War is a Horrible Circus · 8:02pm March 23rd
A veteran's Helldivers 2 review
Unless you've been living in a cave on Mars for the past two months, you've at least heard about Helldivers 2. Obviously you and I have different Google algorithms, but for me, I'm seeing it everywhere. It's currently the most popular new game on both PC and PS5. At current, it has over 8 Million copies sold and 250,000 Steam reviews rating it as Very Positive. If you're looking for specifics beyond that to help inform your purchase decision, there is no shortage of Youtube gameplay videos and reviews. I started playing it at the recommendation of a friend, and at this time of writing, I already have over 110 hours in game. I obviously recommend the game because it obeys Rule 0 of any game: It's fun.
But that's not what I came to talk about today.
When I first played Helldivers 2, it was... strange. Not the game itself, but my experience of it. I couldn't put my finger on it at the time, but after mulling it over for a couple weeks, I've come to a realization: War is a horrible circus.
You see, as a veteran, I feel that I personally perceive "war" games differently than your average civilian. Because I've played plenty of Medal of Honor and Call of Duty before. And as much as they strive for "realism", I think it kind falls into the uncanny valley, where, having seen the real thing, it just makes me notice the differences more. And more than that, the focus on "realism" felt like bringing my work home with me for a time, pushing me away from the genre to indie games. I've had the dubious pleasure of serving amid my gaming career. So I can remember the fantastic thrill of playing "war" games before enlisting. And I use "fantastic" in the academic sense of the word, as the games are meant to be a 'power fantasy'.
It's a great recruitment tool, for sure; the player gets to feel like The Soldier. And I say The Soldier because you are routinely made the most important character in the game, doing the key, linchpin missions that somehow singlehandedly win the war by the end of the game. It's more rare to see a game that treats you as A Soldier. Foxhole does a good job of this. If everyone just rushes into battle, you'll accomplish nothing. You have to be willing to do home-front work like collecting scrap and refining metal to make equipment and ammo for the sake of the larger team effort. Most ego-centric players aren't willing to do that.
It makes sense to me after watching my squadron tell us that we needed to buy our own toilet paper from the commissary because the brass was "having issues" ordering more from the depot. It's why I laugh at government conspiracies. Not that I think that a malicious government doesn't want to pull that kind of stuff off. But that they simply don't have the capacity to actually organize it.
Helldivers 2 has both a larger, and smaller scope. Larger in the sense that there is a persistent, ongoing galactic war that could be considered a Massively Online Multiplayer, in the loosest sense of the words. It has an evolving strategy with regular game updates. But the moment-to-moment gameplay has a more narrow focus on 4-player co-op PVE missions 12 to 40 minutes long. At the end of each mission, you see the tiny sliver of progress your team made to the galactic effort. But with hundreds of thousands of players, entire planets get captured in less than a day. But that is just part of it. And that part wasn't even apparent to me on my first encounter with playing the game.
The entire game is a fantastic satire of fascism. Just in case you thought Starship Troopers was being too subtle, this game beats you in the face with it. The game openly borrows much from it, (just in case the big alien bugs weren't a big-enough clue). Not only that, but it's a satire of war as a concept. Once you get into the actual game and you discover just how mortal, fragile, squishy, and disposable you actually are as you get killed, again, and again, and again, only to have your soldier get replaced by another gung-ho soldier getting thrown into the meat grinder.
Helldivers 2 is a "Be A Soldier" game disguised as a "Be The Soldier" game, rather than the other way around. The game advertisements, and even the game's intro video sell it as a power fantasy with a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor to it.
And god DAMN if that music doesn't just give you the biggest freedom-boner!
So what was it about Helldivers 2 that appealed to me as a veteran in a way that no other "war" game has been able to?
Simply put: War is chaos. And Helldivers 2 is concentrated chaos in a can.
You're going to die a lot in this game. And just like in real war, a not-insignificant amount of it is going to be the result of friendly fire. A misplaced turret or mines, a dropped grenade, an airstrike called in danger close, or just plain running in front of the bullets. Always remember that the bullets have the right-of-way.
And from what I've played of other games, nothing else seems to capture that... Vibe on the battlefield.
What starts out as full-health troops marching arrogantly into battle, "GET SOME!" laughing maniacally while mowing down chafe enemies with a fully-automatic belt-fed 30-cal light machine gun. Spouting one-liners as you fire your grenade-launcher. "How about a nice cup of Liber-TEA!?"
But then an armored bug charges in and scatters the fire team. The dick-waving bravado vanishes and suddenly the power fantasy turns into horrific chaos. You're running around, scared shitless, and not knowing what the fuck to do besides take cover and spray suppressing fire at (what you hope is) the enemy.
The game music does a fantastic job in shifting from the dulcet, creeping tones of tension as you make your way across the map, before sailing into the bombastic drums and trumpets as battle erupts, rising to a fever pitch as everyone around you gets gruesomely ripped apart. A misplaced grenade sends your squad-mate ragdolling through the air before they are killed by the impact on the ground, and you're down to your last magazine, crawling away as you throw a martyr grenade at the approaching horde with your last not-broken limb, screaming in panic, "FRAG OUT!" before the rest of the bugs tears your meaty body apart.
