Enjoy the taste of Freedom with a fresh cup of Liber-TEA. ENLIST TODAY! Join us for a conversation about HELLDIVERS 2, a gritty, propaganda-filled third-person squad-based shooter.
Enjoy the taste of Freedom with a fresh cup of Liber-TEA. ENLIST TODAY! Join us for a conversation about HELLDIVERS 2, a gritty, propaganda-filled third-person squad-based shooter.
In this episode, we join the front line as "peacekeepers" to defend our Super Earth-born rights in a galactic war. In HELLDIVERS 2, you step into the boots of the Helldivers, an elite class of soldiers whose mission is to spread peace, liberty, and Managed Democracy. We all agree this game is fantastic—like, the best co-op game of 2024 so far. It's a lot of fun to play with up to four friends or go at it solo and get destroyed. Joseph talks through how to call in and use Stratagems, Taylor shows respect for the weapon selection and physics, and Williie explains the in-game currency and the upgrade systems. Seriously. This game is worth $40 if you enjoy playing team-based third-person shooters. Everything in this game wants you dead. So, do you have what it takes to become a hero? BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SUPER EARTH MINISTRY OF TRUTH.
Here's the full transcript for this episode.
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00:00:00
[Alienated by ELFL plays in background]
Willie: And it's all kinds of little details, man. We've already sort of said it, but the robots feel like you're in Terminator at points. Especially like last night we were playing and you know Joey throw-
Joseph: Dropping Napalm.
Willie: Yeah. Joey throws down a napalm strike.
Joseph: So good.
Willie: And then you just see robots walking through this fire at you and you're like, oh, this is Judgment Day.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: We're in the middle of some shit right now.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: That particular thing, when it happens, it looks incredible.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: And you're in the process of defending against like 15, 20 enemies coming through fire at you. And it... the thing about this game is communication is absolutely key because-
Joseph: Yes.
Willie: -the number of times I've killed Joey is probably immeasurable. I don't even know, [Joseph and Taylor laugh] but it's-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -[chuckles] it's a lot just because I'll throw in an orbital strike and it's like, not quite as far as I wanted it to go. Or like last night, and Joey's not even going to want to admit this. He just runs into shit [Taylor chuckles] because he thinks he's going to take [Joseph laughing] over this base.
Taylor: I witnessed it.
Willie: He'll just run straight up towards it like I didn't just throw a fucking strike over there or something. There was one in particular last night. He just straight up ran into it.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah. I know which one you're talking about. And I think I heard you call something out. I didn't realize that was the one it was. And that one has a really wide spread footprint and it's kind of erratic. So it's one of the easier ones to get destroyed by if you're anywhere in the vicinity.
[Alienated by ELFL fades out]
[Intro theme plays - Tiger Tracks by Lexica]
00:01:44
Joseph: What's up everyone. Welcome to Berries and Blades. Thanks for tuning in for a casual conversation about video games. My name is Joseph and I'm here with my friends, Willie and Taylor, and we're just three guys wondering how flat earthers explain a solar eclipse, but I digress. So what are y'all been up to this week?
Taylor: Well, to start off to answer that question, I mean, what we, the flat earthers think is that [Joseph laughs] the earth begins to wobble and becomes, uh, an unsustainable wobble, which actually cause it to block out the sun. So it's, um, pretty simple stuff, man. If you just think about it and block out all the science and scientists and data.
[Joseph and Willie laugh]
Super easy, man.
Willie: I had to look it up just because you said that... you posed this question and I will say there's a title to an article that says flat earthers claim the solar eclipse just proved earth IS flat. So they,
Joseph: Yeah, how?
Willie: They think that it's, I don't, I can't, I can't read this whole fuckin' thing. But this is from like 2017.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: All of a sudden it's supporting evidence.
Willie: Yeah. Somehow... there are two key issues I guess, that prove in their mind the earth is indeed flat. One is the eclipse path, which moved from west to east.
Joseph: Hmm.
Willie: The other is the size of the moon shadow on earth.
Taylor: We all know that astronauts are liars.
Willie: [chuckles] Yeah. They just say it moved in the wrong direction is one thing.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: Oh my gosh.
Willie: And somehow that prove that it's...I'm not-
Taylor: I'm sure there's zero explanations.
Willie: I'm not going to read all this.
Taylor: No, no, no, no.
Joseph: I need to learn the basics. [Willie chuckles] Like I don't even know if flat earthers accept that the earth is round, but do they think it's round and flat?
Willie: It's flat and has a cover is what I just learned. It has a dome shape above it.
Joseph: Oh, so it's like a half circle.
Willie: Yeah. Where did I see that?
Taylor: I simply can't buy it. I think they're people that like attention.
Willie: [chuckles] Shaped like a hockey-
Taylor: I mean I've known people like this. [chuckles]
Willie: -puck with a dome above it called a firmament which includes our atmosphere, the sun, the moon, stars. It's all of that stuff.
Joseph: Oh my.
Willie: It's all of that stuff.
Joseph: Oh, so we're like a snow globe.
Willie: Yeah. We live in a snow globe.
Taylor: In an alien child's room.
Joseph: Wow. Star Globe.
Taylor: That's the most...yeah.
Willie: That makes sense.
Taylor: Yeah. This is a simulation. We are simply living out a simulation inside a snow globe.
Joseph: This is, uh, the first Men In Black.
Willie: Mm.
Joseph: Is that-
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Joseph: -the first one where they had-
Taylor: Oh, it is. Yeah.
Joseph: -like the galaxy in the charm?
Willie: Yeah, in the marble.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: They're just playing-
Taylor: Orion's belt.
Willie: -marbles with the, uh, with the whole universe's...
Joseph: Right.
Willie: galaxies.
Joseph: I forgot about that at the end. So, hockey puck with a dome over it. We got the stars. I don't know, I guess the whole universe in this thing. Spoiler alert, it's smaller than we thought. The universe. [Joseph and Taylor laugh]
Taylor: Yeah, yeah, that's, uh, All those satellites.
Joseph: They don't think people live underneath the puck, right? Like you only live on top of it.
Willie: Yeah. Yeah.
Joseph: And then it's just like a flat world map.
Willie: Yeah, I guess so. And this is, I... might just be one view. I'm not sure. Who knows?
Taylor: I think underneath is where Kong and Godzilla come from [Willie chuckles] that's the before, before times.
Joseph: Wait, wait, wait, where, where The Land Before Time, where are we going? [Willie chuckles]
Taylor: Yeah, yeah. [Joseph chuckles] Underneath... underneath the puck is where you find creatures like Godzilla and King Kong.
Joseph: Right, it's the upside down.
Taylor: It's not like somebody just wrote those or anything. Those are, that's based on, real life.
