On February 8, 2024, Helldivers 2 launched to good reviews and even better sales. It was such an unexpectedly big hit that the servers couldn’t handle it. It topped out at nearly half a million concurrent players. I started playing it in March, very soon after launch, and I haven’t been the same since.
There’s Plenty To Love About Helldivers 2
This is a video game anniversary article, yes, but it’s also a Valentine’s Day article, because ’tis the season and all that. I don’t love the overpriced chocolates and flowers of the holiday, but Valentine’s Day has always been a good excuse for me to profess my love for all the many things in this world that bring me happiness. I may be a hater, but I’m also a lover.
This year, I’m thinking about Helldivers 2, the first live-service game that made me excited to play. You never forget your first, or so they say.
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This is a game I haven’t booted up in a long time. Like many first loves, I ended up outgrowing it and moving on with my life, but I still think of it fondly. There was nothing that wrong with it, really, we just ended up being incompatible. I wanted more from it than it could give me. Its overarching story had slowed to a standstill, and I didn’t want to wait around on the off chance that things would change. I kept giving it chances to win me back, but it wasted them all until I was no longer willing to stick around. Too little too late, I guess.
Also like many first loves, it glowed up after I ended things with it (60-day patch program, Illuminates finally coming).
Still, there were many things I loved about it – things I still love, really. Its story caught my interest from the jump, with its brazen space-based satire of militarism and colonialism. It doesn’t gouge players for cash or prey on FOMO, unlike so many other games in the space. I loved its emphasis on cooperation over competition and the wonderful community that formed as a result, how it always managed to surprise me, even the way it drove me to nihilistic meltdowns.
I found strange, perverse pleasure in dying in absurd ways on the battlefield, getting flung across the map by massive explosions and melted in jets of bug bile. It was an endless source of joy, until it wasn’t.
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Lots Of People Still Love It, Even If I Don’t
Even if I’ve fallen off, plenty of people haven’t. Loads of people returned to the game in December after the Illuminate finally attacked, and it’s received plenty of ongoing support for its healthy player base – it has a 24 hour peak of close to 100k at the time I’m writing this.
And I’m happy for those people who are still enjoying their time with the game. Out of all the extractive live-service games in the world, with their long, grindy battle passes, their loot boxes, and their absolute shamelessness in turning their games into second jobs, Helldivers 2 is a gem in a pile of Terminid dung. It actually respects players, as long as you overlook the whole PSN thing, which was eventually smoothed over anyway.
So happy birthday, Helldivers 2, and here’s to (hopefully) many more. And happy Valentine’s Day, too – thanks for showing me that we can expect better from our live-service games, even if we don’t end up sticking with them for life.
Helldivers 2
- Released
-
February 8, 2024
- ESRB
-
M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood and Gore, Intense Violence
- Developer(s)
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Arrowhead Game Studios