Helldivers 2made a splash at The Game Awards, both winning the awards for Best Multiplayer Game and Best Ongoing Game and dropping a new trailer for the Omens of Tyranny update, whichintroduces a new enemy faction and a sweet new ride for the soldiers of Super Earth. The continued success ofHelldivers 2, even after a bout of community backlash from account requirements, proves that players have been waiting for this type of game for a long time; the type of game that puts soldiers in space, fighting enemy alien factions in a multi-front war with a type of infection taking over their comrades.
If that game sounds familiar, it’s becausethe newest trailer forHelldivers 2strikesan eerily similar tone to theHaloseries. In fact, it seems thatHelldivers 2is everything thatHaloshould’ve been, especially after the games seemingly ran out of steam in the post-Bungie era. Creating a chaotic game for space-faring soldiers to fight hordes of aliens is exactly whatHaloneeds for its future.
Why The Helldivers 2 Trailer Is So Great
New Enemies, Vehicles, And Missions
Helldivers 2is a great game that’s receiving a lot of love and attention from its developers, even with somecorporate meddling angering its playerbase. The newest update, which became available to download as soon as it wasannounced at The Game Awards, introducesthe Illuminate, partially comprised of hordes of mind-controlled citizens, and a new vehicle called the FRV, or the Fast Recon Vehicle. The trailer is full of classic Super Earth messaging, especially regarding the practically zombified citizens, who are now called the Voteless.
What the newest update promises is more chaos and even more ways to get killed by the enemies of Super Earth. The FRV looks both like a monster truck and a Warthog, with its suped-up suspension and the mounted guns on the back. While the FRV already draws instant parallels toHalo’s iconic Warthog,the addition of the Illuminate faction only makes theHalocomparison that much stronger. An advanced alien race that brings along with it a body horror plague is exactly like the Covenant and the Flood, which is pure earlyHalo.
Helldivers 2 Looks Better Than Halo Already
Chaotic Gameplay Needs To Make A Comeback
What makesHelldivers 2so fun is that the Helldivers are entirely expendable. Dying in ridiculous ways or even persevering against overwhelmingly bad odds is what makes every mission exciting.That feeling is something that theHaloseries has lost, especially with games likeHalo: Infinite,which have adequate multiplayer of Spartans shooting at each other in small spaces. Always playing as Spartan versus other Spartans has become stale, andco-op shootersneed to mix things up.
Haloneeds a game likeHelldivers 2, where players are much more expendable and are against all the odds of the universe.A game that features ODST rather than Spartans would help, especially if the game wasset back during the era where the Covenant and the Flood were at their highest threat levels. The same basic premise of a small group of soldiers fighting against waves of powerful enemies would make for a very goodHalogame.
Essentially, theHaloseries needs to makeanother ODST focused game and take inspiration from the chaotic fun ofHelldivers 2.One problem is that the tones of the two series, one seriously focused on fighting for the survival of humanity and the other mocking fascist government-style war propaganda, are radically different. However, on-the-ground combat could be essentially the same, and it would be better forHaloas a series to embrace a more chaotic tone for players to enjoy. Injecting some chaos and levity could be exactly whatHaloneeds to overcome a slightly stale era for the series.
Source:PlayStation/YouTube
Helldivers 2
Helldivers II is the follow-up to the 2015 multiplayer top-down single-player/co-op shooter from Arrowhead Game Studios. The sequel, which has shifted gears to a third-person shooter format, drops players into the boots of elite super-soldiers who fight to protect Super Earth from invading alien forces while taking the fight to those who threaten the “democracy of Super Earth.”
