Helldivers 2’s Hail Mary patch has brought players back en masse

Helldivers 2 is a “dead game”; long live Helldivers 2The action-co-op shooter that pits the forces of Super Earth against endless waves of murderous Automatons or terrifying Terminid monsters had a huge launch in February, but has faltered over the summer months. A recent patch from developer Arrowhead has led to a surge of players returning to the fray or picking up the game for the first timealong with a lot of positive feedback on social media — but all the new solutions bring a few remaining problems into sharp focus.

The patch, released on September 17, rolled back nerfs that had accumulated over the course of balance patches to many popular weapons like the railgun and flamethrower, and buffed many other weapons in the Helldiver’s arsenal. The only new nerf that’s significantly impacted my play experience is to the Commando; previously, he could one-shot an Automaton Fabricator from any angle. Now, it takes two shots. That seems fair to me, and the rest of the buffs certainly make up for it – such as the Thermal Grenade’s damage increasing from 150 to 2,000.

Players were previously limited to a metagame that allowed them to use a few ideal weapons and strategies; the update has added a more versatile arsenal. The Recoilless Rifle is a new fan-favorite, largely because it can take out dropships and their contents in a single well-aimed shot. The Spear has become a powerful siege weapon, and the Flamethrower takes down Chargers in a flash.

The buffs make each individual mission much more fun and flexible, but the larger war still has some issues. Take the Automaton for example. The bots have slowly crept closer to Super Earth, while the Terminids are constantly being fought back. A significant portion of the Helldivers simply won’t leave the bug front, not for orders from Super Earth and not for cool rewards. It can be frustrating to throw yourself on the front lines of a Major Order, only to inevitably fail while thousands of players are having a blast fighting bugs on Hellmire.

If Helldivers 2 As Arrowhead continues to evolve, it will have to rethink how players coordinate for war—major events like the Terminid supercolony on Meridia, which the Helldivers were forced to attack in a suicide mission to create a black hole. Things will only get more complicated once the long-awaited third faction from the first game, the Illuminate, arrives in the galaxy. Arrowhead has ironed out a lot of the game’s frustrations, but it’s worth taking a look at the wider map to see what else can be ironed out.