The Ringer-Verse - How ‘Helldivers 2’ Broke the Live-Service Slump | Button Mash

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

Are you ready, Helldivers?! Ben, Steve Ahlman, and Matt James discuss how online co-op shooter ‘Helldivers 2’ became a surprise sensation and feel-good gaming story by building a new model for live-service storytelling and community (to go with great gameplay). Then they offer five rapid-fire recommendations for recently released, lower-profile games to play between blockbusters (58:00). Host: Ben Lindbergh Guests: Steve Ahlman and Matt James Producer: Devon Renaldo Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, can I talk to you for a second? Over 25 years ago on September 29th, 1998, we watched a brainy girl with curly hair drop everything to follow a guy she only kind of knew to college. And so began Felicity. My name is Greg Grunberg, though you may know me better as Sean Blumberg, the inventor of smoothies and director of dociventory. I'm still trying to get that released. I'm teaming up with my Felicity wife, Mandy Foreman, and The Ringers Juliet Litman, to revisit our favorite moments from our favorite show and talk to the people who helped shape it. The rewatch begins on March 13th. Listen to Dear Felicity on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters.

Tramphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tramphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject trumphia, proper training is required. Tramphia is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis, serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor

if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tramphia today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit Trimfairadio.com. This episode is brought to by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP. and make it a mess. You don't need weather tech floor liners in the summer, unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner or a road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those weather tech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer. You don't need weather tech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. And welcome into the ringerverse, your nexus podcast.

feed for all things bandham. I am Bell Minberg, a senior editor for The Ringer and your host here on Button Mash, or at least that's my job during the day. But by night, and also, let's be honest, during a good deal of the day. My job is to take on the terminated and automaton hordes on a host of unpleasant planets as I fight for freedom, humanity, and managed democracy. That's right, I'm a hell diver. And who isn't hell diving these days? Both of my guests today have helped ensure the safety of Super Earth, and they will spawn as soon as I press up, down, right, left, up to reinforce. Joining the fray, unless their server requests fail, are Matt James, ringer deputy art lead, Matt, say hello to democracy.

For democracy, Ben, hello. And also dispensing peace with the ultimate weaponry is my almond joy, an almond brother, the almaniac. Sergeant Steve Alman in the house, Steve, only you can answer the call. So long as puns are covered in basic training, I'm down. I just took a swig of liberty right before we started recording, and that will not be the last time that we bring out one of those lines. You may know Steve as a midnight boy, a junior mint, or a house of our producer, and he is all of those things. But he's also a guest on button mash because the ring of her supports crossplay, much like helldivers too.

Guys, the Galactic War waits for no one. Are you ready, hell divers? Woo! O'ah! All right, that lacked a little enthusiasm. There we go. Okay. Then let's hell dive right in. before we get going, anyone need to call down a support weapon,

Sentry, maybe a mech? I really do just need to get my super credits in order. We're tied up in war bonds right now. Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good guard dog rover by your side. Guys, last week when we talked about Final Fantasy 7 rebirth, I said I wanted to take questions and comments and make that a bigger part of the pod, some listener interaction. I put out a call for emails and ask people to write in at ringaverse gaming at gmail.com.

And wouldn't you know it, one of the first messages we received from listener Eric had the subject line, Hell Divers 2 episode, when? Well, Eric, we aim to please. So the answer is right now. Eric continued, unless I miss something, it seems like you won't be covering Helldivers 2. If so, please reconsider. It's genuinely one of the most fun games I've played my entire 25-year gaming career. It's so much more than a shooter, very much in the style of Deep Rock Galactic in that joy, humor, and a non-toxic community are prioritized over super serious military simulation.

It seems like a very meaningful moment in gaming that Helldivers 2 is a huge hit, especially when, quote unquote, quadruplea games like Skull and Bones are released around the same time for $70 and have the depth of an $8 mobile game. I'd just love to hear a deep dive episode on why the game is resonating with so many people breaking down all the little genius. such as that Hell Divers 2 employs. Well, we are happy to answer Eric's SOS beacon because the truth is, we've been wanting to find time for a Hell Divers pod for a while. And with rebirth behind us, now is the time. And I think it's a good time, actually. Even though the game came out on February 8th, we usually talk about games for the first time, at least, close to release. And that makes sense because that's usually when the most people are playing them.