Joseph: Meg and I were talking about this while we were in Austin for the eclipse. It kind of dawned on me that I don't know all of those basics about those beliefs. Do they think that celestial objects are orbiting around each other? I guess not, if it's housed in a dome, then like the earth couldn't be going around the sun.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: If were all in this dome covered thing.
Willie: I don't know. I'm not going to try to go into it.
Taylor: It doesn't add up.
Willie: I did just read a little bit, but that's more than enough.
Taylor: Yeah. Don't entertain that. [Willie chuckles] Ignore that.
Joseph: I feel like we could waste a lot of time.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah.
00:05:23
Joseph: And that's not even going to YouTube. You go to YouTube, you'll probably waste a year, [Willie chuckles] just [chuckles] going down the rabbit hole. Okay. Anyway, before we dive in, I have a few questions for everyone or you two.
Do you believe in freedom? Can you stand in the face of oppression and defend the defenseless? Will you wage war for peace? Die for democracy. Think about it.
Today's episode is about a third person cooperative team shooter called Helldivers 2, and recently, the three of us decided to join forces and step into the boots of the Helldivers, an elite class of soldiers whose mission is to spread peace, liberty, and managed democracy using the biggest, baddest, and most explosive tools in the galaxy.
I'm going to read or also read a short description for the game that I found online that was written by someone named Quy Ma. Here it goes. Helldivers 2, developed by Arrowhead Game Studios, is a satirical co op shooter set in a dystopian future reminiscent of Starship Troopers. In the game, players take on the role of elite soldiers serving a government that glorifies the idea of dying for democracy, while actually operating as a totalitarian regime.
And for anyone who's never heard the term managed democracy, Quy Ma also said this, managed democracy is a political system that appears to be democratic on the surface with regular elections and democratic institutions. But in practice, the outcomes are heavily controlled and manipulated by those in power, which made me think, Hmm, [Taylor laughs] sound familiar?
Taylor: Sure.
Willie: Yeah. [Joseph and Willie laughing]
Taylor: Sure sounds just like normal, good, normal democracy to me.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Interesting. Yeah, dude, uh, let the, let the winds of democracy fly and, and wave your cape indefinitely.
Joseph: Yeah, totally.
Taylor: I like that description.
Joseph: That's totally my thoughts.
Taylor: That's a really good review.
Joseph: But anyway, let's get started. Willie, uh, what do you want to talk about first?
Willie: I mean, I think we have to stick with that for a second because it's a, it's such a good satire. The propaganda in the game is very well done. Just the intro video, right?
Taylor: Oh, the intro's... [Willie chuckles]
Joseph: Oh, yeah.
Taylor: Oh man. Chef's kiss right there. It was cool.
Willie: You know, you start and you're like seeing his family doing their thing around the house and it's a happy family. I don't remember. It's like a husband and wife with I don't know how many kids, but they're just like entering the house and he's just like standing at the car saying hi to the neighbors and you... suddenly there's a bug, a terminid that comes and kills his family and he's like shocked. And then you zoom out of the video and he's, he's a soldier [Taylor chuckles] talking about this thing that you can all join up to deal with this.
Taylor: It's like a transition, right?
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Like he, like the bug, like the, if I remember correctly, the blood just sprays on his face and he's just like horrified. And then he himself transforms into like the salesman. Like he's walking with the camera.
Willie: [chuckling] Yeah.
Taylor: Like, do you, do you find that your family has been murdered by, Oh man.
Willie: It's very well done. And I, [sighs] it is so fucked up because your description of reading about managed democracy, it's like, damn, that does sound real familiar. Doesn't it? It's fun. It's interesting that this game tows a line of like, Oh, I can do this and it's escapism, but also I can't think about it too hard because it's fucked up.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: Because you take it one step further. Like, if you look at the description for Helldivers 2 like, even on the wiki, like on Wikipedia, and you look at the story. Like this game is set a hundred years after the first Helldivers game, which did anybody play? I didn't actually play.
Joseph: No.
Taylor: Nope, I never even heard of it.
Joseph: All I know really is that it was like a top down shooter instead of a 3D shooter.
Willie: Same style-
Taylor: Oh.
Willie: -of thing, but yeah, top down shooter, but you can play in squads and you have, you know, things that you have to call in and you are on planets killing Terminids and the Automatons and then something else, uh, called the Illuminate, I think. Anyway, this game takes place a hundred years after the successful, like, defeat of all of those threats from the outside.
But what they realized is that upon death, the Terminids produce something that's unique and highly valuable as a resource called E-710. And so we start farms on Super Earth, or on the planets around Super Earth. And at some point, they break out. And we have to kill, like, fight the bugs back. But the best part about that whole fucking thing is that fucking 710, E-710, 710 is just oil upside down and backwards. [Taylor chuckles]
We're just farming-
Joseph: Mm. [Taylor laughs]
Willie: -this resource and we're all helping spread managed democracy by going back to killing all these bugs that we decided to harvest for their E-710.
Taylor: I love it. I love, I love that they have a message. [Willie chuckles] They're not hitting you over the head with it, but they are, but you don't, you appreciate it because you're, like you said, you can ignore it.
You can skip all the videos incredibly fast too. Once you've seen them once, like if you don't want to see it anymore. So you're not having to watch it over and over. But I, I like that they, that they have a message behind it, you know, and take it if you want it or just take it as an amazing, uh, fun game experience.
But, it definitely resonates for sure.
00:10:36
Joseph: Taylor. I don't know if you remember, but a few, a few minutes ago, you were shaking your head while Willie was talking.
Taylor: Oh, Super Earth.
Joseph: Okay. Okay. So it was when he... [Willie chuckles]
Taylor: That was what I was thinking of, is just the fact that it's called Super Earth.
Joseph: Right. Yeah.
Taylor: Ridiculous. At first when I was seeing all these, all the names and everything, I was, I was definitely skeptical because it seems too on the nose. It seems like it could get real annoying, but honestly, the way that they played everything and quilted this world together, I think they did a really good job.
Willie: One thing I would like to do that I haven't really... is see if anyone's collected all of the in game text somewhere.
Joseph: I hope so, dude.
Willie: Because there's a lot of like things you can interact with while you're on a mission within the game that's just like readable stuff.
Joseph: Oh, you're talking about the items you inspect.
Willie: Yeah. And a lot of that stuff is. Really sort of funny, but not supposed to be funny, but it's like, oh, this outpost fell to something, but it's like, uh, I can't remember what I read. That was actually kind of funny, but it's like also fucked up.
It's like fucked up storytelling that they're doing within all of the items you can interact with on on the planet to see like, oh, these people were just here farming and it fell to the bugs or, you know, like there's a lot of storytelling they do just through those items because there's not a lot of cut scenes, there's not a lot of dialogue.
