Helldivers 2... ah, the game all about spreading freedom, liberty, and democracy. You're a Helldiver, a revered and elite soldier who drops into territory occupied by the undemocratic enemies of Super Earth, in order to liberate captured Super Citizens, launch nukes, destroy enemy staging grounds... the list of missions is long, and they're all pretty fun! I really think this game is probably one of the most cinematic and ballsy games I've ever played. Seeing an Automaton patrol emerge out of the fog, to open fire on your squad... or catching a glimpse of Illuminate warp ships in between streets as you run from a horde of Voteless.

The times when you misjudge the concentration of automatons in a fortress, then shit starts to hit the fan, and you and your squad just BARELY manages to evac with the skin of their teeth. I love it! I really do! The flow of the gameplay is amazing. You transition smoothly between diving, travel, objectives, combat... you can do stealth solo, or go in guns blazing with a full squad. The choice is yours, and there's a loadout for everyone. The music ramps up and ramps down extremely smoothly with the flow of battle! It picks up when you encounter a patrol, and then soars when a Bile Titan emerges out of a hole in the ground, before slowly dropping tempo as the bug breach is dismantled.

Every faction, and even almost every enemy composition comes with its own theme. The Illuminate, high-tech soldiers who convert Super Citizens into hordes of Voteless, have mainly synthetic elements. The Automatons are vocal, brassy, and full of drums. The Terminids have mostly strings and brass...! I've never had as much fun in a first person multiplayer shooter as I've had in HD2.

Honestly, the only thing I don't like about HD2 is how toxic the community is. They want everything to go their way, and disregard the artistic and gameplay vision the developers actually have. It results in missions being vastly easier than the developers intended, weapons getting unnecessary buffs... the game went from a relatively challenging and overwhelming shooter to almost a walk in the park on the highest difficulty. All because the community thinks it should be easy, because they're usually really bad at the game. The number of squadmates I've had who are unwilling to work together, intentionally teamkill you, or are just plain bad at the game... yeah, it's really sad.

Aside from that, I've never had more fun than dropping in with a squad where everyone seamlessly works together to dismantle the enemy and complete the objectives.

Also, man, the explosions are cool! There's nothing like lobbing a Railcannon strike towards a Warpship and seeing it explode into orange and purple after being ruptured from orbit, or the explosion of a Hellbomb wiping out a gunship factory... yeah, I love it. I actually will have a cosplay set (to be painted) ordered, just so I can go to Comicon and show up to costume parties as a Helldiver. I think it'd be fun!

One last thing I want to add is how smooth difficulty scaling is, even in between different factions. I mean, it does follow similar rules (higher difficulties have more enemies, and a higher percentage of heavy/massive enemies), but each faction follows it differently. Automatons and Illuminate are more accurate and do more damage on higher difficulties, but Automatons tend to respond by having more fortifications (Cannon towers, barrager tanks, factory striders), and Illuminate respond by having higher numbers of medium and large enemies (Overseers, Harvesters). Terminids, on the other hand, respond with overwhelming numbers of low level enemies with massive enemies interspersed (Bile Titans, Heavy Chargers, Impalers), and more common "special" enemies, like shriekers and stalkers. The difficulty levels scale pretty well to get the average player used to it, too. Low level missions might start with a main objective to take down a single Bile Titan, but once you reach higher difficulties, you'll encounter multiple of them, while you have to complete a much more complicated objective, like launching an ICBM. I really love how it encourages different team play! Like, you'll have to stick together and bring more horde-clearing support weapons for bugs, or you'll want to split up and flank Automaton fortresses so that you can dismantle them from different angles. Illuminates encourage mobility and chokepoints in high difficulties so that you don't get overwhelmed! (That's why you bring the car, haha!)