#helldivers 2 new faction

[silentwisher-feed]

The Rocky Red Planet - Helldivers 2

The Rocky Red Planet – Helldivers 2

[jessfromonline]

have you been enjoying absurd Helldivers 2 nonsense?

multiple players have independently called my compared my satirical scifi skirmish storytelling TTPRG 🎲 PLANET FIST to Helldivers—so much as to call it "exactly the tone of Helldivers." the new Faithless Edition of PLANET FIST will be releasing this year, and if you buy it now, you get the new edition for free!

in PLANET FIST, SHOOTOUTS ARE STORIES, and they're goofy and over the top. you're an undying, unsleeping soldier who can get blasted to bits and thrown right back onto the battlefield next round. if you're looking to see how it hits that Helldivers tone, just check out some of the FACTION TRAITS below!

what's PLANET FIST about? what does it play like? read the PRINCIPLES OF PLAY here!

what are people saying about PLANET FIST, besides that it's like Helldivers 2?

"PLANET FIST is a quick-to-learn and quick-to-play system for characters thrown into FPS-style deathmatches on a world that knows nothing but war. It's a game of high-emotion, low-consequence combat, for when you're wondering what the infinite Master Chiefs are thinking during Halo multiplayer. PLANET FIST is 'war never changes' said with the same inflection as 'it's all made up and the points don't matter.'"

- Caleb Zane Huett, designer of Triangle Agency

"An absolute blast—and then another, and then another, and then another, each leaving remains splattered on a wall. Gleeful, and tactical, and winkingly tongue-in-cheek; a masterful game from top to bottom."

- Jeff Stormer, host of the Party of One actual play podcast

or check out some table stories:

[s3znl-gr3znl]

I know its really no secret by now that we're gonna be fighting a new faction soon, but it's funny to see how Helldivers 2 is preparing players via propaganda.

Official announcement (in game from the Ministry of Truth) saying "Its not that Super Earth hates aliens, its that aliens hate freedom!"

Currently, we're fighting bugs and bots with very strict terminology and name use around them, so the fact they would say "aliens" doesn't really feel like a mistake.

[bi-badass-geek]

Summer Games Fest 2024

Holy fuck if that shit wasn't putting me to sleep and it wasn't even because it started at 11pm over here. No offence to those devs and all but most of the stuff was Boring with capital b. Audience either didn't care bout most things showcased or was just asleep too cause that was just sad. My 5 cents that no one asked about since i fell asleep right after + gonna link trailers from IGN.

📣 First they pulled presentation of top 10 Steam sales january-may Palworld, Helldivers 2, Manor Lords, Enshrouded, Hades 2, Dragon's Dogma 2, Balotro, Deep Rock Galactic Survivor, Supermarket Simulator, Buckshot Roulette. I can see most but some i didn't even heard.

📣 Lego Horizon Adventures : Coming holiday 2024, nothing else to say another day another lego game soon we will see any universe with those.

📣 No one Room in Hell 2, Early Access Halloween 2024

📣 Harry Potter Quidditch Champions another game September 3rd.

📣 Star Wars Outlaws coming out August 30. Saying everyone waiting out for it this year is mad!

📣 Battle Aces that's RTS but 99.99% trailer had Tracer like is outta pocket!

📣 Cairn climbing simulator, face texture horrible, studio name 'the game bakers' tho cooks.

📣 Killer Bean EA summer 2024.

📣 Valorant coming to console.

📣 Palworld Sakurajima Update : New Island, New Raid, Arena, Xbox dedicated Servers, 27 June, Stronghold Oil-Rig, New Faction and boss, New Pals, New Buildings and Level Cap, New Subspecies.

📣 Skate console playtesting coming this fall great trailer especially 'STILL' working on it!

📣 Deer & Boy crazy name.

📣 Dune Awakening well it's MMO yikes.

📣 Wandershop fans of gardening, farming will enjoy for sure with a twist. Coming in 2024!

📣 Phantom Blade 0 i can't look at it the same way after i read Japanese Geralt or its Sekiro 2/Nioh 3 lol ,to experience on hand : 8-10 June Summer Game Fest, 26-29 July ChinaJoy, 21-25 August, September 28-29 Tokyo Game Show.

📣 Hyper Light Breaker comes out Late Summer typical Hyper's stuff!

📣 Monster Hunter Wilds

📣 Honkai Star Rail i seriously have no idea what it's about since i don't play but something new i guess?

