Helldivers 2 is an unexpected standout in a crowded February

It’s only February and 2024 has already another unexpected hit. Helldivers 2 revels in the confidence of knowing exactly what it’s doing, offering up one of the most approachable extraction shooters yet.

The extraction shooter is an emerging subgenre of games focused on getting players to drop into an intense mission, complete objectives, obtain loot, and extract without fighting or dying too much. Helldivers 2 takes that formula and redefines it by applying its basics to a more traditional mission-based sci-fi shooter that feels one license deal away from being a direct adaptation of Starship Troopers.

In a month full of new live service games launching to less than stellar results, Helldivers 2 is the one I’d recommend the most, especially as it may be shepherding in a more mainstream, approachable future for the popular genre.

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Easy-to-extract enjoyment

In Helldivers 2, players control soldiers fighting for Super Earth, a fascist, military-focused coalition intent on wiping out threats it considers a scourge. Right now, that entails the bug-like Terminids and Automatons. If you’ve watched or heard of Starship Troopers, it’s a shameless homage to that premise. This is reflected through gameplay too, as each time you die, you start playing as a new soldier who has enlisted and is 100% into fighting and dying for Super Earth. Sometimes, it feels like a more apt Suicide Squad story than Kill the Justice League.

Players do all this across a variety of missions on planets under the control of enemy forces. After kitting out their loadout on their starship, players choose a mission on an available planet that Super Earth has not completely “liberated” yet, alone or with friends, and are dropped down in pods and forced to complete