There are some like videos to watch while you're on the ship. And those are usually like propaganda or like updates on the war efforts. But the storytelling is almost non existent besides stuff that you have to read.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: And there's only two NPCs, if I'm not mistaken, it's just the two. Oh no, [Willie chuckles] you do actually rescue people on, on planets sometimes, but...
Joseph: There's three on the ship. There's one to the left, to the right, and then the person that's at like the mission table.
Willie: Who's on the right? I don't know if I've ever talked to that person. I know there's a person who's always like...
Joseph: Really?
Willie: Yeah. There's one character right when you get off the ship who's always like talking about supplies if you got some or not, supply, samples.
Joseph: Yeah, there's someone else to the right and they're like definitely comes across as like an everyday soldier. They're like from the lower decks.
Willie: Oh.
Joseph: Just kind of an everyday person, but you can talk to that person.
Willie: I've never talked to that person at all.
Joseph: It's more mundane stuff than the other two say for sure.
Willie: Yeah. And then the other people that you do see besides the person standing at the like, war table type thing, uh, is there are a couple of people sitting in your ship. Who were just like sitting at computers. Like if you look down in the lower part of the ship, they'll just be down there at a computer, but you can't interact with them.
And at some point, I don't remember if it was us having this conversation, but I was talking to maybe Tyler about...
Joseph: Yeah, it was me and you.
Willie: Okay. About like, it would be cool if like the rest of the ship gets used at some point.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Cause there's plenty of room. What else is... what else could be in there?
Joseph: It almost seems like an expansion could open up that the little gate that says under construction and then you'd-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -be able to like walk down a staircase and then you could like I don't know there's like a ship in there so maybe who knows if it could be like ship related or something but it's a pretty tight system that this game has.
Like the way it runs is pretty it's pretty streamlined. Pretty tight. There's only two things you can do in the ship. Three things? Start a mission, you can equip new stratagems or do things to your ship, and then you have access to your character, which is like armor and body style and other kind of personal information for your character.
But the ship itself acts as like the main hub. So before you enter a mission, you're in the ship. When you leave a mission, you go back to the ship. There's not really any kind of travel or anything in between being on this ship that you are apparently the captain, right? You're the captain of the ship.
Willie: Yeah, I assume so.
Joseph: Yeah. So you're flying around in the ship and that's where you start in where you come back to after you finish a mission and also where you kind of form out with your squad. Like if you're playing co op with teams. Or friends, which is definitely the way to play this game. 100%.
00:14:30
Taylor: It's all very seamless too. I noticed that anytime somebody is like, okay, I'm joining up. It seems like five seconds later, they're-
Joseph: That's true.
Taylor: -in the game-
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: -and ready to go. And it's, and it's automatically acknowledge... acknowledging that they joined. It's, uh, they really made a really good, like UX UI situation in there where everything works really well.
And I think it makes things like having to use Konami code to [chuckles] call your stuff in, it makes that a lot more pleasurable too-
Joseph: oh, dude.
Taylor: -because everything else works. You can accept that, okay, this is a, this is a good little mini game going on right here, where you have to get this going, kind of like the guns in Gears of War, where you have a window where you have to reload. It's-
Joseph: Oh, yeah.
Taylor: -similar and learning things like don't reload early was huge. I know in-
Joseph: Uh-huh.
Taylor: -my first game, I landed and, uh, and I realized I ran out of ammo instantly. And that's because I Halo reload where I'm just constantly, if I shoot one bullet, I'm reloading. And that is not the way to play this evidently.
Willie: Yeah. If you're not in an engagement in any other first person shooter or third person shooter, you're like, oh I'm going to take a few shots, not in engagement. I'm going to reload so I'm ready for the next engagement cause I don't want to end up with the, like, you know, five bullets left in a clip and die because of that. And yeah-
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: -until you said that to me, Taylor, I was like, Oh shit. I had no idea. [Taylor laughing] Like I've just been reloading. Like I didn't realize.
Taylor: Just thought she had the smallest [Willie chuckles] clip ever and no ammo. Yeah. Yeah, it was, that was a big moment.
Joseph: I didn't even have to figure it out the hard way, because I think Willie, that was the first thing Willie told me. Almost the first thing is like, hey, if you reload and you still have rounds in the magazine, you'll lose those extra rounds.
And it'll just straight up put a new clip in and it's going to decrease the number of clips, like the magazines you have by one. I was like, oh shit, that's interesting.
Willie: Yeah, that's a very interesting choice, but it does make it, it obviously makes it slightly more realistic and more-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Tactical, right? Like you have to think about that.
Joseph: It does make it harder.
Taylor: Yeah, they added another dimension and, and some of those choices at first, I definitely didn't like because it's different than what you're used to, like you mentioned. And, but after I play it, I did start realizing that, okay, they're going for a certain feeling with this, like, they want there to be that panic.
The moment where you literally see an army of Terminators coming over a hill right in front of you and you have to enter a code to get out the grenade to call in the big boy bomb [laughing] on these fools and that's, uh, it's easy to mess that up.
Luckily, the orbital strike was a super easy one, I guess, for starters, so people don't bounce off of it. But... do the codes get a lot more difficult?
Willie: Dude, there's some long ones for sure.
Taylor: Oh, man.
Willie: There are some 9 or 10 long codes for sure.
Taylor: Cover me codes.
Willie: [chuckles] Yeah. [Taylor chuckles] What is that one called? There's a orbital barrage blast. I bet if you looked up stratagem, orbital barrage blast. Orbital walking barrage is what it's...I'm looking for.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Have we seen that one yet?
Willie: That code is pretty long. I have that one. I just got it yesterday.
Taylor: That's the one that blankets bombs.
Willie: Yeah. And it goes kind of away from you, but like back and forth, it's like. Away from you blankets bombs to the left or to the right basically in a in a walking pattern away from you.
00:17:54
Joseph: I feel like we should maybe try to explain this better-
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Joseph: -for anyone who hasn't played this game. There are these things called stratagems. You have a way to call in support like air support and things like that. They just call them stratagems, and there's a fucking lot of them.
But the way you call it when you're in the game is, you're like running around, you're playing the game, you hold, at least if you're playing on an Xbox controller or a controller, you hold the left bumper, and that brings up a submenu on the screen that tells you which stratagems you can call in for support, and then the way you call them in is by a fucking d-pad combination code.
You're entering like a cheat code on Super NES or NES or something, and it's just using the d-pad directions. And I think it's one of my favorite parts of the fucking game, is that you use these codes.
Taylor: The fact that you can do it while you're running-
Joseph: Love that, dude.
Taylor: -like if you can claw your, [chuckles] if you can claw your hands around in the right way, you can actually sprint and still be calling it in, but it's super dangerous-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -because you have no, you know, control over your weapons or anything while you're doing that.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: It's terrifying.