📣 Alan Wake 2 Night Springs out now, 3 playable characters : Control, Quantum Break. Gotta say wild that they showed it in less than 24h hours before it was out love that and cool that they added other games! 3 episodes!

📣 Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 looks like more good ol' shenanigans that people are stocked for! Kiss Our Asses what's more to say! Coming 2024!

📣 The First Descendant out July 2nd, heard it's good, looks typical stuff. Melee character lookin dope!

📣 Enotria The Last Song : Spanish Souls what can i say! Demo out now! September 19th!

📣Dark and Darker back on Steam and Epic Store for free now!

📣Blumhouse Games : Project C, The Simulation, Fear The Spotlight, Sleep Awake, Crisol Theater Of Idols. Nothing got me more confused in entire livestream than this segment that was just dumped bucket of trash no offence.

📣Sid Meier's Civilization VII : coming 2025 not my vibe but didn't saw fans complaining!

📣Neva comes out 2024 from creators of GRIS.

📣Back Myth Wukong coming out August 20th. That's quick been a while since we last heard.

📣Once Human : Comes out July 9th. Around the corner not going to lie i forgot about this game till i saw it!

📣Asgard's Wrath Available Now

📣Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine 2 September 9th. Another Warhammer.

📣 Metaphor ReFantazio October 11th lovers of Persona got somethin to consume!

📣 Batman Shadow VR game Fall 2024. It's VR game that's all you need to know.

📣 Tears of Metal

📣 DragonBall Sparking! Zero October 11th. KAMEHAMEHAAA!

📣 Delta Force Hawk OPS Global PC Alpha Test in July.

📣 Battle Crush June 27th Moba Mobile nothin else needs to be said.

📣 Mecha Break Closed Beta Test in August such Gundam vibes when i saw trailer but funny how people called it Anthem 2 lol.

📣Slitterhead combat looks chunky November 8th it's out.

📣Unknown 9 : Awakening. Coming Fall 2024 got actress that plays Yennefer in Witcher show. People called it Forspoken 2 lmao.

📣Monster Hunter Stories &2 : Coming June 14th.

Sales : Monster Hunter Rise Up 75% OFF, Monster Hunter World 67%, Resident Evil 4 25%, Street Fighter 50%.

Among Us folks made OutterSloth that supports devs + fuckin tv show is supposed to come out think years too late but oh well.

📣 Sonic x Shadow Generations October 25th nostalgia hittin hard for some individuals.

📣 The Finals new Arena, New Ranked Mode, New Weapons and Gadgets, Weekly Tournaments.

📣 New World Aeternum October 15th consoles. Last i saw game was dead on dead.

📣 Kunitsu-Gami Path of the Goddess half of the graphics to gameplay confused my brain.

📣 Party Animal didn't catch what was that about.

Inside Out 2 Yong Yea voicing is cool!

📣 Squad Busters : Mobile that fuckin trailer killed it omfg! Way too OP for mobile!

[space-wizards]

Back when I still played (I got my 40 hours, I'm quite happy), I kept thinking about what this game would look like in "maintenance mode".

Helldivers 1 was designed to be an endless war from the get-go: The galaxy was randomly generated, and whenever Super Earth kicked out all three factions or failed the final defense, everyone would get the winner's or loser's outfit (respectively) and the whole thing would start over on a new galaxy. The servers are still up; you can still jump into the forever-war 9 years after release, 8.5 years after the last DLC drop.

Will Helldivers 2 make that transition someday? Can it make that transition? So much of the game's identity in the zeitgeist lies in a long, churning galactic war with a human GM directing both sides. You could hand that over to the computer, sure, but would anyone accept a Helldivers 2 where losing Super Earth amounts to getting a new cape?

[chlorokaleido]

New helldivers 2 faction: strong as fuck ice mummies.

[cavefilllingcorporation]

Summer Quarterly Financial Report 2024

Welcome to our first Quarterly Financial report. This report will not be wordy like the Export Logs, and instead will focus on cold hard statistics and percentages. This report is slightly off as we did not keep track of our exports for our investors until late April, but next report will keep track of the entire financial quarter. We hope this will be the first of many similar reports like this.