But sometimes it helps to have hindsight that takes weeks. or months or maybe even years to develop, and a little more than a month, then we can say with some certainty that Hell Divers has staying power. Matt, we did an emergency episode one week after Powell World came out, remember Powell World because it had the most concurrent players in Steam history, but as with most games, Powell World's popularity has steadily declined. Still a lot of people playing it, but a tiny fraction of the peak player count, Hell divers never came close to that peak player count, but there are now many more hell divers than Power World players, because with Hell divers, people keep playing and playing and playing.

So roughly as many people were playing this weekend as were a few weeks ago, because the game keeps people coming back. And partly also because new Hell divers have enlisted. Matt Piscitella at Circana, one of the few reliable sources of sales data for games, has said that Helldivers sales are on an inverse declares. Klein curve, which is a fancy way of saying that it's the rare game that has sold better in week two than week one and in week three than week two. But why? Why does helldivers have such a hold on us? Let's explain. And for anyone who hasn't helldived yet, it's essentially Starship Troopers the game. I know there was an actual Starship Troopers game, and it wasn't good. This one is. And like the original Hell Divers, which was also developed by Arrowhead Game Studios, and released

in 2015 for PS3, PS4, and Vita. It's an online objective-based shooter where up to four players team up against robots and bugs. Also, unlike the original Hell Divers, it's a third-person shooter, not top-down, and it's a huge, huge hit on

PS5 and PC. And deservedly so. I'm with Eric. This game is great. Steve, give me your high-level Hell Divers reaction. Do you remember when games were fun? That's my answer to the question with the question. As one of the dozens of people that played hell divers one back in the day.

It's kind of amazing to see what I can only describe as the gaming glow up of the century with hell divers too. I think that when you strike a perfect balance with a short, concise, challenging, and I say inclusive in the way that, like, everybody can want to play your game and everybody can play your game under any circumstances besides server issues. You have a winning combination. The first Hell Divers was a genius, short, perfect little premise of a game

that made it like a cute, top-down shooter that is really cool to play with your friends. This becomes, and the time that it comes out, a wildly, it's almost a statement game without actually making its own statement because everything that this game is is an emphasis to what the big gaming industry of Quadruplea games,

I hate to say, is now because I hate to make this hyperbolic of the last game that I talked about this, but like, like Baldersgate 3, it is very atypical about everything that gaming is now. And when you equate quality and a CEO that seems to be a walking and shining example of what to do when your game is suffering from success, I think that this is probably one of the best, like, feel good narratives of a game to come out of recent years, let alone, it's just so. so goddamn fun to play. Yeah. Matt, you and I were playing

last night this morning until 2.30, my time, because freedom never sleeps. And we were playing with Randos because Steve big-timed us to go to an Oscars party. That's all right. We were matched with a level 31 guy.

There's literally a friend's house where I bring the Dune Bucket and they make fun of the Dune Bucket. That's okay. We were fine without you. You know, it matched us with some high-level people. We were good.

First you sat with Mal and Joe instead of Jomey Van and Charles at the Dune screen. Hey, I've been exonerated. All right, all right. I'm just glad some people are partying while the rest of us are on the front lines fighting for the survival of the species. I will not be put on a podcast for false narratives.

Matt, how has helldiving been for you? It's been wonderful. For me, it's sort of been a bit of a vindication as someone who loves co-op games and won't shut up about how much more enjoyable and rewarding it is to play co-op with people, rather than competitively against people online. I think that so many of the most successful games over the past decade-plus have been competitive online games. Everyone knows a handful of people in their lives who all they do is play modern warfare non-stop.

And I think this might be a bit of a turning point in gaming in that people are kind of realizing that we don't need to have the experience of teenagers yelling at you online every time you want to play a game with people, you can actually play on the same side as other people and work together towards a common goal. And it's a much more enjoyable experience. So for me, this is just about the co-op awakening, I would say.

And I think that one of the things that the game does so well in that regard is that there is that sort of universe map, right, where the entire population playing the game is working together to liberate specific planets. So you establish this community feel on a massive scale. And they've been really smart about unlocking new features behind the liberation of a certain planet. So you have everyone focusing on the same thing at the same time.

So when that planet's liberated, every single person who's been playing feels like they had a small part in it and the rewards that come from that feel earned by everyone. It's a really unifying gaming experience in addition to just being a game that plays really well. It feels really good to play. Yeah. Isn't it so like head-scratchingly simple when we think about it where they're like, oh, if we just have a game that is this simple, like the only main things that you are doing

is you are on your ship, you are selecting missions, you are selecting difficulties, you are finding friends, you were teaming up with people, joining games, going down, being shot out of a ship like a bullet from a gun with bullet-shaped pods, while patriotic music plays that gets you amped up every time.