Willie: I've definitely learned to hold the controller in a different way to be running-
Joseph: Me too.
Willie: -and, [chuckles] and enter a code in.
Joseph: And the way you face your camera too.
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Joseph: The way you orient your camera while you're running.
Willie: Exactly.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: Uh, I think the longest one I have is only, like, seven. It's the orbital 380 millir... millimeter HE barrage.
It's like a heavy barrage. It's right, down, up, up, left, down, down.
Joseph: I think that's as long as I get.
Willie: I always have to, like, find cover to, like, do that. Just because I haven't memorized them yet, and that would obviously help.
Joseph: The only ones I memorized are like the three, the three button codes.
Willie: [chuckles] Yeah.
Joseph: [chuckles] That's the only ones I've like actually remembered. Also, when you're attempting to type in the code, if you get it wrong, you have to start over. So there's also the added pressure of being run down by a bunch of T1000s. Like it's Terminator and then you mess up the direction. You have to start over. So then you're like literally just in panic mode trying to get this code off.
Taylor: Or if you just let off L1 as well, that's a [Willie chuckles] quick way to reset it.
Joseph: [chuckles] Oh, sure.
Taylor: But then the menu goes away, so-
Joseph: I love it, man. I love it.
Taylor: I'll admit like when I first started it, I did not know if I was going to like it because it, it didn't have all the normal trappings. Like it just kind of hits you with the beginning of what's going on in the world.
It doesn't put a ton of story on you or anything. And, when I first got in there, it was difficult and the enemies seemed a little bit samey probably because I had just started the game. But now that we've played through, I don't know, five or six, I think maybe five to seven games I've played now that I'm starting to see the depth and the stratagems and the ship upgrades, things like that, that can make everything more powerful.
And, I haven't even unlocked any weapons yet-
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: -different or new weapons. And I was reading that there's a lot of nuance in those too.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Yeah, that's the thing that I was hoping we would get to play a little more before. I've played with Joey a few times, with both of you a couple times and I've also played with our friend Tyler who's also part of the Berries and Blades if you've ever watched our D&D game.
He plays D&D with us. He and I started playing too. We've only had the group all together like once I think for one game.
Joseph: Mm hmm.
Willie: But I've been learning stuff from Tyler. I had been learning stuff from watching people play before I even got the game, which is why I knew I wanted to play it. But it wasn't until I like got to sit down by myself on the ship and start looking through all of the stratagems and all of the like ship modules that I was like, oh, this is like really complex and really cool in the way that it lets you pick how you want to play the game.
Do you want to buy offensive stratagems? Like, do you really like the, the Eagle strikes? Those are pretty cool, and they're very fast, and you get multiples-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -of those with one sort of loadout, and then before you have to, like, rearm them. Or do you want the orbital strikes, which might be a little bit more powerful, but they're also going to take longer to respawn, or the cooldown time is, like, much longer? And then, yeah, all the weapons are, like, that you're talking about, Taylor, like, I haven't really delved too far into that list as far as buying them, but I know some stuff on the list that I want to get, I just haven't done it yet.
Taylor: I've only tried the, the machine guns that you can call in, but those things are great.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: At first I doubted that I would like that machine gun as well until I finally picked it up and in intense situation, and at that point you can really... man the the damage looks so good on this game, when you're shooting-
Joseph: Oh yeah.
Taylor: -when you're blasting robots or bugs, but I prefer the robots, they just look cooler.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Uh, when you're blasting them with a machine gun, especially the heavy LMG, you are blasting them to bits and it feels really good and it looks good. Like the bullet tracers are amazing. The, I wanted to ask though, the, the resupply I noticed seems like a shared call in.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Like if any of us call it in it, we all get a timer. Are there any other ones like that? Or is it just the resupply?
Willie: The SOS beacon might be, which we've never used.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: That's just to call in extra help.
Joseph: Reinforcement too.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Like it'll go on cooldown after someone uses it.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Wow. That's interesting. So you can really stack. So if everybody had Eagle strikes. You know, we have eight of them to call in at any given time, I guess.
00:23:11
Joseph: Yeah. I have no idea which other stratagems are like, if you, like if one of you equip a stratagem that I don't have, I don't know which ones I actually have and get access to versus not getting access to.
Willie: Are there any that are shared that way? I don't think there is.
Joseph: I thought there were.
Willie: I don't think there is, but I think that sometimes.
Joseph: It gives you some you could use, like, in that mission.
Willie: There's two ways, right? Recently, last week, the last Major Order, part of it was that they were giving everybody two Eagle Strikes. I forgot what they were. They were just on every planet, or maybe not every planet, but the planet that we were playing on most.
They just were giving you two. And so everybody had those all the time. But then there also are some in the missions that you can do, right? There's the, I don't know what it's actually called. It's a SEAF, S E A F artillery strike. But, um, there's like an outpost you can go to where you have to load in the artillery shells into the cannon to bring it online.
And then that becomes available for you all to use, right? And so then there's another shared stratagem.
Taylor: Oh.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: That's cool.
Joseph: Which is like the hell bomb too, right?
Willie: The hell bomb is another similar thing. And sometimes those are-
Joseph: Is that what it's called, hellbomb?
Willie: Yeah. And some of those are mission specific, I think, depending on what the like mission is supposed to be doing.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Like if you're destroying outposts specifically, like that's what the whole mission is, then yeah, they'll give you those hellbombs that you called in, put down, and then you have to go to the terminal and same as the stratagem, there's like a, uh, another code you got to enter-
Joseph: Input code.
Willie: Input code you have to do to, uh, call that in or activate the terminal or the bomb.
Joseph: I want to cover like a little bit more basic things that we kind of skipped over or glazed over, but also we just also kind of skipped over like what our initial thoughts were of this game. And I think it's great. I think it's the funnest game I played all year for sure. And, well blows Dead island Two out of the water in terms of like a co op game, but I don't know. It's just gnarly, man.
It's it has grit. The propaganda is like, perfectly executed. And the basic training dude, the basic training was so good. The voiceover in there is so over the top ridiculously good.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: But um, when Willie was talking about the missions a second ago, so like the base setup for a mission is that you choose from like a galaxy map. And you get to decide whether or not you want to fight robots or bugs. Which are Automatons or Terminids.
And the whole game, the whole community that is playing this game is working toward common goals or common, like major objectives to like defend Super Earth against these two enemy forces that are invaders.
Willie: He did air quotes there. [Joseph and Taylor chuckling] You can't see that, but there were air quotes, air quotes-
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: -around the word invaders. It's very important [chuckles]
Joseph: Invaders. And I think that's a, that's a question that a lot of people have about this game and how it ties back into the propaganda and managed democracy is like, who, who are the bad people here?