Significant Statistics

Exported Crates: 3912

Significant Absence sales (in terms of Crates): 1355.5

Dragons acquired: 4

Crates of Stone used in Cave Filling: 118

Worlds identified as potential additions: 15

New Additions to company territory: 0

Identifications to possible territory additions were not announced, and it is unlikely that they will be announced in the future.

Significant Client Sales:

Automatons {Helldivers 2}:

30 Crates of Steel

2 Crates of Quartz

1 Crate of Cobalt

12 Crates of Silica Sand

{If anybody has any other faction they would like the CFC to sell to, let me know!}

Heroes League engagements:

Solar Isles - Completed, Looted, and extracted from.

Completion Percentages:

MazeRun Percentage: 3.76% -> 6.72%

Shattered Isles Percentage: 5% -> 11%

Storytime Dimension Percentage: 6% -> 5%

C8H Percentage: 0% -> 1.44%

Default Percentage: 0% -> 0%

Inferno Project: 0% -> 1.2%

Unfortunately, we had to decrease the Storytime Dimension's percentage as there was a survey error. This should not happen again, and next report the percentages should go up. Next time, we will also highlight percentage increases, instead of having them buried in the Export Logs like the Great Tree one. To this end, we will make major percentage increases their own announcement once again, instead of lumping them with Export Logs.

Also we have completed surveys on C8H and Default to prepare for this report. They will never be as exact as the others, but hopefully they will be decent to show progress. That being said, while we hope that Default will continue at a fast rate, and we will be more than happy to show the progress in the weekly export logs, the same cannot be said for C8H. Due to the nature of C8H work, there are a ton of areas that need to be explored and addressed, and it is almost impossible to compartmentalize them in a way to make completion of an area immediately recognizable. As such, surveys will be taken near quarterly reports, and progress will be shown there. Major announcements will be made for major things (Like all Caves being filled or something), but the chances of that happening soon are unlikely. To be fair, Default suffers from some of the same issues, but not nearly as much as C8H, and immediate recognition of cleared areas is possible. (Also, apologies for the wordiness in the report, we will avoid doing this in the future)

Side Projects:

Art commissions - Ongoing

Archeology - Ongoing

Alien Invasion defense - Completed

Restaurant Investments - Completed, but financial failure (saved employees though)

Magnus Project- Completed, but a waste of resources

Atmospheric Clearing - 0% -> 25%

Prehistoric warfare - Completed with lots of loot

Breakfast and Utility company investment - Destroyed due to warfare, managed to get some return.

Giant-fighting super soldier program - Ongoing

Hotel Investments - Ongoing

Factory Robots Part 1 - 0% -> 31.25%

Other Significant Projects/Plans

Inferno Project - Corporation with Tomorrow Corporation to distribute goods and gain lots of absence resources

Loading Goods - Completed

Catalog 1

Catalog 2

Catalog 3

Catalog 4

Catalog 5

Catalog 6

Catalog 7

Anti Project Plan - Finish Solar isles Campaign, Inferno Project, and Default Project to free up time and resources

Load Inferno Project Goods - Completed

Completing Solar Isles Loading - Completed

Finish Cave Filling - Completed

Get goods to C8H - Completed

Process Side Project Loot - Ongoing

Process Solar Isles Loot - On hold

Process Inferno Catalog 1 - On hold

Process Inferno Catalog 2 - On hold

Process Inferno Catalog 3 - On hold

Process Inferno Catalog 4 - On hold

Process Inferno Catalog 5 - On hold

Process Inferno Catalog 6 - On hold

Process Inferno Catalog 7 - On hold

Finish Default Project - Ongoing

[jcmarchi]

Players Have Defeated An Entire Enemy Faction In Helldivers 2

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/players-have-defeated-an-entire-enemy-faction-in-helldivers-2/

Players Have Defeated An Entire Enemy Faction In Helldivers 2

Players have defeated the entire enemy Automaton bot faction in Helldivers 2, making Operation Swift Disassembly a success. Now, with one of the game’s two enemy factions wiped from the galactic map, players wonder what developer Arrowhead Game Studios has in store for them. 

Last week, a new major order called Operation Swift Disassembly was doled out to Helldivers, tasking Super-Earth’s finest soldiers to annihilate the Automaton Legion. Days later, the Automatons are no more and Operation Swift Disassembly is complete. The studio congratulated players with the following message on X (formerly Twitter), and while it looks great on the surface, many are wary of what Arrowhead might have planned next. 

“You did it, Helldivers. Operation Swift Disassembly was a success! With the bots eradicated and bugs contained, the galaxy is free once more.” 

