Helldivers 2

[Blackhawk]

I know some folks have played this, but I figured it deserved it's own thread so that people can find it, rather than it getting lost in the thread for the first game (which was a completely different type of game.)

I've put in 74 hours in the last few weeks, and I am really loving the tongue-in-cheek humor, like an extreme version of Starship Troopers (if you kept the bugs and added Terminators.)

Anyway, they just announced a third enemy faction, cities, and all sorts of other goodies, due out... now. I'll be checking it out in a few minutes.

[gbasden]

That looks pretty fantastic! I can't wait to try it with my regular group on Saturday.

[Blackhawk]

I ran through four or five missions. We only failed one. Fair warning - they're tough. They're the hardest faction yet. You need weapons for dropping shields, something for crowd control, something for tough enemies, something for tanks. There will be tons of spawns, and it will be unrelenting. Some tips:

There is a new 'jammer' that can be found by looking for the blue beam of light/blue vortex. It works like the bot jammer, but instead of disabling stratagems, it scrambles the inputs, and changes them every few seconds (including while you're in the process of inputting them if you're unlucky. To take it out, run around and look for the batteries - they look like blue lights mounted on the wall - and break them.

Shields absorb a lot of damage, and there doesn't seem to be any damage bleedthrough. This kills the 500k bomb as a base killer on spawners, although the orbital laser still works. The shields come back quickly, too. Either be ready to strip the shields and switch weapons, or have one person who strips and another who fires. I had good luck with the Stalwart for the shields, and I heard good things about the sickle.

The spawners look like UFOs on the ground, covered with a shield. Grenades through the door once the shields are down do the trick. I was able to take them out quickly with the Stalwart followed by a single shot from the exploding crossbow.

The tripod walkers are similar - strip the shields, blow 'em up.

Be ready to swear at all of the jetpack guys.

I seemed to have good luck with fire to keep the hordes at bay - grenades, air strikes - but that was just my impression.

Be on the lookout for tesla towers - they like to use them for defense.

I'm sure that those smarter than myself will be figuring out exactly what their weaknesses are over the next few days, so some of what I wrote may change.

[Blackhawk]

New warbond today. Armor that provides +primary ammo and +primary reload speed. A booster that puts a turret on every resupply drop. A shock lance (melee weapons!) There's also a shock baton on store today - that's something new.

I ran a bunch more Illuminate missions this morning, and we did much better. My current loadout: Light armor with the +ammo/reload passive, the Sickle for horde clearing and shield stripping (it's mediocre at the latter, but comes with effectively infinite ammo), the stun baton for when they get close (it's surprisingly effective), and usually the Commando for the heavies. I've also been using the machine gun Guard Dog, as it's really useful for keeping you from getting overrun. I don't have a 'loved' grenade for this yet, but a couple of the people running with me have been using the gas grenades, which seem to be really, really effective.

[Blackhawk]

Anyone notice this little nod to the game's inspiration?

[gbasden]

New warbond today. Armor that provides +primary ammo and +primary reload speed. A booster that puts a turret on every resupply drop. A shock lance (melee weapons!) There's also a shock baton on store today - that's something new.

I ran a bunch more Illuminate missions this morning, and we did much better. My current loadout: Light armor with the +ammo/reload passive, the Sickle for horde clearing and shield stripping (it's mediocre at the latter, but comes with effectively infinite ammo), the stun baton for when they get close (it's surprisingly effective), and usually the Commando for the heavies. I've also been using the machine gun Guard Dog, as it's really useful for keeping you from getting overrun. I don't have a 'loved' grenade for this yet, but a couple of the people running with me have been using the gas grenades, which seem to be really, really effective.

I was able to play this afternoon, and the new enemies are really interesting. The zombie hordes can be difficult to deal with, but I like how different it feels from the other two factions. I was running the liberator penetrator as my primary, the shock lance as secondary and the machine gun as my stratagem weapon. I've also been taking the 500kg bomb since it's good at taking out the harvesters and landed spawn ships, the MG turret for shields and hordes and then have been playing around with the last slot. The machine gun guard dog is quite good.

[Blackhawk]

The new kick animation they added can be used, under specific circumstances, to knock down another player on the ship. That player may then be carefully kicked into the hellpod, at which point they get to pay a visit to the Big Black.