Dun-dun-d-down. Amazing. And isn't that so simple? Isn't that like the most boiled-down reasons why we love games? And to know that this isn't taking, like all of those event-ties, things that come in, like, what you could describe is destiny right now, Matt.

What you could describe is the last season of Call of Duty, but it isn't. Like, this game has what you think is a battle pass, but it actually isn't. It's just their progression system that looks like a battle pass. Everything that you can unlock in this game does not need money. It takes time, but it does not need money. And it's like the amount of money that you can spend in a given time is like no more than $20 for super credits that you will earn in Map anyway? It breaks my brain that it's this simple,

and nobody's thought about it before. And that's actually the thing that's gotten me more perplexed about all this. I'm like, it took us this long to just get it right the first time. Yeah, we're going to get into all of this, but it does seem so simple and so stripped down. Game development is miraculous and impossible, and it's incredible that any game ships, and yet you play something like Hell Divers too.

And it's like, oh, just do this. just make more games like that. It's so easy. It's, of course, not easy. There's a lot of work that goes into making it seem so easy. But I'll co-sign everything you guys said. It's hard for me to get hooked on an online multiplayer game like I used to. Just because there are so many other competing obligations and attractions,

it's like the Ian Malcolm line, life finds a way. Life also gets in the way because there are just so many good games and there's work and there's family and there's friends. And in a lot of games, it sort of stresses me out to play with people who have high levels and tricked out loadouts because I just think, I'll never have that. I'm not going to put that much time into this. Give me a level playing field where everyone's the same because that's the only way that I'll have a chance. Whereas in Helldivers, because it's not player versus player, I don't have to worry about that. When I get matched with someone who's a much higher level, it's great news because they can carry me through that level.

And also, it makes me want to play more instead of intense. eliminating me, turning me off because of the time investment that's required, I think I want that. I'm going to get that. I started sort of late, both because I was busy with Final Fantasy and because I was wary of the server issues that Helldivers was having, and to some extent, still is. But I'm making up for lost time. It is tough for me to stop playing long enough to record this podcast. I do it for all of you. So I said life gets in the way. You know what else gets in the way? Programming reminders. But we'll make them quick. And you won't. want to know what's coming, right?

Later this week, the Midnight Boys, Poo-Pew! We'll be covering the return of Invincible for the second half of its second season. That'll be on Thursday, followed on Friday by the Verses, the award show where Steve and I and all the other hosts will form

Ring orverse Voltron on what's sure to be a chaotic call. The Oscars were our warm-up act. This is March's main event where we celebrate the best nerd culture of 2023. And also this weekend over on House of R, Joe and Mal will be inducting Paul Atreides into the House of Our Hall of Vame. To paraphrase, Duke Ledo, a good man doesn't seek to join the House of Our Hall. He's called to it and he answers.

Paul will answer that call this Sunday. And here is what's tentatively coming up on Buttonmash. On March 22nd, three big games will be released. Always just a joy for players and podcasters when the biggest games of a given month all come out on the same day. We love that. It does wonders for work-life balance. So later this month, we will be joined by Jessica Clemens to determine who won that day. Dragon's Dogma 2, Rise of the Ronan, or Princess Peach Showtime.

Also, stay tuned to ButtonMash in April when we will be covering two big game adaptations, Fallout on Prime Video and Knuckles on Paramount Plus. Fallout's latest trailer looks fantastic. I don't know about you guys, but I was anticipating it. And then I saw this thing. it seems like they've spared no expense on this show. I think they might nail it. I regret to inform you they might nail it.

Yeah. Both of those shows will be binge drops for whatever reason. So we will try to post those pods promptly. And remember, ringerverse gaming at gmail.com right in to request that we cover something. And we might just do it within a week, especially if we're already planning to. So, Steve, you were just sort of touching on this. I think Helldivers has a few things in common with Powell World,

actually besides being the other big surprise sensation of this year. Oh, sorry, is this also getting sued by a major studio? Other than that. Yeah, I don't want to overstate the similarities because they are both sensations, but for different reasons. It's just a little like Power World in that it is a mashup of influences. So you start with Starship Troopers, then you add a sprinkling of halo and planet side and destiny and gears and Earth Defense Force, et cetera. And voila, you have hell divers. The difference is, as you're saying, helldivers.

saying, Helldivers is not so derivative that anyone is wondering whether Arrowhead is going to get sued. But it is also a budget price game, $39.99 versus Powell World's $2,99. And it's a little lo-fi. It's kind of janky. It's not the polished, premium, AAA, quadruplea experience you get from a Final Fantasy 7. Mainly, though, I think the thing it has in common with Powerworld is what it has in common with any good game, which is that it's hard to stop playing. It was pretty easy for me to stop playing Palworld personally, but I think I might have Helldivers in my long-term rotation. And sometimes explaining why something is fun is like explaining why something is funny. You just know it when you play it.