You did it, Helldivers. Operation Swift Disassembly was a success! With the bots eradicated and bugs contained, the galaxy is free once more. pic.twitter.com/W7GolbDmHW

— HELLDIVERS™ 2 (@helldivers2) April 7, 2024

Sure, the galaxy is free…for now. If you’ve been playing Helldivers 2 since launch, you know players are likely just days away from some new galactic horror, Automaton re-emergence, or something even more terrifying. Of course, there’s the funnier timeline where this just means Helldivers 2 is done and Arrowhead turns off the servers, as many have joked about online, but with so much momentum for the game, there’s no shot this is the end. 

In the meantime, read about the Democratic Detonation premium Warbond that drops into Helldivers 2 this week, and then read about how the latest Helldivers 2 update increased the level cap, added blizzards and sandstorms, and more. Check out Game Informer’s Helldivers 2 review to find out why we think it’s a must-play game. 

Did you help erase the Automaton Legion? Let us know in the comments below!

[44gamez]

Helldivers 2 beginners tips and tricks

Helldivers 2 is a riveting recreation crammed with odd quirks so that you can wrap your thoughts round — you realize, for Democracy. Being a co-op recreation (and one with pleasant fireplace), there's numerous stress to get issues “proper” throughout your first mission for Tremendous Earth. On this Helldivers 2 newbie’s information, we’re going to stroll you thru 9 ideas that will help you turn into a real Helldiver and do your half to win the day.

Take note of your orders

Picture: Arrowhead Sport Studios through Polygon Earlier than you ever go on a mission in Helldivers 2, you must pull up your orders, which you will discover within the backside proper of your display screen. There are Main Orders, which let you know which of the 2 factions Tremendous Earth is presently waging a conflict towards. And there’s sometimes a Minor Order, which is extra of a aspect quest. The Main Orders are issues all the Helldivers 2 group is working towards — like liberating a sector of planets from the Tyranids. Profitable a Main Order sometimes provides everybody in the neighborhood a burst of foreign money. Minor Orders are extra particular and solely apply to you and your celebration. They’ll ask you to do issues like kill three Charger enemies or get kills with a sure form of Help Weapon. These are completely value specializing in, as they’ll provide you with loads of Medals to make use of for unlocking new issues.

Full as a lot of the mission as you possibly can

Picture: Arrowhead Sport Studios through Polygon The quickest option to degree up in Helldivers 2 is to drop in, full the target, after which depart with out doing anything. Nonetheless, with a purpose to assist your Main Order and get some extra currencies (which we’ll get to in a second), it’s finest to your crew to totally filter out the map earlier than extracting. You positively wish to ensure you end the primary goal early on, that means you possibly can nonetheless extract if issues go badly. However when you have the revives out there, you’ll earn bonus XP and Requisition slips for both sides goal and enemy nest you destroy. The extra you clear the map earlier than extracting, the extra you’ll contribute to Tremendous Earth’s Main Order. So do your half.

Prioritize grabbing Samples

Picture: Arrowhead Sport Studios through Polygon Requisition Slips and Medals are extraordinarily essential in Helldivers 2, however Samples are each an important useful resource and probably the most scarce. To assemble Samples, you’ll want to search out vegetation and Pattern nodes throughout your missions. You’ll then must pocket them and extract with out dying. When you do die whereas holding a bunch of Samples, you or a celebration member might want to choose them up out of your physique earlier than extracting. The excellent news is that every one Samples are shared amongst celebration members, so for those who choose up the frequent inexperienced Samples, everybody will get 5 on the finish of the mission. As you improve your issue in Helldivers 2, you’ll discover increasingly more Samples of rarer and rarer varieties. As for why you want them, you’ll use Samples to improve your ship and its numerous departments. These upgrades affect the assorted Stratagems that come from that space of the ship, permitting your airstrikes or orbital cannon assaults to turn into stronger or extra dependable within the discipline.

Ensure that to carry a Help Weapon

Picture: Arrowhead Sport Studios through Polygon Your Helldiver has three weapon slots in Helldivers 2: major, secondary, and Help Weapon. Earlier than loading into your mission, you possibly can choose the primary two, however you received’t have the ability to match a Help Weapon into your drop pod. With a view to get one, you’ll must both depend on an ally’s dying, get fortunate within the open world, or equip a Help Weapon Stratagem. These first two choices aren’t nice, as a result of they depend on luck and stealing issues from teammates. As a substitute, attempt to dedicate certainly one of your Stratagem slots to a Help Weapon with the intention to make the most of that slot and take advantage of out of Resupply ammo packs. Plus, Help Weapons are extraordinarily highly effective, and are the very best non-explosive choices for coping with armored enemies.

