Helldivers 2 - Are you doing your part?

[PeregrineFalcon]

Helldivers 2 has eaten up pretty much all of my free time since it launched last month. It's a third person, team shooter that has a difficultly slider that goes from "I love the scenery on this planet" all the way up to "Dear gawd, I just landed and I'm on fire!!!"

 

I just wanted to see if anyone else has been playing this game and, if so, what you think of it.

 

 

[Glacier Peak]

Haven't played it, had a lot of friends recommend it. I was burned badly (let down is an understatement) by an unrelated game (Halo Infinite), so I haven't picked up any shooters in a while. 

 

How are you enjoying it?

Edited March 27 by Glacier Peak

[twozerofoxtrot]

I played the first one ad infinitum, glad to see they've kept the spirt and tongue in cheekiness of that game in the sequel. The transition from top-down to third-person seems to have gone really well.

 

But not planning to pick this up. Too hard to find time for anything but little spurts of CoX to even consider. 

[PeregrineFalcon]

On 3/26/2024 at 6:00 PM, Glacier Peak said:

Haven't played it, had a lot of friends recommend it. I was burned badly (let down is an understatement) by an unrelated game (Halo Infinite), so I haven't picked up any shooters in a while. 

 

How are you enjoying it?

I play exclusively with friends on Discord and we've been having great fun!

 

Sometimes we play on low difficulty and tear around blowing stuff up while drinking beers and making silly jokes on Discord. Other times we crank the difficulty up and really work hard to  get the objectives and get to the shuttle to escape retribution from the incoming enemy army.

 

And, unlike many games now days which are very grimdark dark dark darkity dark serious, HD2 is very positive and light-hearted. The music is very upbeat and positive, the NPC's are always saying things like "Now that you're here the war's as good as won." And the background story is essentially tongue-in-cheek Starship Troopers (the movie) with the propaganda and fascism cranked way up.

 

There's a reason that HD2 sold so many copies that for the first month the servers were constantly full and/or crashing.

[Luminara]

Why do they have capes?  Wouldn't they interfere with drawing and aiming weapons, combust when they encounter flames and give away their locations like giant fucking spotlights that spell out, "THE GUYS YOU WANT TO SHOOT ARE RIGHT HERE!"?

 

😬

[PeregrineFalcon]

20 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Why do they have capes?

According to my unit's Democracy Officer: "Capes are a staple in liberation, managed democracy is heroic and requires capes to reinforce this."

[PeregrineFalcon]

Sargon of Akkad, ancient wise man and king of the Akkadian Empire, has an interesting take on Helldivers 2:

 

 

[PeregrineFalcon]

MALEVELON CREEK HAS BEEN LIBERATED!!!

 

[PeregrineFalcon]

I saw something funny on r/Cityofheroes today:

 

 

[Oubliette_Red]

https://www.pcmag.com/news/sony-playstation-accounts-no-longer-required-helldivers-2-pc-players

 

Would they have about-faced if Steam hadn't offered refunds to the players no matter how long they have played?

 

Edited May 6 by Oubliette_Red

[PeregrineFalcon]

Yes, what happened over the weekend is quite the story.

 

tl;dr: Sony announced Friday afternoon that PC gamers would have to create and link Playstation Network accounts to their Steam account. Over the weekend gamers review bombed the game and requested refunds. Despite not being normally eligible for a refund Steam support was granting them anyway. Monday morning Sony execs walked into the office, freaked out when they saw the new review score, freaked out even more when they saw the report from Steam showing how much money they'd lost to refunds, and immediately released a statement canceling the forced PSN linking.

 

33 minutes ago, Oubliette_Red said:

Would they have about-faced if Steam hadn't offered refunds to the players no matter how long they have played?

Almost certainly not. Sony has a well earned reputation for being every bit as evil as EA.

[Ghost]

It’s even worse knowing that they knew this would be required upon release, but delayed it 6months - and still sold it to areas that can’t get PSN……without saying a word

[PeregrineFalcon]

36 minutes ago, Ghost said:

It’s even worse knowing that they knew this would be required upon release, but delayed it 6months - and still sold it to areas that can’t get PSN……without saying a word

Yes. And on top of that some of the places where you can buy it you're not able to make and/or make alterations to a PSN account online, like you can in many places, you're required to do so only on a console for some reason.

 

However, people who already purchased it in places where you can't make a PSN account can still play it, for now, but people in those areas can't buy it anymore so no new players from those countries.

 

And, despite Sony tweeting out that they've decided not to "move forward" with requiring PSN account linking it still says on the Steam page that PSN account creation and linking is required.

[Ghost]

What a disaster

They we’re getting rave reviews from gamers, and they’ve gone and made a mess of things

[PeregrineFalcon]

9 minutes ago, Ghost said:

What a disaster

They we’re getting rave reviews from gamers, and they’ve gone and made a mess of things

Well, now that Sony made the announcement reverting the change people mostly went and changed their reviews. And it generated a ton of publicity online so ultimately it will probably generate more sales.

 

Oh, and they fired the community manager and demoted one of their mods over things that they posted in the official discord that weekend. So while people are still vilifying Sony over it, Arrowhead has come through pretty much looking like the hero in all of this.

[Ghost]

Yeah, the same community manager who told everyone to flood them with bad reviews and refund requests if they wanted Sony to walk it back.

 

[PeregrineFalcon]

21 minutes ago, Ghost said:

Yeah, the same community manager who told everyone to flood them with bad reviews and refund requests if they wanted Sony to walk it back.

Yeah, the same community manager who was smack talking customers and who had previously said that customers were too lazy to take 120 seconds to make and link a PSN account.

 

And now some people are trying to lionize him by claiming that Sony would never have given in if not for him "leading the charge." When, in fact, he just told people to do what they were already doing, and he didn't lead a damn thing.

 

He flat out deserved to be fired, in my opinion.

[Ghost]

41 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Yeah, the same community manager who was smack talking customers and who had previously said that customers were too lazy to take 120 seconds to make and link a PSN account.

 

And now some people are trying to lionize him by claiming that Sony would never have given in if not for him "leading the charge." When, in fact, he just told people to do what they were already doing, and he didn't lead a damn thing.

 

He flat out deserved to be fired, in my opinion.

Ahh, didn’t realize that.

Then yes, he/she deserved to be fired 

[Oubliette_Red]

Sony to Hasbro: "Hold my beer."

 

[WanderingAries]

Already did my part

[Ghost]

Looks like the controversy isn’t actually over.

Apparently if you live somewhere that you can’t have PSN, you can no longer play the game.

 

Sounds like Sony is still planning to push the Steam/PSN link

[PeregrineFalcon]

According to the Arrowhead CEO, it's Steam that made that decision. They don't want to be sued for selling a game in country that can't play it. Reportedly they're holding out for Sony to actually sign something before they remove the country restrictions.

[Octogoat]

Any updates to the steam/PSN thing? Thinking of getting this for chrimbus but don't want to if I need a psn account already go through that crap with ubisoft and rockstar.