But I think the ways that this game is fun are fascinating. So we talked about some of the big draws, just right out of the Hell Pod, what grabbed you guys? Steve, what was it about Hell Divers that made a strong first impression and made you want to keep coming back? I keep coming back to the narrative in your head that you make up while you play this game. It's the thing where you buy into the game's camp. You buy into the game's silliness.

It's jank actually helps because there's this amazing tone that is set with that with that hilarious opening video that looks like the like Starship Troopers propaganda. aganda ad and the more and more you think about what it is you're doing and with the world that you are in because it's not like there's no lore that you have you have little bits of text on screen and different bits of like information that come from the super earth ministry of truth and all of these things like add to a tapestry that in your head makes this game so hilarious because you're sending these poorly trained like cannon fodder soldiers off to die

in horrible ways via bugs and robots and explosions from their own squad mates and then immediately they are set down with a frozen clone that looks just like them and it's set back to it. All of those things make for amazing gameplay. All of the things that we've been like conditioned to not like or be.

been not used to, such as friendly fire, disposable magazines where if you reload the clip, you better get rid of all that ammo because that's what happens. All of those things that we've kind of like gotten soft to, this generation has gotten soft to, it works to its benefit because all of those things add to, oh, I want to do what's better for the teammates. I don't want to get in my teammates line of fire. I want to make sure that if I can go off and make this objective happen, somebody else can flank around and like throw in the stratagem and throw in some explosives and they blow up this bug nest and while I try to call something else down, it instills everything that this game structurally makes reinforces the idea of a communal objective. And that's that's the

perfect mix for anything that you want to achieve in this game. I think that that's absolutely where it keeps me every single time. Yeah. Matt, were you aware of the reputation when you first tried it and so that kept you going or was there something that pulled you in initially? Anytime a game becomes a runaway success, I always want to dip my toes in and see what the fuss is about. Sample the zeitgeist. But for me, I think the thing that everything kind of centers around, the reason why this game is so successful to me is the stratagems and how that is integrated into the game. So for those who don't know, strategisms are these either weapon strikes or additional weapons, that you can carry that you call in from above that drop down onto the surface of the planet

when you hit whatever sequence of directions on the D-pad you need to type for them to spawn. And so a lot of them are bombs being dropped or maybe there's a napalm strike or basically just a big thing with a cool down of a certain amount of time that can do a lot of damage on the surface. and the managing of those strategisms, as well as the awareness that you as a team have to have of where that stratagem is going to strike, all of that coupled with the fact that Friendly Fire is on. Friendly Fire is usually not a feature that makes games more fun.

I think most people would agree. But in this context, it's essential to the experience. Yes. You have to be aware of each other. And I like to take a little bit of a metaphorical meaning away from that as well. The game actually forcing you to be aware of your teammates and working together. It's part of a bigger meaning behind this game to me. And the stratagems and that friendly fire are where this game becomes more unique than just being a third-person shooter where you're shooting bugs like a co-op returnal or something, which would also be great, but would be a very different.

experience. And if I may, I think that what you're hitting on is like a heightened awareness of your surroundings in whatever game that you're making because of the like terms and conditions for lack of a better term that the game sets for you to play it, making friendly fire and like being aware of your surroundings, that heightens. And I hate to say it, but like it will heighten the immersion that you actually allow yourself to be in for this game. Like you're actually paying attention in a way that you can just shut your brain off when you're playing Call of Duty or Halo or something like that.

Like the reason that you're actually focusing on all of those things is because there's a lot to manage in this game. There's actually a lot to think about. And it's even fun when you fuck all of that up because it's so challenging and so rewarding when you get it right. To know that like it took me so many hours of this game

to realize I'm like, oh wait, we actually don't need to be able to extract in order to get most of the objectives of a mission. And doesn't that add something to the narrative of what being a hell diver actually is? Yeah. And we're like, oh, well, if we get all of our objectives done, we'll still get all the resources that we have. And, you know, getting home and getting alive is just a cool thing that we like to do. That, like, just think that that's what that you got to do.