Be careful to your teammates

Picture: Arrowhead Sport Studios through Polygon As talked about within the intro, Helldivers 2 has pleasant fireplace. Which means you possibly can blow up your mates simply as simply as your enemies. The truth is, by chance killing a fellow Helldiver is way simpler than taking down a Hulk or Charger. Listed here are only a few methods I’ve by chance been killed by my allies in Helldivers 2: Shot by their gun Shot by their turret Blown up by their badly positioned mines Annihilated by their airstrike Blown up by their barrage A few of these had been humorous on the time, I’ll admit. However even goofy betrayal can get outdated after some time — particularly when it prices your staff the mission. Remember that your allies are probably the most helpful instruments you may have towards the enemies of Tremendous Earth, so preserve an eye fixed out for them whenever you’re launching explosives and different lethal Stratagems.

Change your loadout to go with your allies and the mission kind

Read the full article

[pocketbelt]

bit of an experiment; going to put a Read More here and see if tumblr properly hides only the stuff beneath this, as I have quite a bit more to say/gush about Helldivers 2

Helldivers 2 vs Live Service Games

To elaborate further on what makes Helldivers 2 work while things like Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice fall over; I've seen the latter played in full, I've seen its immediate predecessor Gotham Knights (yes it launched as a single-player thing, but it is blatantly a service game that aborted last minute with hasty adjustments), I and likely you have seen here and there all manner of shit from these games or inspired by these games.

These aren't games designed to be fun, they're games designed to Fill Time. Everything is extremely basic or even standardised, copied from predecessors or older successful examples without any thought as to whether or not people like it. I mean shit like Gear, of course, where you have to get Epic Loot and find Legendary tier equipment so it has more modifiers that do things like apply 15% ice damage while augmenting your Suicide Strike by 4% if you shoot a specific type of gun before it. Even single player shit has been invaded by this, it's all a perversion of old Diablo-style systems where modifiers used to get massive and be meaningful and form a whole fucking system of interlocking bonuses.

Helldivers 2 has none of that shit; guns come in one form each. You have your basic assault rifle, and the other assault rifles you get have different uses. One, for example, penetrates medium armour in exchange for less raw damage. Just flat, no percentage, no modifier, no requirement to do specific actions to trigger the effect, there's no fucking around. Your first shotgun shoots normally and is reloaded by putting individual rounds into it, letting you start shooting mid-reload process if you need to. The second shotgun uses a magazine so you can't do that, but it's stronger and fully automatic. Each gun is designed to have a use case, even the premium guns are just that; the premium assault rifle has explosive ammo that can stagger more durable foes, pinning them down or halting, say, the charge of a Terminid Brood Commander so it doesn't hit your ally or you. It isn't as strong offensively and has some other stat hits to compensate; it has a specific use case.

This makes getting new weapons, new grenade types and new armour impactful and meaningful. All of the Epic Loot shit makes it all meaningless, combined with sloppy system design allowing the procedural generator for them to spit out things like higher level, higher tier gear having massively worse stats than lower level, lower tier gear acquired earlier. Immortals of Aveum, in the news this week as a developer gripes about it flopping while refusing to admit it was an ugly, undesirable grey blob of a generic mess, was a single player offline game that suffered from this too (so it was likely also an aborted service title).

I also mean stuff like enemy and encounter design. This is also a recurring failure of Western AAA games in general, but especially service ones; the boss fights of Suicide Squad, for example, are miserable affairs that are about doing some bland attacks to fill a meter to break a shield so you can do real damage for a little bit, then doing that for another 10 minutes over and over. The regular encounters are invariably a mix of Regular Bug/Goo Man with Gun, Sniper Bug/Goo Man, Meaty Bug/Goo Man, and a tank or turret or some other form of larger gun. I'm going to keep bagging on Suicide Squad: Green Lantern just making guns and military equipment and growing big with his powers is comical for reasons the devs likely didn't intend but were doubtlessly aware of, the man whose power is his imagination can only imagine generic guns because the devs had no room or freedom or drive or whatever to do anything else.

