Diving Into Hell Has Never Been So Fun!

Fans of Starship Troopers rejoice. There is a new game in town that gives the world a definitive look at being apart of Rico’s Rough Necks from the Starship Troopers film franchise without the branding, and that is HELLDIVERS 2.

HELLDIVERS 2 is the long awaited sequel to HELLDIVERS by Arrowhead Studios. The original game released in 2015 and was a co-op top down twin-stick shooter where the player was an elite patriotic soldier who squished bugs and evil robots for democracy. HELLDIVERS 2, however, turned the original formula upside down and released in February 2024 as a 4-player co-op third person shooter. The player is the same elite soldier spreading democracy for Super Earth like the first title, but it added more intensity due to the perspective change. Not only that, but the game has returned with its persistent war interface dubbed the “Galactic Campaign”. What this means is any mission the player squads complete or fail, that contributes to a planet liberation system, positively if successful, and negative if unsuccessful. Similarly to the map in For Honor, or even Galactic Conquest in the original Star Wars Battlefront II, which also has a remastered collection releasing in just a couple of weeks, that will have full multiplayer server support as well as 64-player servers.

Everyone And Their Mother Wants In On The Bug Squashing/Terminator Crushing Action

One thing the first game did not have to struggle with was its player-base. Everyone that was interested in it could log in and play. However, Arrowhead Studios was unaware of how many players would actually be diving into combat this time around with the sequel. After the alleged slightly underwhelming release of Starship Troopers Extermination by the video game studio, Offworld, who are most notably known for their fantastic work on the highly realistic military simulation game known as Squad, had fans of the movie hankering for another experience like it. Arrowhead Studios dive bombed the community with the release of HELLDIVERS 2 and people are loving it. The issue, however, is the fact that so many people wanted to log in and play, that it was overloading the servers and the developers had to restrict the amount of players that could log in, which was only 450,000 players at a time. Those unlucky souls that were forced to wait until it was their turn were met with a error message upon the login screen.

One other problem that the game has been having lately is since the servers are at capacity, people have been sitting in their lobbies all night not logging out, which proposes a new problem, however, the developers have seemingly fixed this issue by adding an idle kicker at the time of writing.

Honesty amidst Controversy

The developers, especially the CEO of Arrowhead Studios, Johan Pilestedt has been nothing but transparent with the community which is a nice change to see. No secrets. He states,

While we made a really fun game it’s worth waiting until the servers can support the capacity.

“I mean, as a CEO I of course want the game to be as profitable as possible, but if you spent yr last $ and got stuck in server queues I’d be 💔”

This comment seemed to go down well with the overall HELLDIVERS 2 community with one user on reddit going by the name of LittleBlueCubes stating,

Honesty is the best policy.

The game’s director even put out a statement,

People’s renewed interest in Starship Troopers is Incredible.

So needless to say, people are enjoying the game. The game is $39.99 for Windows PC, and PlayStation 5, not to mention it’s cross-play, and is some of the most fun a player can have in the current decade in which we live in. It’s very nostalgic because it feels like the world is back into the PS2 era with this title. No pay-to-win mechanics, and everything is earned in-game. Despite the server issues, it is still a perfect purchase with hours upon hours of content.

Humor Just Like Starship Troopers

The marketing is genius. The Developers knew what type of demographic they were tailoring to.

If this doesn’t scream Starship Troopers then I don’t know what will! The last video is the introduction cutscene that plays every single time the player loads the game, and it sets the tone. It is obvious that Arrowhead Studios loves the Starship Troopers franchise just from these videos alone.

So, ARE YOU DOING YOUR PART?

The game has gotten such positive feedback that even the star of the Starship Troopers film commented on a post from the CEO Pilestedt, page on X.

The post states,

While my wife and friends have plenty of tattoos, I am for the first time considering getting one. What do you think, Yay Or nay?

Casper Van Dien, who is Rico himself from the film Starship Troopers commented and said,

Welcome to the Rough Necks!

Pilestedt responded and said,

Thank you, and thank you so much for one of the best movies of all time man ❤ Had such a huge effect on my life!

Mr Van Dien responded and ended the exchange with,

I can’t wait to play. Maybe we should do a crossover movie?!

If you are on the fence about the game, get it anyways! It is almost perfect in every way, and the world needs more games like it. The server issues will be continued to be worked on and fixed eventually, the developers even stated that, the player capacity cap has been updated to hold 800,000 players as opposed to the original 450,000 at the time of writing. The game is in a great state and will continue to flourish.