and every 10 samples you earn a Research Point, which is used to upgrade weapons and stratagems. You DO earn a research point for every level, but that's not really a reliable way of getting reasearch.

Now, i know what you're thinking, "Midget, this sounds like an amzing game that's perfect in every way! i'm gonna throw all my money at the screen RIGHT NOW!" But HOLD UP THERE FRIEND! There is a problem here, and unfortunately, there is a Pay To Win aspect of it. That's right, the more money you throw at the screen, the more likely you are to find success in your missions! Now what do I eman by that? the game itself is about 25$ but there are some DLC for it that provide items. And not just cosmetics, either. For Instance, there is a perk called "All Terrain Boots" which means you no longer have your speed inhibited by Snow or Water, but to get them, you have to buy the "all terrain pack" (or something along those lines, can't quite remember the name of it atm) and there is NO way to earn them normally in-game. Having a tough time fighting Cyborg tanks and hulks, or those nasty, heavily armored bugs? then just shill ou $5 for the Entrenched Pack, and get a nifty Anti-Tank turret and mow em all down! also not earnable in-game.

So as fun as it is, this apple is a little bitter with that knowledge. That being said however, even without your super OP tank murdering turret (seriously the thing is ridiculous) they still have an INCREDIBLE base game here, and is massively fun, especially if you can get 4 people to work and communicate together. It is seriously the most fun i've had in a game in a long time, and is definitely worth the money.

Interesting and engaging story and characters. However, could not get my waifu to love me.


9 unreciprocating Stoic's out of 10

This game is really interesting in the combination of fps and stealth, but there are some things that definitely need to be fixed:

1) Framerate. Now I know this is probably just my computer, as I have the same problem with nosgoth, but when I tried to fix the resolution, suddenly all of the buttons registered my mouse only when it was several inches away from the actual button. THIS IS NOT GOOD, but it is a small problem that probably could be fixed with a quick update.

2)Lighting. This game is pretty dark, with lights in the levels shutting off randomly, even without me shooting them, and I have no idea if this is on purpose, or a bug. some explanation would be helpful. Also, incorporation of a night vision feature would greatly help, as a flashlight automatically gives me away, and as was previously mentioned, this game is pretty freaking dark.

3)Audio. The computer giving me directions in the game sometimes repeats things, and again this is a problem that I'm not sure is intended or not, and if not, this is just another small problem that could be fixed with a quick update, as instruction was sometimes garbled among itself.

Overall, though this is a really cool game, with solid controls, decent graphics (for an early access game), and a really cool helmet/HUD feature that entertains me to no end. I would love to see this be a full release and move beyond the early access stage, as this game has a lot of potential.