You play it enough. You start to feel like, oh, we're, we're the baddies and stuff like that. So we're defending Super Earth from these two enemy forces. You get to choose who you fight against and you pick a planet. All players that are playing Helldivers are contributing to a collective progress at defending a planet.
So it's like, almost like wildfires, where like a wildfire can be 0 percent contained. All Helldivers that are on the servers playing this game are all contributing to getting a planet to 100 percent defended. Which I think is pretty unique.
Willie: Liberated. Be clear about that.
Joseph: Liberated, yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, democratized, man. [Willie chuckling] What are you talking about?
Joseph: Yeah, of course, man.
Taylor: These bugs need to vote, sir.
Joseph: Dude, how about a nice cup of liber-tea?
Taylor: Yeah. [laughs] Oh, man.
00:26:43
Joseph: So we're out there saying hello to democracy with bullets to the face. But anyway, you get to choose and then once you get into the mission, you get to choose a drop point where you want to land on the map. You get a pretty, a pretty basic 2d rendition of what like the planet surface looks like, and then you get to drop in wherever you choose and then you just kind of fly down in a pod.
And then once you're there on the ground, you can go wherever on the map. Like you can actually access, but there's always a main mission and then some sub missions and optional missions. Maybe not always a sub mission, but there's always a main mission or a main goal on the planet and then optional stuff, which is cool because you can find weapons that you can use on the planet.
You can find the in game currency, which we haven't talked about yet. But that's the kind of basic setup. And then there's always a time limit for these missions. So you might have 12 minutes to, to complete one of the defense missions. And then at the end of 12, 12 minutes, you have to call in, uh, an aircraft to extract you out, which means you have to run around this planet, get to the extraction point.
And then once the aircraft lands, you have to jump on before you're dead or before the timer ends, that sort of thing. But there's 12 minute missions. There's 40 minute missions. I don't know if there's anything in between that. Do you know, Willie, if there's any links.
Willie: I don't think I've seen anything in between that, no. No, I think I did see like a 15 minute one, or maybe it was 12 and we just assumed it was 15, but I have played something.
Joseph: I definitely remember 12.
Willie: Yeah, there's definitely 12. There was a time Tyler and I were playing that we were like, oh, was this 15 minutes? Cause it like seems super short, but it might've been a 12, we weren't paying attention.
Joseph: What's interesting about those 40 minute long missions is that it's long to play a game. We always run it up to like 12 seconds left or 30 seconds left.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: And then we're scrambling to like board the aircraft with like seconds to spare and completely overrun by the enemy forces.
And it is fucking brilliant, dude. Taylor, this is the only game that has made me feel like the zombie hordes made me feel like in Days Gone where you're just like on the run for your life.
Taylor: Yeah at first I started out and I would constantly shoot first, throw a grenade first, or whatever until I started realizing like how many baddies could potentially come at you from that. [Joseph and Taylor chuckle]
Like there may be some just on the other side of the base that you're attacking, or just on the other side of the hill. I agree, man. The lasers are also the best I've ever seen, I think. I want to couple that with the vibration on the controller is amazing. I don't know if you guys play with that on.
Joseph: Yeah, but you're on PS5, so it's probably better.
Taylor: Right, on the PS5 controller, it's insane, man. Just the feel of the guns. That was what really lit me up on, when I picked up the LMG for the first time, was it sound... It feels so heavy. Like it even is like-
Joseph: Oh yeah.
Taylor: -making like a sound out of the controller. That's just like, "dut, dut, dut, dut, dut, dut," and it's exciting. Getting hit by those giant turbo lasers.
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
[chuckles]
Taylor: I guess we'll call it something else.
Joseph: Laser cannons.
Taylor: It's a different game. But yeah, laser cannons. That is also exhilarating and terrifying because you'll think you're in the clear, you're doing good. And then suddenly you have no limbs or head-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -and you're sitting a hundred yards away. It's amazing.
00:30:01
Joseph: Willie was talking about knowing that he would like this game and I didn't see people play, but I did see some like IG/Tik Tok videos that people were creating where the person playing the game and their voiceover was like super dramatic and like over the top. And even some people were making like short cinematic edits with footage from the game.
And then even at times overlaying the sound and voices from famous war movies.
Taylor: Oh. [chuckles]
Joseph: And then trying to recreate-
Taylor: Wow.
Joseph: -scenes from those different movies. So like out of the gate, I was like, I'm going to love this. And then sure enough, when we play, now I get it just because of like, the impact of taking hits, right? Taking shots. The recoil on the weapons is like, I think really, really well executed.
The recoil animation, when you're looking down the optics or down the iron sights of the weapon in first person mode, the way fire exhausts from the barrel, like, I think they fucking nailed it with the, the weapon firing animations, plus the sound effects and then the kind of like haptic feedback you get from controllers when you're like staggered.
Taylor: Yeah, and the physics, the physics of the weapons that I never would have expected in a game, like the way that, so I use LMG as an example, because it's a long gun. And when you're holding that and it's, you know, you're trying to quick turn because you see, oh, there's enemies over the right or whatever.
It doesn't quick turn with you. Like it had... you have to wait for it to make its way over, you know, wander to where you're at so you can steady again, which, at first I hated it, but once you learn how to control it and you learn what the limitations of it are, it's really good. It's an amazing mechanic that definitely, again, adds to the realism of everything.
I thought that was a great touch.
Willie: It definitely takes some getting used to, to just control the weapons and use them in a way that's effective. I do think I like aiming down sight more, which is another great feature of this game is that like, it is third person, right? You're running around third person, but when you aim d... You can aim down sights and like look down, like actually look through the sight itself and go to first person if you click the stick.
And one of the controls, one of the options is to have the game remember even by gun type, not just globally, but like, oh, when I use this gun, I always want it to use aim down sights for this particular gun.
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: Or you can turn it on globally so that every gun, it remembers that you're always aimed down sights, you know, so that you can like basically set that at the beginning of the game and then not have to like click in or out of like aiming down sites.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: It's pretty well crafted.
Willie: And I definitely prefer aiming down sights because I feel like I'm just way better when I'm doing that with certain guns in particular. But like using an AR or something, if I set it to burst fire, I want to aim down the sight so I can like, try to get headshots with that thing. And I'm just not as good if I'm in third person at a distance like that.
Joseph: I've been using it a lot more, but only, only in situations where I need to zoom in because the distance is too far. If I'm too close and looking through the optics. I'm like screwed
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I'm just all over the place. I can't even I can't even locate the target.
Taylor: If you're zoomed in and you see one of those knife guys it's already too late. [Taylor and Willie chuckle]
Joseph: Exactly, exactly.
Taylor: Just run, you're dead.