You got to get out of live. No, you just got to get the job done. And that's kind of the beauty of hell divers. Like, you find yourself adding meaning to more things than the game actually gets. you. And I think that that's brilliant. Yes. There is a learning curve, which is sometimes seen as a negative, but there should be a learning curve if it's a game that's going to grab you and hold you for hundreds of hours, potentially. It can't just give up all of its glory and secrets immediately. The tutorial doesn't

really tell you how to play the game. I mean, it gives you an overview of the game mechanics. Here's how you move, et cetera. But once it dropped me into the actual environment, I really didn't know what I was doing. It's like, where do I go? What do I do? What are these objectives? How do I find them? There was a lot of trial and error and Reddit research on my part to get to that point. But it's really rewarding when you do finally get a handle on it and you feel like, okay, I'm actually

contributing to this team instead of just falling around this other person who seems to know what they're doing. And then there is so much depth to it, just the environmental effects on players and weapons and then getting the hang of when to reload. And also, yes, not calling down airship. strikes on everyone else's heads. I mean, there's just a lot of this that you get better at, but it also produces these really memorable moments. I remember a lot of individual games where everything went haywire and we managed to pull it off anyway or, you know, if you spectacularly

land right on the back of a heavy or something and it splatters and everyone's dapping you up for that, those moments. This game is, I think, among the best at producing those just organically. It's funny because the first thing I noticed, honestly, was the install size, which is not that big a deal, but it does set this game apart. Because on PS5 at least, it's like 25 gigs compared to 100-ish for Rise of the Ronan or 150-ish for Jedi Survivor, Final Fantasy Rebirth, or Call of Duty, which is just completely out of control. It's just like, here, call of duty, just have my whole hard drive, why don't you? but this game is relatively compact and I think that's indicative of what you're getting here, what's under the hood because when I boot it up for the first time,

I thought it looked like a PS4 or PS3 game. This is not some Unreal Engine 5 graphical showcase. It's built in the same engine that the original Hell Divers used, which was discontinued in 2018. There's sort of a throwback budget look and feel to this. You know, bugs breach out of the ground and they just kind of go from not being there to suddenly being there. It's not like there's some high fidelity burrowing animation or something.

When you load onto a ship, you're just regularly clipping through other players' avatars or just getting stuck. But as you said, that does sort of enhance the feeling of playing this game, right? Because you are just expendable. You are just cannon fodder. And so when you come out of that hell pod and you're frozen from the trip and you're just like shaking off, you're thawing, it's so funny, right? Like this game is legitimately funny in a way that not that many games are

and it does it so subtly. I mean, it does it, maybe subtly is the wrong word, but I guess efficiently, you know, there's just so little lore, so little video, so little text, so little dialogue. And yet it has conveyed this world that feels real that we all want to live in

and kind of cosplay in. I'm drawn to a quote by the director Paul Verhoeven who directed Starship Troopers. And he said about that movie, to anybody that doesn't know this movie, it's basically this game of soldiers meant to fight bugs

and kind of like indoctrinated into the world of war and democracy and all these things. But he said that I want to make a film that is so blatant and obvious in its satire that the people that understand it live in mental anguish by the people that don't.

and just look at this game and to be like, oh, if this isn't like a direct, taking the absolute piss out of anything that like Call of Duty has become now or anything that any warboy edge lord shooter has ever been, I don't know what it is. And it might not even be the fault of that because HealthEvers has been around for a minute. But if we look at everything that gaming has become now because of people like, because of people, because of franchises like Call of Duty. with battle passes and skins and emotes and all of these things. It builds around a game that is just so simple in what it does that it almost seems like it is taking a direct shot at all of these things the industry has become. And I'm looking right now,

the Community Hub from Helldivers 2 on Steam, it's sitting at 250,000 concurrent players right now. People are playing this game right now in droves. And it's not slowing down. It's midday Monday. where we are, by the way. Yeah, and I don't understand when this is going to actually set a precedent because we're going to be talking about probably Hell Divers 2,

like we used to talk about PubG back in the day. Because this is, this feels like a catalyst of like, okay, now we have like community-based co-op shooters. That's the thing now. This is the big, it feels like a record shift because not everybody can make a Balderscape three. That takes a lot of time and a lot of craft work to do. And I'm not saying that Hell Divers 2 can't,

that doesn't have that same amount of skill behind it, but to know that this might be the brass ring that people chase now. To find the magic that Hell Divers 2 has and then see what we can port it over to like, oh man, if Halo can do this, if any of our favorite franchise can do this, I bet you Fortnite's going to find a way to do this.