But don't worry.
There's another Helldiver coming down to take up your place.
Another jester in the theater of this tragic farce.
And god damn it all, I love it.
Helldivers 2 doesn't glorify war, it satirizes it. And it doesn't browbeat you with the "war iz bad and you are bad for liking it" message the way that Spec Ops the Line does. It respects the players' intelligence and capacity to read between the lines. To see how pointless all the death is for the gain of some faceless, fascist, military-industrial complex. But at the same time, Helldivers 2 remembers that it can deliver this message while still being, (wait for it...) FUN.
And that was my takeaway. War is fun... until it isn't.
It was fun at Camp Bastion, dropping a scorpion onto a fire-ant hill, watching it fight to the death in glorious battle until the ants over-powered it with sheer numbers. It was fun body-checking a porti-potty with your squad-mate in it, watching them stumble out covered in blue water and... other stuff. It was fun until you're out jogging around the flight-line for your morning PT and realize that the "twinkles" on the mountainside isn't morning dew, it's muzzle flashes.
It's fun until you watch your battle-buddy, high on a fresh morphine stick, unloading his M9 downrange for covering fire while the field medic stuffs his guts back inside him and sows his stomach up, all to the tune of your worsening tinnitus and the whip-cracks of tiny sonic booms from the AK-47 rounds sailing over your heads. (The mf lived btw).
It's fun until the incoming-mortar alarm blares in the middle of the night AGAIN, and you roll over in your cot with the pillow wrapped around your head to drown out the noise. You no longer feared death. Death is the end of your problems. Waking up at dawn for a 12-hour shift with no sleep after a previous 12-hour shift was a whole lot more problems. The slam of metal on metal making you lurch upright, looking into the dark for your asshole squad-mate pulling a prank, before seeing moonlight coming in through the hole in the barracks roof. And looking at where the rusty 1980's mortar round landed in the dirt next to your rack. A dud. You should have died. But you lived.
So you laugh.
You have to laugh.
You're a clown.
And war is a horrible circus.
Shakespearicles™: i died
pu$$ydestr0yer: its k. happens to every1
Yes, the game has a hug emote.
I'm not fully familiar with this game since I primarily play games on my iPad and don't have access to PlayStation or PC. However, I'm thrilled to see your enthusiasm for it, and I'm eager to learn more!
I've seen how badly I suck at shooters so I don't play them. Coop would only exacerbate that problem, but y'all have fun being a bloody cog in a murder machine. (The fandom has embraced the satire so I can say stuff like that and they can say stuff about killing me for being insufficiently democratic and there are no hard feelings anywhere)
Yeah, super fun. Just wish I had more people to play it with. Considerably less enjoyable when you're solo 83% of the time.
This echoes some of what my friend said after a decade in the Army. Not about Helldivers, specifically, but the general idea. And also the mortars. Scared the shit out of me when he told me those stories.
[quot]Always remember that the bullets have the right-of-way.Also this is a very good line and I'm stealing it for later.
I've never served in the military. I tried to join 3 different times, but got disqualified for psychological and medical reasons. This was before Call of Duty, Medal of Honor and Battlefield were a thing. I've talked with people who have served in different conflicts and did amateur studies(emphasis on amateur) on tactics and logistics. I've heard and read the same complaints regardless of the conflict, most men in a warzone can't get what they need when they need it where they need it, nothing ever seems to work like it's supposed to and every plan falls apart as soon as they see the enemy.
I do agree with the overwhelming majority of the military-style shooter games, they're ego trips and power fantasies, they're basically action movies that you're participating in. I do agree that more military-style shooters need to make the player feel more like another body on the line and another cog in the machine.
I've never played Foxhole or the Helldivers franchise. I've been aware of them for some time, just never played'em.
Bro couldnt get reactions on his steam review and posted it here to clutter up my timeline like smdh ngmi my dude. Make more incest funnies
5773538
I disagree. I love these sort of posts. Gives us insight the man behind Shining getting behind Velvet
I didn't know you were a veteran. What branch and have any "fun"?
I still to this day find it funny how much the Heinland book os SO different from the movie.
I love sci-fi settings built up around that sort of tongue-cheek satirical fascism. Starship Troopers, Helldivers; hell with the right perspective you can view the Federation (Star Trek), UNSC (Halo), Alliance (Mass Effect) albeit without the humor. In the last decade people have been try-hards looking for examples of fascism where it isn't and I find it refreshing to have Helldivers be such a blatant sample of its core traits.
"Managed Democracy" fucking lol
5773600
Not sure why your laughing "guided/managed democracy" is a real thing. Indonesia had it and Russia is a good example now. The quick and dirty is you have truly free and fair elections/votes on things that change nothing in the system. Like voting for a congressman with no competition either way it's staying the same.