Helldivers 2 has two factions of enemies at the moment: the Terminids, which are the Starship Trooper bugs, and the Automatons, which are Terminators with a healthy dose of Warhammer 40k injected in. We'll start with the Terminids: being animals and hive insects, they largely fight by massing in giant swarms and entering melee range, hoping to overwhelm with sheer numbers and the tactics their different forms have evolved like gigantic ants. What makes them interesting are those forms and their specific tricks.

Standard bugs just run up and hit you; Hunters can leap massive distances and get the drop on you quickly, Warriors hope to get into melee range through the swarm, Armoured Warriors have front-facing bulletproof carapaces that they use like shields, so far neat but basic. Then you get the Brood Commander: a big tanky Warrior who takes a lot of fire to go down, easily able to close distance and gank you. But, you think, the Brood Commander isn't as armoured as the Armoured Warrior, his head is particularly vulnerable to being splattered!

The Brood Commander will keep moving for several seconds after being decapitated, enough to finish his charge and run you through.

That immediately makes the Brood Commander a special problem. Decapitating him is easy and guarantees his death moments later; can you escape his post-humous charge? Are you distant enough? Or will you spend extra ammo, likely in the midst of a full swarm assault already, to force him to die faster? Can you afford to dive out of the way, potentially into the waiting claws of a pile of Warriors and Hunters? Are you even distant enough for the dive to stop him from reaching you?

And what do you do when there are multiple Brood Commanders at once?

See also the Alpha Hunter, or the Predator as my group calls him as I don't even know if "Alpha Hunter" is the right name; a Brood Commander equivalent of the Hunter type of Terminid, it's fast and agile and can spring from great distance to reach melee instantly. It has a slightly-ranged tongue attack that knocks you down, making you vulnerable to it or other Terminids, but not only that, the Alpha Hunter always tries to sneak up on the Helldivers. It always moves to get you from off-screen, and it has the ability to cloak, becoming a transparent silhouette that, while visible at distance still, can slip away in the chaos of a full assault. They'll also creep after the party, they'll move to hide behind rocks or other obstructions if you turn the camera their way, they'll stalk you across the map to spring ambushes once they're on you.

Alpha Hunters also fake their deaths, flopping and ragdolling after taking some damage, only to cloak and skitter away before coming back. So when you shot it to shit, are you going to keep shooting to make sure? Or watch it to see if it gets back up? Can you afford to let Alpha Hunters go, especially because a group of them will very quickly dispense of a Helldiver or two even in a full party of four?

Combine this with remarkably clever but simple AI and the Terminid swarm quickly gain a sense of character unto themselves; the AI for the Terminids encourages them to spread out as they swarm, but also to move in the direction you're moving and give chase, making them at once move to block off escape routes, move to encircle the players, and move to flank the players all in one swoop. It's the thing that FEAR did; clever but simple AI used really effectively.

This isn't even getting into Chargers, the giant fully-armoured walking tank Terminids, or the bile-spitters, the giant goo-filled spitters (whose spit stream is an instant kill if you're caught in it for half a second, in what feels like a case of unintended numbers), and the gradual build to the presence of the Bile Titan, the gigantic striding Terminid that fires jet-streams of nuclear green acid. Working from the basic premise of Terminids mostly being melee-range, with their ranged capabilities mostly coming in the form of line-stream projectiles or tiny gobs from the smallest spitters, they have a remarkable variety that works super well together. It's like the Special Infected of Left 4 Dead, each one altering a situation with its presence and the mix and matching of them (or, in Helldivers 2, the swarming of multiple, holy god we had like five Chargers at once in our first tier 4 mission!) creating emergent gameplay scenarios.

The Automatons, by contrast, are humanoid foes that are primarily ranged. Their basic footsoldiers wield laser guns, some may have laser machine-guns that can tear you up, and some have fucking RPGs. The larger Automatons start toting bigger guns, shoulder-mounted missile pods, miniguns on each arm, and there are special melee units with laser blades and ones thickly coated in armour with buzzsaw blades that seek to just walk through your fire and gank you. The Automatons fight completely different from the Terminids even with their own ranged-melee mix, you need to account for cover (there's no "cover system", you just need to put shit between you and them yourself), you need to prioritise by weapon (RPGs must go first!), the game and how you approach it changes almost entirely from Terminid missions.