Joseph: And it's kind of hard to switch back because you have to be aiming down the sights to swap them. You have to be holding left trigger and be aiming to even change it from third person-
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: -to first person. So sometimes I let go of left trigger because they're so close and I'm trying to swap the aiming and it won't do it because you're not holding left trigger so I've gotten caught in that a lot of times.
Taylor: What does it do, melee while you're aiming? Because that's the melee button, right?
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: The right. [laughs]
Joseph: Uh-huh.
Taylor: So are you just looking down your sight and kicking or something?
Joseph: When I input right stick, it's like doing nothing because it's like in between.
Taylor: Huh.
Joseph: It's in the transition phase from like being in aim mode versus being like shooting from the hip fully third person modes. So I'm clicking the stick in that transition. So there's no, there's actually no reaction to it. There's nothing that comes out of it. Or-
Taylor: Huh.
Joseph: -if it's slightly too late, then it will be a melee. But I'm getting better at it now that I'm using aiming down the sights more. And I love it when the enemies are, like, partially covered.
The enemies are partially covered and you can only see from, like, the waist up. And it's far, like, it's pretty far away. I would definitely aim down the sights and get closer to actually hit them.
Taylor: I have to try it some more. I haven't used aim down sights hardly at all.
Willie: Yeah, what I think this game does, and just to be clear, I also really enjoy this game. It's been a lot of fun to play co op, so let's say that. But it just does a lot of little things right to make the gameplay fun, to make it feel like there are options for what you're doing in the game, and like, sort of your play style. And I think there's a lot of grinding. I know, just from how little we've played, you can tell there's a lot of grind, but the gameplay loop is fun enough that it's like, I don't mind it.
Like, I don't mind having to play more game, more game to just experience more, to upgrade stuff, to buy better stratagems, to upgrade my ship mod modules. It's fun enough that I don't care about any of that, that I'll just do it.
Joseph: I feel the same way.
Willie: And it's all kinds of little details, man. We've already sort of said it, but the robots feel like you're in Terminator at points. Especially like last night we were playing and you know Joey throw-
Joseph: Dropping Napalm.
Willie: Yeah. Joey throws down a napalm strike.
Joseph: So good.
Willie: And then you just see robots walking through this fire at you and you're like, oh, this is Judgment Day.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: We're in the middle of some shit right now.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: That particular thing, when it happens, it looks incredible.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: And you're in the process of defending against like 15, 20 enemies coming through fire at you. And it... the thing about this game is communication is absolutely key because-
Joseph: Yes.
Willie: -the number of times I've killed Joey is probably immeasurable. I don't even know, [Joseph and Taylor laugh] but it's-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -[chuckles] it's a lot just because I'll throw in an orbital strike and it's like, not quite as far as I wanted it to go. Or like last night, and Joey's not even going to want to admit this. He just runs into shit [Taylor chuckles] because he thinks he's going to take [Joseph laughing] over this base.
Taylor: I witnessed it.
Willie: He'll just run straight up towards it like I didn't just throw a fucking strike over there or something. There was one in particular last night. He just straight up ran into it.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah. I know which one you're talking about. And I think I heard you call something out. I didn't realize that was the one it was. And that one has a really wide spread footprint and it's kind of erratic. So it's one of the easier ones to get destroyed by if you're anywhere in the vicinity.
00:36:37
Joseph: We skipped over another thing that you just reminded me of, and that friendly fire is always on in this game.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Mm hmm.
Joseph: It can't be turned off, so there's always the chance that you're gonna get caught in some crossfire, or, like Willie was saying, run up and then get some orbital lasers dropped on your fucking head, or do it, you know, to one of your teammates.
Willie: Well, even more so, like, if you have, like, one of the defensive stratagems, like a turret, if you throw down a turret to defend an area and anyone goes outside of that area, the turret doesn't care that there's a Helldiver between it and the enemy it's trying to fight. So it's just going to fire. And if you happen-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -to be on the-
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: -wrong side, when like enemies come in, you'll get fucked up real quick.
Taylor: Yeah, it'll laser dude in half. One thing I noticed that I, I don't know if it's something that they need to fix. Like maybe it's just something in the pipeline or something like that. But whenever we were calling in our strikes, I love to look up at the sky and see like where they're coming from.
And I noticed that a lot of times there would be ships up there, like there would be whatever giant massive cruisers, dreadnoughts, whatever they're called up there. And I thought it was a missed opportunity that the, the strike doesn't appear to come from them. Like it seems to come through the-
Joseph: It's just like coming from the heavens.
Taylor: Yeah. From the clouds. [Joseph and Taylor chuckle] Yeah. I was like, that would be surreal if you could just see that thing fucking firing a giant orbital laser down.
Joseph: That would be a great detail.
Taylor: Maybe they're too close. Maybe it doesn't make sense scientifically or something like they might have their reasons, but I would love to see that just so you know exactly where it's coming from or even better.
If it's like beyond that, just have the laser, like clear a fricking circle of smoke and show the ship behind it or something like that. Like there's ways to do it, but I think they came out swinging. When did this come out? How long has this game been out?
Joseph: Couple of months, I think.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Okay.
Willie: At least a couple of months. I don't remember.
Taylor: They haven't really even done any DLC or anything. I could see them adding in another. Maybe another, um, faction?
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: Because it seems like there's such a there's a triangular looking focus to the map.
Joseph: Uh-huh.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Willie and I were talking about them bringing in like another enemy type.
Taylor: What would it be?
Willie: Well, people think because the first game had the Illuminates in it, that it's going to be them.
Taylor: Oh.
Willie: And I don't actually remember what they are. Like, I only briefly looked at something that was talking about them.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: It's another enemy that's from the first game that people are assuming is going to join the fight at some point soon.
Joseph: Yeah. The fuckin worst thing about this game is the vaulting slash climbing mechanic.
Willie: Yeah. Yeah.
Joseph: And they fucked up because you can sprint by pressing right stick. Or maybe it's left stick. And then once you approach an item, or an object that is small enough that you can actually vault over it, if you're sprinting, when you run into it, it'll actually just vault over it automatically.
If you're not sprinting, there's like an alternate way to climb on stuff, and it might be B, I don't know, it might be A. I don't know which button it is, but there's a way. You can press one of the buttons to kind of like manually climb on something. But the problem is, since you can do it automatically while you're sprinting, and you run into an object, you're always fucking sprinting in this game.
And like every-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -time you try to walk up to something that you're gonna grab, or try to actually duck behind cover, if you're sprinting when you get there, you're going to climb on top of it instead of being able to take cover and duck behind it. So that by far is like the biggest frustration in this whole game for me is when you do it and-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -you don't intend to, and you're just getting fucking hammered-
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: -or it's like literally life and death, right? Like you can duck behind this cover and use a stim and survive. And then you're jumping on top of it [Willie chuckles] and becoming more exposed to like-
Taylor: Yes.
