Helldivers 2 review

What is it? The sequel to 2015's Helldivers, an online squad shooter inspired by Starship Troopers. It switches the original's top-down perspective for a fully 3D, over the shoulder view.  

Expect to pay £35/$40

Release date Out now

Developer Arrowhead Game Studios

Publisher PlayStation PC

Reviewed on RTX 2070, i7-10750H, 16GB RAM

Steam Deck Playable

Link Official site 

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 (mercifully, you still get rewards for any completed objectives).

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 harmonises 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 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 iconic scenes—panic, bravado, dark humour—through improvised mayhem.

Leaning into Starship Troopers' scenario is a smart choice for the tone of the game