In particular, I want to note some differences between them. Automatons are, unit-to-unit, much more durable and more dangerous than individual Terminids, but they aren't as numerous, and because they are humanoids/ex-human and not big ants, their unit-production and unit-summoning methods differ. The Terminids can spray a pheromone blast that makes waves come bursting out of the earth and there's nothing you can do to stop it once the spray goes off; you need to spot a Terminid going into the spray animation and kill them in the split second you have, or just blitz through the initial patrol/small group you stumbled into. Automatons, similarly, fire a flare into the air to summon a dropship to drop off a group of bigger, beefier units, but there's a trick: you can't stop the Terminids coming up, the most you can do is a drop a gas field or static field on their entry point to mitigate the swarm.

Automaton Dropships, however, can be shot out of the air by blowing an engine with a recoilless rifle (your own RPG) shot. Aim well and you skip the summoned encounter. Terminids are easier to deal with, unit-to-unit, so they are harder to stop coming in; Automatons are harder to stop once they're in, but easier to stop arriving. You just, you know, need a loaded recoilless rifle primed and ready to hit the ship before they drop; not simplistic but reasonable, especially as you likely have an RR for blowing up structures or dealing with the bigger Automatons anyway.

Similarly, bug nests are spawners that require getting in range of the mouth of the nest and chucking a grenade or other explosive into it to collapse it; easier said than done, as Terminids coming up will bounce grenades back out or otherwise block them. Automaton production structures are above-ground factories; you don't have to hit the weakspot vents with grenades, you can drill the walls with grenade launcher rounds, RPGs, orbital ordinance or whatever to destroy it. There's the difference, again; Automatons are harder to deal with when they're present, but easier to stop from spawning.

This makes the Automatons sound easier to deal with but the Automatons, being thickly armoured and extremely lethal at range the further up their chain they go, are bigger bastards. You really need to be utilising the special equipment and strategems way more often to deal with Automatons even at lower difficulty levels; armour-penetrating and high-explosive gear is necessary to reliably kill them, and you'll be using orbital/bomber aircraft strategems way more to deal with far fewer foes. The Recoilless Rifle is needed solely to deal with Chargers and maybe Bile Titans in later Terminid missions; it's needed to deal with normal mission types and multiple common enemy Automatons, especially if you don't have the Penetrator AR (and even if you do, some of the mid-tier Automatons can take whole mags of it to their faces before dying). The Anti-Material is of limited use against the Terminids, it's super useful on Automatons.

Automatons also behave differently and have different tricks. They have their own grenades, for one, which they use to force you out of cover as much as kill you. They move to destroy cover or move around it, they have their own machine-gun nests, cannons built over their structures, they are a human force that fights like a human force would. They surround their installations with mines and barbed wire to force your avenue of approach. Automatons will keep firing even when they lose sight of you - they use suppressing fire! They will go to where they saw you last, even! Their equivalent to the Charger is the Hulk, a walking weapons-platform that can shred a Helldiver in seconds at range, never mind closing the distance; the tanks from Helldivers 1 are their Bile Titan equivalents, they're just actual tanks and you're gaudy infantry. Good luck!

Note that by having such specifically designed, powerful enemies with particular traits and behaviours, this encourages having a spread of different equipment to hand. You actually have to care about which guns you take; you can only have four stratagems per Helldiver, which means spreading key tools (Recoilless Rifle, Tactical Backpacks for reloading, other special weapons like Machine Guns, the Arc Thrower, Anti-Material Rifle, Flamethrower, etc) and bombardment weapons (cluster, gas, static field, rocket pods, orbital rail cannon and laser, 500KG Bomb, the works) around the party. Or carefully considering what you need if solo. You might want multiple turrets of different types to deal with specific foes and so on.

In other words, not only the mechanics of what the player does, but the design of the enemies has knock-on effects on stuff like equipment, weapons and so on, which makes all of it matter, which makes decisions matter, which makes the game fun and engaging and interesting!

And so many Western AAA studios just don't see that! I usually specifically blame leadership and executives, and still do, but that Immortals of Aveum piece has me reminded that no, sometimes the actual developers also don't get it.