Joseph: -500 robots.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: That's the one I hate is when I call in like a bazooka or something so I can get it and I'm running over to it because the shit is intense. And then you go to hit X to get it, but you waited a millisecond too long.
So now instead of having a bad ass gun, you're actually standing up on top of that fucking drop in front of everybody. I hate that.
Willie: That's definitely, definitely my least favorite thing about this game. It is it's one big fucking flaw because it definitely gets you killed in some bad situations where like you... just, it's completely unnecessary.
Joseph: I think I'm getting better at it.
Willie: Yeah, I will say the other, other thing is sometimes reloading guns is such a pain in the ass for some reason.
Joseph: It just doesn't work.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: It's like, you hit the button and you're like, if you're in the middle of running, you can still reload, but it doesn't always respond for some reason.
Joseph: Right. I have that problem too.
Taylor: Have we already looked in the settings to see if there's a reload when it's empty option? Because [Willie chuckling] I would-
Joseph: Oh my gosh.
Taylor: -really like that. That's the worst is when you don't notice you're out.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Taylor: You just go click.
00:41:25
Joseph: That's how the wasted ammo, like if you reload a magazine and there's still rounds in it, you waste those three or four rounds. This is what happens when you're able to discard ammunition is that you end up waiting to the very last round-
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: -so that you're not wasting any and then you end up just straight out of rounds and like, you need to change the magazine in the worst possible time ever.
Taylor: I'm used to it when, when the shit's not hitting the fan.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Like if we're just running-
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: -around, it's like, oh, okay. Yeah, I see that immediately. My clip is empty or has a couple. I'll just reload. But yeah, when it's going down and sometimes it can, sometimes you just run into a pocket of enemies or the drop ships just come in and drop them right on your heads, very Halo style.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, totally.
Taylor: So I saw that you could shoot down the drop ships that we'll have to try that sometime.
Willie: Oh, nice.
Taylor: Yeah, it said you can-
Joseph: Like, you can blow them up?
Taylor: -You can blast them down. Yeah. Yeah, you can blow them up before they even come down.
Joseph: [chuckling] Oh man. That's, I guess that's where you start using that anti tank.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah. I was calling those in last night. Those were great for the, for the kind of medium size walkers or that have a robot up top driving them. When you use the rockets, you can just blow them up in one shot, so you don't even have to aim or get behind or anything.
Willie: Yeah, I saw yesterday that I really need to be using the auto cannon more [chuckles] like I need to buy-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: -that because that thing is really good for medium sized creatures.
Joseph: Is that the one where you have to have somebody load it for you?
Willie: I think you do. And that's why I hadn't gotten it yet. But, uh, that comes down with a gun and a backpack. Where somebody else has to put on the backpack to resupply you. So that you can take shots.
Taylor: That sounds like people that are going to die right there.
Willie: I think that's that one. I think I saw that, but it's super good. And maybe-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -it's not that one, but there's definitely a couple, there are a couple of guns like that where you have to have someone reload them for you.
Taylor: Yeah. There's a recoilless rifle, GR8. Great.
Joseph: That should be good.
Taylor: Of course.
Joseph: If you, if it takes like two people to operate them and-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -just the, the synchronization-
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Joseph: -and organization to like work as a team.
Taylor: Yeah, we have to try it.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: We have to try it. What happens if all three of us, man, that weapon just one.
Joseph: Yeah, probably.
Willie: I want to play with that autocannon because it seems really good at taking stuff out that's bigger. There's so many things to say about this game. So many positive things to say about this game. It's just been mostly a lot of fun, a great way to play co op and have to strategize together because communication is super important in the game.
But I guess one of the other things that I want to say before we, you know, call this one is one of my favorite things is that there's this battle pass like structure that's called a warbond. And in that warbond, you use medals, which is one of the many types of currency in this game. [chuckles] There's requisitions, there's XP that can be earned, which gets you levels.
There's medals. There are medals that can be used to buy super credits. There are samples that come in common, rare, and super samples. So all of these things can be used to purchase different items in the game in different ways. But the medals are what are used in the warbond, which is the basically the battle pass where you can get a different helmet or a different, a set of armor that has different perks on it, or buy new guns, buy a shotgun or buy a different sniper rifle or whatever.
But within the warbond itself, you can buy super credits with those metals and the super credits can be used in the superstore to buy specific armor that changes every two days or something like that. Or specific, yeah, it's usually armor, I think that's in there. I don't know if there's ever any weapons, but I think it's just armor.
Joseph: There's, there's a lot of elemental charged weapons in the, like the premium warbonds.
Willie: Oh, well, I was just talking about the superstore where you can use those.
Joseph: Oh, it's armor and helmets only.
Willie: Okay.
Joseph: I think.
Willie: Yeah. So Superstore is how you use your super credits, but also super credits, if you collect a thousand, you can open a premium warbond, which is basically getting a premium battle pass in another game.
So you don't have to spend real money, but it is going to take a lot of grinding to earn enough super credits. But it goes such a long way that this game allows you to buy the premium warbond, the premium battle pass without having to spend real world money, because the other way to get super credits, obviously, like every other game is spend 20 bucks on buying a bunch of super credits.
And of course, you still can. So it's still like, man, I wish that wasn't there either. Like, just like, let's get more super credits in the game. But the fact that it's an option at all is like, kind of just a little bit of a win.
Joseph: I consider it a win too. I love that-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -it's an option, even though you have to grind a lot to find super credits in the game after like your first 10 hours of play. But like Willie said, just the fact that there is an option to find the credits that you spend real U. S. dollars on, or real money on, you can find those in the game, that's pretty, pretty damn cool.
Taylor: It's just a slow route, but it's, it's always nice to have that option.
00:46:28
Willie: And I do think all of the leveling in general and finding super credits within the map itself will probably get faster as we get better at the game. And we're higher levels taking on higher difficulties because there's also just more structures in higher difficulties that you can search.
And we know that there are more, more samples in higher difficulties. Playing more means you're going to earn more, and being better means you get to play higher difficulty levels, because we've not gone past level four, really, and there are nine levels of difficulty for the missions.
Joseph: It seems unreal. I love difficult games. Love Elden Ring, love soulslikes, Lies of P, Sekiro, love, love difficult games, but trying to think of how difficult [Willie chuckles] the level nine difficulty level actually is, seems impossible.
Willie: Yep.
Joseph: Dude, we've gotten destroyed [Willie chuckles] at, on like medium.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And challenging, which is like level three-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -and level four. And it goes up to nine.