5773600
I love how we have to distinguish the book from the movie
Yes
No idea, never played it
I never really got enough to be able to say. A bit of column a bit from column q, but full fascist like, say, the batarian or turians? Not really. Mind we never see much of any of their actual societies, so its hard to judge
5773685
I've never read the book, unfortunately, but I take the movie in stride; I can't understand how people can watch it and take away any kind of endorsement.
The authoritarian behavior of the UNSC is not demonstrable in the games. The books carry hints as to the nature of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) (alike Federation Section 31, a fictitious take on the NSA, KGB, or MI5/MI6). I can't recall whether it was UNSC or ONI, but most people who call Halo fascistic tend to indicate the Spartan-II program being for counter-insurgency as opposed to a survival necessity. In other words children were abducted, indoctrinated, and trained to eliminate the political dissidents of the colony worlds... but that's all in the books, and we all know literature is for higher-minded people than gamers *rimshot*
As for The Alliance the games do use more nuance on the subject than Halo. No, not fascist like the batarians nor like the military junta of the turians. I included The Alliance more for the part where I got pissed at "try-hards" for the fact that The Alliance isn't fascist, or even traditionally authoritarian, given moments in the game where military action is precluded by political prerogative. This was about calling military action flicks fascist wholesale; it's tiring.
TLDR
I just want to enjoy my games and movies.
5773638
I laugh for that exact reason
... okay, real talk man, would it be all right if I asked something? None of my usual glibness, this has been on my mind a bit
5773911
yea
5773945
Well, first off, thank you for your service.
The first question I have to ask was what was the response after the laughter? Did you, or whoever this happened to, just go back to sleep, have to be debriefed, or just kind of admire the moon for the rest of the night?
The second thing I'd ask is... how? How did you come back from something like that? Lot of homeless vets were Im at, and the situation Im in has me around them quite a lot. I help how I can, but not a veteran, so what helped you afterwards?
5774083
The laughter didn't come until later. The first response was the adrenaline of the shock, expecting it to explode at any second. And then getting tf away from it and calling EOD to come dispose of it while the sirens blared for another hour. Needless to say I didn't get much sleep that night. Even unexploded, it was still scary. Force still equals mass times velocity. And a 3lb dud hitting you center-mass at almost 300mph doesn't have to explode to make you past-tense.
But at a certain point, I was so sleep deprived I felt almost punch-drunk, and everything just seemed hilarious. So having almost died, I laughed. Because at that point if you don't laugh, you'll cry.
Some people handle war better than others. For me, I came away from it with more of an appreciation for life, being grateful for every day being the gift that it is, since nobody is guaranteed a tomorrow. For other people, that sort of thing haunts them as an anxiety. Everyone is different.
But yeah, mostly grateful. And a little jaded. Just in case that wasn't obvious.
5774175
I appreciate your candor on these matters.
That I get mate. Not a soldier, but I think I at least get that.
As for the laughter... I suspect yours might be a bit different then mine.
And speaking of which, this matter has been a departure from my usual irreverant self, so if you would permit its return dead baby joke, 9/11, old man shakes fist at clouds rant.
You know, Ive been kind of thinking about this game... and I think its one of the few that has it.
What is it you might ask? I'm struggling to find the word for it, but it covers both what he game itself has been about, and speaks to the meta narrative around it. We actually very rarely see it from where I sit, but two examples spring to mind (and in all honesty are the only ones I can draw from, so it might be me being weird):
-In Undertale, after you commited the atrocity of Milf murder,,, oh, and killing everyone else, but killing Toriel should be enough for you Sans, you antipathetic fuck bag, you fight the aforementioned bag of fuckery and at one point he calls you not on having bad morals, but having no moral compass at all saying " You'll never give up, even if there's absolutely NO benefit to persevering whatsoever. If I can make that clear. No matter what, you'll just keep going. Not out of any desire for good or evil. . . But just because you think you can. And because you "can". . . . . . You "have to."
-In Cruelty Squad, at the half way point where this usually happens, you are set upon by your own employers. Escaping the police, you go to your job the next day... and go about your business. Apparently it was a paper mishap and the boss fucked up, so you just go back to your job without a whimper, showing apathetic you have become.
In Helldiver 2... its this
This is, by from I can gather, the literal extent of their training and introduction into Super Earth defense forces. Ands its all that needed since they're only expected to maintain a population of bugs on each world, not exterminate them outright. Because the 710 must flow to gear up for the automatons so that whoevers left is ready to fight an even worse enemy later on.
Whats the word I'm looking for to describe this sort of thing?
5774875
Satire.
5774877
Well, yeah, that too... but also no. Its really something I don't see much in games at all to be honest. Or maybe it is that and Im being a dope
5773538
Go away.
Great review. I've been hesitant to get it as the satire felt a bit too over the top for me (I hate anything overly patriotic, even when said attitudes are being lambasted) and it's weird hearing my British friend sounding like someone from west Texas but this makes me want to get the game. I'll have to pick it up if/when it goes on sale.