It’s been a horrible few months for Helldivers 2. If you follow the evolution of the game and all the news I’ve published on iGamesNews, you’ll know that the summer of 2024 will be remembered as a very dark chapter in the history of helldivers. Arrowhead Game Studios’ decisions have not only been questionable, but they have gone against the original premise that we fell in love with last February.
I don’t want to go into every single blunder the studio made because that would make for a very long and negative article, and that’s not my intention. I’ll get straight to the point. I’ve always believed that the key to Helldivers 2’s success and fun was invented a long time ago. It’s been around for many years in Dynasty Warriors, Diablo, Lost Ark and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, to add a more recent example.
Helldivers 2 It’s fun because it offers an explosive experience similar to 80s action movies: spectacular and entertaining. It doesn’t try to test you like a soulslike or convey a deep message like Hellblade, God of War or The Last of Us. Its goal is to have a good time destroying everything in front of you. There is difficulty, of course, but that’s not the main objective.
This philosophy went to hell this summer due to Arrowhead Game Studios’ decisions to increase the power of enemies, depower our weapons and stratagems, and introduce changes that sought to simulate realism, as occurred with the armor system and fire behavior. The result of all this? A sharper drop in players than expected and a general unrest in the community, including myself.
This is the Helldivers 2 I fell in love with
Arrowhead Game Studios released Helldivers 2 patch 01.001.007 yesterday, which we can already consider the most important and positive patch in the short history of the video game. It has meant a very brutal change of direction towards the original concept of the game: very wild increases in weapon power, changes to some enemies and redesigns in the armor system and armor penetration.
I’ve left my Space Marine armour hanging in the lockers on the destroyer. Warhammer 40.000: Space Marine 2 to put on my helldiver uniform again. From loving the Empire to dying for Democracy in a matter of seconds. I’ve been playing for about six hours since installing the update and I promise I’m not exaggerating when I say that this update has changed absolutely everything.
Play to Helldivers 2 It’s a lot of fun again. It always has been, but I admit that having a good time hasn’t always been easy over the past few months. Most weapons were useless or very ineffective, but that’s changed. I’ve seen more variety in equipment in the last few hours than I have in the past few months.
Killing enemies, especially Terminids, is once again an extreme joy. Most of them are made of paper (as they should be) and the elites, who are armored, go down very quickly if you know where to land your bombs. And fire! Holy, holy fire. It works like it did before, melting armor and charring any creature that dares to cross the flamethrower’s huge tongue of fire.
Not to mention the latest addition to the stratagems: the Napalm Orbital Strike. It’s a 20-second hail of fire projectiles that leaves a huge (and it’s really big) sea of fire that chars anything in it. There’s no escape. In fact, I’ve broken my personal record of 34 kills in a single kill combo. I’ve managed to increase it to 51 kills. And since I know that data is useless here without visual proof, here’s a screenshot.
Another stratagem that has been resurrected is the orbital chemical gas strike. And it makes sense because tomorrow, September 19th, the War Bonus called Chemical Agents is coming. I haven’t seen players using it since the game launched. I stopped using it because the behavior of the gas didn’t make sense or was not effective. The latest update has improved the way the gas expands.
Support Stratagems (weapons and backpacks) take the cake because they have been the biggest beneficiaries of this patch. They are now much more effective against robots and bugs due to the revised armor and shell penetration. I have seen people firing the Autocannon like real people again, I have killed Rollovers with a single round from the Quasar Cannon, Thermite grenades are weapons of mass destruction, and I have seen Bile Titans go down in seconds with three or four rounds from the Commando Missile Launcher. And this applies to the Automaton factories as well.
Beyond the update, Arrowhead has introduced a very interesting new Supreme Order: a balance of conquered planets that must be in the positive once the remaining six days are up. Conquered planets add up and lost planets subtract.
This is a new, more general type of order that doesn’t force you to choose a single front, which is another of the problems that has plagued the game. This allows all players to contribute to SuperEarth orders regardless of where they want to fight and what equipment they choose. Specific orders will return, but there was no better time to introduce this one. And to make things even better, a new war bonus is coming in a matter of hours. Helldivers 2 is back…and I hope Arrowhead has learned its lesson.
At iGamesNews | The new horrors of Helldivers 2 almost made me scream for my mom, but nothing can defeat the power of democracy
At iGamesNews | I have left my post in Helldivers 2 to travel to the past and fulfill the wish of many players: to defend SuperEarth from the Automata
At iGamesNews | I’ve been exploring the origins of Helldivers 2 for a few hours and now I understand where this democratic marvel came from