Taylor: [chuckles] Yeah.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Like it worries me. [laughs]
Willie: I've watched some people play at that level and it's, it's ridiculous. And I, I just can't wait till we get there. I'm, I, what I will say to start closing this out is that I'm just excited to play more of this game. I want it to be a more regular thing just because I want to grind to get those other things. I want to see more weapons.
I want to see more enemies. I've seen some of the like enemies that come up and I am scared of them but [chuckles] I want to see them. It will only create more epic moments of like a huge battle and overcoming that challenge and getting to the drop ship together. Like that's, that's the kind of shit that's just fun to do.
Joseph: And this game does a great job of making it... like put some fear into you, you know, like in a video game sense, there are moments where like. No, I can't fuck with you right now because-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -I just don't have enough stims or I don't have enough cover or I'm alone. There's no way, I'm going to get wrecked quick-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -and then you have to bail, right? Like you have to come up with some other evasive strategy, which I love that this game can make you feel like a total badass. But then also make you feel, you know, like a piece of shit private.
Willie: Your only option in some cases is to run. [laughs]
Joseph: Yes.
Willie: You have to run or you will die. [Joseph and Willie laugh]
Joseph: That's great.
Taylor: You know, it's rare, but you will run into an enemy that that's not even effective against, you know?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Exactly, because the range is too good and you're just going-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -to get shot in the fucking back.
Taylor: Yep. Yeah, I'm definitely eager to play some more too. It's been a lot of fun. I did not expect it to be so good, but the, uh, they just nailed it on so many levels and with so many little quirks that just work as a positive on it.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I think my final thought, the game is good. It's the funnest game I've played all year. It's the funnest co op game I've played all year. It's definitely worth the 40 bucks or whatever the price is that it costs. Unfortunately, it's not on Xbox right now, but there's been talks that they're going to bring it over to Xbox, which I think is going to blow this game through the roof, man.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: We didn't talk about this, but the game tracks the number of Helldivers killed, the number of enemies killed, and the number of shots taken. Last night when Willie and I, uh, all three of us were playing, I noticed that the number of shots taken was 630 billion. [Taylor laughs] And this game's only been out for a couple months.
Like Willie and I were talking about this a couple of days ago, like whether or not some of these numbers could hit the trillion and yes, 630 billion already, it's definitely going to hit trillions.
Taylor: I hope they keep adding to it. Right now it seems like they have a really good framework in place. They have two good sets of enemies, but I think that if they're willing to do so, they could get really innovative with it and combine enemies together on maps, especially once they have three different types, you could make lots of, um, you know, I, I would love to see them go as far as even adding mechs and things like that, because it's such a good mechanical engine.
Joseph: Dude, there is a mech.
Taylor: Robots, robotics and things like that.
Willie: Oh, there is a mech. It's just level 25. If we just get to level 25,
Taylor: Oh my god.
Willie: You could be calling in mechs, dude.
Taylor: Oh.
Willie: We gotta level to 25. [Joseph laughing] That's... we're not playing enough.
Taylor: We're peacing out right now.
Willie: That's what I'm saying.
Taylor: Yeah. That's, oh my God. I'm going to have to tell the family [Willie chuckles] things have to be put on hold.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah. There's at least one mech, one mech that we can call in, but vehicles would be cool. Like if they did some shit like that.
Taylor: I think that's my only other complaint about it altogether is that there's a lot of running.
Willie: For sure.
Taylor: And I...when you're 40 and you've played as many games as we have, every single minute that you spend kind of running out in an open thing, that was one of the thoughts I had was the one thing this is missing is like a Destiny style quick call in your glider and I don't, I don't give a shit how they do it.
They can, they could add a hoverboard, just a little surfboard Willie chuckles] that you call in and pop on just because there are moments that it seems like you're running too far.
Willie: Yeah, for sure. There's a lot of running.
Joseph: Dash could be fucking sweet.
Taylor: Something. Something to take that down.
Joseph: I think it breaks the realism of the game that way. But yeah, some way to traverse a little bit more quickly, even if it's temporary. You know, like the-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -jetpack is kind of like trying to do that, but it's also not. Not really great for most things.
Willie: It's pretty weak, yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, super weak.
Willie: I will say they already have added stuff and I am curious to see what else they added. I do want to point this out real fast before we wrap up because they added it in a fun way too. They didn't say in patch notes that they added bugs, like flying bugs to the game, but they did and people started-
Taylor: Huh.
Willie: -talking about it and then the CEO leaned into the idea. He like posted on Twitter or whatever. It was like, I've heard rumors of flying bugs in Helldivers 2. And he goes on to say, like, I want to officially refute such preposterous claims.
Everyone knows [Taylor laughs] that bugs can't fly. And I'm not alone in thinking this. The ministry of truth agrees that this is propaganda from bug sympathizers that want to brainwash. And like-
[Taylor laughs]
Joseph: Nice.
Willie: -Ultimately later found out that like, no, they added flying bugs and there's videos of them. And it was like, this whole-
Taylor: That's hilarious.
Willie: -sort of ordeal leading into this like, oh, it's, we're in a managed democracy that runs on propaganda. So like it's fucking great. And they seem to be having fun with it. I hope that they keep listening to their audience and this goes on to be fun for a while. Cause it, it seems like it could.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Well, well executed game. Play it if you enjoy this type of shooter, third person with a little bit of first person mixed in if you really want to.
Taylor: And it's cheap, right? This one was 40 bucks.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I think it's 40 bucks.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Instead of 70. Yeah. So the best part of it all.
Joseph: It is worth 40 bucks and just fun as fuck.
Taylor: And if you see it on sale, definitely get it because that's an even better deal. I mean, I couldn't imagine. It hasn't already, but wouldn't be too long before it's 20 or something just to get more players in.
Willie: Yeah, I'm excited to play more and I hope you all check it out.
[Outro theme begins to fade in - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Appreciate you listening to us talk about this game sort of all over the place today, but we've been having fun with it and yeah, thank you for being here with us.
Taylor: Peace.
Joseph: See y'all. Freedom never sleeps. [Taylor chuckles]
Taylor: Democracy.
00:53:23
[Outro theme continues - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Joseph: Berries and Blades is an independent podcast created by Joseph Bullard, Willie Garza and Taylor Garratt. Thanks for tuning in, and consider subscribing if you enjoyed listening to this episode. You can also support us by telling your friends about the show, and we hope to see you in the next episode of Berries and Blades. Until then, thanks again.
[Outro theme fades out - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Willie: Oh, in addition to watching Creed videos lately, I did, I did watch pretty much a whole Limp Bizkit concert.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: It was Lollapalooza in Chile, I think?
Joseph: From back in the day or recent?
Willie: No! No, it was recent, a month ago. [chuckles]
Joseph: Oh no, how was it?
Willie: Fucking great.