Helldivers 2

Helldivers 2 is a 2024 cooperative third-person shooter game developed by Arrowhead Game Studios and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The game is the direct sequel to Helldivers, a 2015 top-down shooter. It was released for PlayStation 5 and Windows on 8 February 2024.

Helldivers 2 received positive reviews from critics and became PlayStation's fastest selling title of all time, surpassing 12 million units within 12 weeks of its release, as well as Sony's most successful Windows title.

Gameplay
Unlike Helldivers, which is a top-down shooter, Helldivers 2 is a third-person shooter. Players take the role of the titular 'Helldivers', elite shock troops dropped from orbit onto hostile planets in bullet-like 'Hellpods'. Gameplay consists of missions where players must accomplish objectives in procedurally generated levels while fending off hordes of enemies, after which they can attempt to call a ship to extract themselves to space. A core gameplay feature carried over from the first game is the use of 'stratagems' – powerful equipment and offensive abilities such as rocket launchers, sentry guns, bombing runs and orbital strikes which must be called in by executing a sequence of arrow key presses and throwing a beacon to signal to the player's Super Destroyer in orbit. Friendly fire is always on.

While Helldivers featured shared-screen co-op, Helldivers 2 does not. The game features cooperative multiplayer with up to four players, but does not include a dedicated single-player campaign. It also provides optional cross-play between PlayStation 5 and Windows. In the initial days of release, gameplay involved staff at the studio observing players and influencing gameplay in real time.

The game features a battle pass that never expires. Players can earn various types of in-game currency during gameplay; "war-bond medals" and "requisition slips" are awarded for completing missions and game objectives, while "super credits" are found during missions or purchased via microtransactions. As players gain experience and progress in level, they unlock different weapons and Stratagems to use during missions. By completing missions, players also contribute to the collective "liberation" or defense of planets, a percentage displayed on the Galactic Map.

Plot
Helldivers 2 is set a century after the triumph of "Super Earth", a self-described managed democracy, over the Cyborgs, Bugs, and Illuminate during the events of the first game. It is discovered that, upon death, the Terminids produce a unique and highly valuable resource known as E-710. Farms are established on human-colonized worlds, but containment is eventually breached, releasing the bugs and causing chaos and destruction. Simultaneously, a new threat emerges in the form of the Automatons, a mechanical army intent on destroying humanity. The game begins with a recruitment video for the Helldivers, who are elite shock troops dropped from orbit to reclaim the colonized lands. New players undergo a short training course on Mars, becoming a fully fledged Helldiver, and are sent off into space to crew their own Super Destroyer and fight in the ongoing Second Galactic War. Environmental storytelling is prevalent throughout the game, with various logs, notes, and propaganda messages available for players to find during gameplay.

Development and release
On 3 December 2020, Arrowhead Game Studios revealed that work had started on a new project for PlayStation 5. It was confirmed that the game would be a third-person shooter. Like the first game, Helldivers 2 runs on the discontinued Autodesk Stingray game engine (originally known as Bitsquid). Arrowhead Game Studios founder Johan Pilestedt confirmed on social media that "The project started before [Stingray] was discontinued," adding, "Our crazy engineers had to do everything, with no support to build the game to parity with other engines."

On 13 September 2021, Helldivers 2 was mentioned in a GeForce Now leak. The game was teased in a TikTok post showing Arrowhead's social media manager starting their workday, which is followed by a series of posts from fans demanding them to release the game. On 18 August 2022, a 12-second clip of gameplay was leaked on Twitter, but was later removed.

On 24 May 2023, Helldivers 2 was announced during the 2023 PlayStation Showcase, with a slated release of sometime in 2023. On 6 July 2023, a trailer showcasing gameplay was released. On 30 July 2023, the game received an M rating by the Entertainment Software Rating Board for "blood and gore" and "intense violence". On 14 September 2023, gameplay was shown in a PlayStation State of Play event, and it was announced that the game would release on 8 February 2024. Pre-orders became available on 22 September 2023. On 8 February 2024, the game was released on the PlayStation Store and Steam.

Reception
Helldivers 2 received "generally favorable" reviews from critics, according to review aggregator website Metacritic.

Upon release, the game experienced a large influx of players, leading to widespread server and login issues for the first two weeks of release. By the third week of release, the player cap was increased to "a whopping 700,000 concurrent users" according to Wesley Yin-Poole of IGN.

Aaron Bayne of Push Square described the game as "a riotous affair, offering up best-in-class gunplay" and a "truly epic and often cinematic experience, mixed in with one of the best co-op gameplay romps currently available." However, he criticized the game for the server issues and crashes that players experienced after release.

Helldivers 2 has been compared to the 1997 science fiction action film Starship Troopers; both are a satirical comedy featuring a militaristic regime fighting against a race of large insectoids.

Sales
On 11 February 2024, Arrowhead Games CEO Johan Pilestedt announced that Helldivers 2 had sold approximately 1 million units.

Helldivers 2 was the largest launch of any PlayStation Studios game available on PC. Arrowhead stated that the game's success has greatly exceeded their expectations. Following its initial success, Arrowhead Studios announced its intention to scale its studio and team to accelerate its post-launch content plans. Pilestedt reacted to the game's ongoing success by stating that he hopes to see Helldivers become considered as iconic as PlayStation's other IPs such as Uncharted, God of War, and Horizon.

In Europe, the United Kingdom, and Canada, Helldivers 2 was the best-selling game of February 2024. Helldivers 2 remained the best selling game in Canada in April 2024 too.

By 24 February 2024, the game was estimated to have sold over 3 million units and became the most actively played game on the PlayStation Network, surpassing Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 and Fortnite. By 15 March 2024, Helldivers 2 was estimated to have sold 8 million units and reached 450,000 concurrent players on Steam. By 5 May 2024, 12 million units of the game had been sold, making it PlayStation's fastest selling video game of all time.

PSN account controversy
At launch, Helldivers 2 did not require PC players to log into a PlayStation Network (PSN) account, allowing players to skip the integration despite a line on boot up stating that a PSN account is required. On 3 May 2024, Sony Interactive Entertainment announced that the PC version of Helldivers 2 on Steam would mandate users to sign in with a PSN account, taking effect for new players on 6 May, and required for existing players by 4 June. SIE stated that a PSN login is necessary to "[uphold] the values of safety and security provided on PlayStation and PlayStation Studios games", and that this requirement was not implemented at launch due to technical issues. The announcement was met with criticism. Additionally, many players called out that official documentation from Sony claimed that PSN accounts were optional for games on PC, with this statement changing to an ambiguous "some games" statement after players were directed to contact Sony support by Pilestedt. On 4 May, the listing on Steam was updated to disallow sales to 177 territories where PSN is not available.

Pilestedt apologized for the sudden change, stating on Twitter that "I hope we will make it up and regain the trust by providing a continued great game experience". Developers inside Arrowhead Game Studios stated that they were on the side of the players and called for the player base to negatively review the game on Steam, leading to players review bombing the game; as of 4 May, nearly 53% of all posted reviews were negative,  with over 84,000 negative reviews on Steam. As a result of the negative feedback, Sony announced on 5 May that it will currently not be moving forward in requiring account linking and was working with Arrowhead to find alternate solutions to protect players.