Helldivers 2 (PC)

This post comes about a week after launch, for what it's worth, in case post-launch support happens to go down foul roads (more likely due to Sony's influence)

Having dumped 28 hours into it, my biggest impressions are that Sony did Helldivers 2 fucking dirty with their advertising, it was granted justice in spite of that (1 million shifted in a hyper-busy window!) and it is a marked example (though not a perfect one!) of how to do right what all the recent live service failures do wrong

The "dual-track" battle pass-esque unlock system (one behind premium currency, of course) existing is shit, and the lack of offline play is a reminder that it will in time vanish and die, which is agonising because it's really good (especially as Helldivers 1 has offline!). But, I got the premium stuff unlocked from the stuff doled out for free within a week of normal play, so it manages its disease well. On top of the clusters of premium currency in the normal unlock pile, small pockets of it can be found in missions with no 'session limit'; if there is one, it's quite generous.

Where Helldivers 2 stands out is a mix of the good ol' Helldivers 1 "Verhoeven's Starship Troopers but we're leaning in even harder" comedy taken a bit further again, and being an actually good game. Unlike Sony's other first-party shite it's comfortable in its skin as a game and provides ample challenge with engaging mechanics, and unlike the glut of service games it's not a spreadsheet misery propagator coated head-to-toe in pointless numbers and percentages, and has actual mechanics with actual design intent behind them. It is a third-person shooter by considered choice, not because that's The Template.

On the one hand, it has comedic ragdoll physics and will send your body hurtling whenever it can, and it will also chuck around enemy bodies and make them hilariously flop in from on high after big explosions completely naturally. On the other, Helldivers 2's actual mechanics are actually a bit complex and brush up against simulator territory at times; guns in particular, for example, hit military-sim with realistic ranges and behaviours (shotguns will still hit and kill targets at 10s of metres out, ranges most others would consider sniper ranges; guns that reload by loading rounds can be fired mid-reload process, etc), you have to hold a button to check your exact ammo count as it's not on the UI, there's burst/full auto/semi-auto firing modes and adjustable scopes with a first-person view, and reloading dispenses of any unused ammo still in the mag you're discarding. It's an interesting contrast that really works, and the willingness to use such mechanics gives Helldivers 2 a real sense of character, as well as making it just plain fun and engaging unlike shite like Warner Bros' recent slop.

It's super fucking fun, alone or with friends, it perfectly continues Helldivers' special brand of chaos with its cavalier attitudes towards resources, death and players and willingness to let things spiral hard. And that's something Helldivers makes great use of: the chaotic spiral, that element some would call "emergent gameplay".

And it launched at £35 new, day 1 on PC alongside the console release, with proper cross-platform play! Not £70 with a £30 Season Pass and £15 Battle Pass on PS5 only with PC a year later on the Epic Game Store only! Miracle of miracles!

[spicynbachili1]

Helldivers returns with a tough update and a free weekend

To save lots of our mom Earth from any alien assault

For those who missed Helldivers (and it certain looks as if quite a lot of people did), this weekend is your likelihood to see what’s up. Arrowhead’s unforgiving sci-fi twin-stick shooter has a brand new content material replace and an compulsory free Steam weekend to additional entice onlookers. The free-play occasion runs till Sunday, October 28 at 10:00am Pacific. Helldivers can also be marked 50 % off if you wish to maintain enjoying.

The considered returning to a punishing co-op-centric shooter like Helldivers hasn’t entered my thoughts in a very long time, however I do have such a smooth spot for its bug-killing methods and recurrently scheduled “unintended” pleasant hearth. It is the kind of sport finest loved with longtime on-line buddies who’re on the identical wavelength. It’s doable to outlive intense missions with randoms, however they could be a handful.

My favourite side is the sport’s flexibility when it comes to problem and your particular person tools loadout and the way that may synergize with teammates. Additionally, it is simply plain satisfying to mow down overgrown bugs. This newest replace provides three extra difficulties that culminate with the “Interior Circle of Hell” (stage 15), in addition to three enemy varieties (one for every alien faction that opposes Tremendous-Earth).

Lastly, Helldivers has one other stratagem to tinker with: a 300-round, one-use, toss-it-when-you’re-done machine gun known as the MGX-42. Simply you’ll want to watch your positioning earlier than opening hearth.

Optimistically, we’ll get a Helldivers 2 sooner or later with extra mission selection.

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        from SpicyNBAChili.com http://spicymoviechili.spicynbachili.com/helldivers-returns-with-a-tough-update-and-a-free-weekend/

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Excuse me sir? - Helldivers 2

Excuse me sir? – Helldivers 2