HELLDIVERS 2 is a masterful, hilarious squad shooter, when it works

By Jon Bailes

Picture the scene: four soldiers make a desperate scramble for their dropship on an alien planet, pursued by enormous, dagger-clawed bugs. Machine-gun fire rattles, green goo erupts, the landing pad teems with beasts as the quartet piles through the boarding hatch and their ride blasts off at the last available second. It could be a Hollywood action sequence, but in Helldivers 2 it’s merely the end of another mission.

Indeed, it’s amazing just how often a Helldivers 2 sortie climaxes in screaming, skin-of-the-teeth heroics. And it remains exciting time after time, because that Hollywood ending is never guaranteed.

Maybe you get tagged yards from completing your great escape.

Maybe by a spray of bullets from a wheeling teammate. Maybe the group’s impossibly overrun, yet one of you somehow dives home and lives to tell the tale. Or maybe no one makes it at all.

STARSHIP BLOOPERS

It’s not only the denouement of missions that make lasting memories either. In this four-player squad shooter (solo play is possible, but not much fun), every element harmonizes explosively, resulting in scenes that really could have been choreographed for the movies. And, well, in a sense they were. Helldivers 2 is unashamedly a mash of sci-fi action film tropes, with a large slice

You will be crushed, burned, impaled and blown up

of Starship Troopers on proud display, sprinkles of Aliens and the Terminator series on top. Every line of its code works to recreate the feel of their scenes—panic, bravado, dark humor—through improvised mayhem.

Leaning into Starship Troopers’ scenario is a smart choice for the tone of the game too. As with its predecessor, Helldivers 2 apes Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 satire at every turn, as citizens of Super Earth fight for freedom and democracy by offering their lives to the churn of endless war. True, the writing here is little more than a pale impression of its inspiration, yet it grants the action a glorious absurdity that sparks wild gambits and hilarity.