And I'm very interested to see how this gets, you know, twisted and moved around because I don't know if anybody's going to be doing it as good as Hell Divers 2. And they've designed it in a way, too, where there's so much room to grow. Already, since the game's release, we've just recently had them open up mecks. They've deployed mecks into the game

where you can crawl into a meck and shoot with your machine gun or your missile. And that has already changed the gameplay dynamics so much. And when you think about the fact that right now, we pretty much were fighting bugs or we're fighting robots, right? like how many different kinds of enemy types can they introduce and all of the different weapons can play so differently with different types of enemies.

There's just instantly you can see a horizon where there are so many possibilities for where this game can go, how the gameplay can subtly shift in interesting ways. It's going to be really exciting to watch what they do. If they're going to do new enemy types first, or they're just so much opportunity. And it feels weird because normally we would see this in a game like this. If we were to make a comp to like say destiny of how like you would see like a roadmap or like a season calendar or something that like, okay, well like on this date, we're going to be giving you guys mecks.

And this is going to be like a raid to fight the bug queen or whatever. Like Health divers isn't doing that because it's more just so. hey, we have this, we've employed this guy called a game master. And he's going to be the guy that's going to be like putting more different threats on the map that the community is going to actually go towards. And that's going to change whenever the hell we want. Yeah. Are they going to have zombies at Halloween? You know?

Yeah. We're not going to tell you about it. We're not really going to like do marketing for this. It's just going to be like, hey, if we want to change something up, it's going to happen. And they had been planning for mex for a minute. And like that was going to be the first big thing. that they changed to it, but they're like, okay,

instead of making this a grand event, we're going to be like, all right, well, if you guys can take one part of the map and like this one planet, then we'll unlock it for everybody. But on this planet, we have mex. And it took like a fervor online. Like I've seen, I've scrolled through my TikTok feed.

I'm on Hell Divers 2 TikTok, and it's more of like people being like, we need people on this planet doing this war. Like, it's instilling this sense of like, community that I genuinely have not seen before. And nobody could have asked or engineered this better. You hire influencers to do this, but people are just doing this on their own. It's wonderful.

Destiny just overloaded you with lore, right? There was so much story, so many factions that I could never understand or follow what was going on. Whereas this, they leave us wanting more and the community supplies it. So on TikTok, you have accounts that are basically broadcasting in universe, in character, hell divers, PSAs, 24-7, right? Everyone is constantly checking in, is there a new major order? What's our objective?

Oh, yeah, you have that fake news channel that I've seen where it's like they have the logo. Yeah, it's great. And they've done such a great job of maintaining the partial fiction, right, that the community is kind of in control here, that this is all organic. As you mentioned, there's one mysterious Arrowhead employee named Joel

who serves as the game master for everyone, basically a D&D-style dungeon master, right? And it is kind of conducting this campaign, this ongoing persistent world like Planet Side 2, but it's not something you see in games that often. And it's already produced these indelible meme-making moments, right? Like, where were you when Malevolon Creek fell? Were you in the campaign to free Tian Kwan? Kvall, were you in the campaign to free Tian Kwan? There's this huge setback for the community when Malevon falls. We're all just throwing ourselves at the robots that we can't overcome. And

then when we're down from that defeat, they hand us a carrot and they say, okay, but you can go to Tian Kwan. You know, you failed at robot Vietnam as people were tubbing it. That's kind of the fall of reach in Halo or the fall of Acadia and Warhammer. That's malevolon in hell divers. And now they say, okay, but you can pick yourself off the ground. You can go to Tianquan. If you can turn the tide there, then you get mex. And it at least produces the impression that this is all organic that we have some control.

Obviously, they've been planning to roll out mechs for a while. It wasn't like if we had not liberated Tian Kwan, we never would have had mex. They were going to give us mex. But they've managed to make it feel like this participatory activity instead of just arbitrarily, well, we made mex and we're going to drop them on this day. You know, it's at least perceived to depend on player actions, which is just so empowering, so engaging that we're all super into it. This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty limited time flavors. New Whole Foods, Market Peach, apricot, rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch. As is their trending mango,

Yuzu chantilly cake. But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with yellow sales. store-wide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tramphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tramphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks,

followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Tramphia, proper training is required. Tramphia is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a bite of infection.

vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tramfaya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit Tramphiator.com. Transport your senses with Soltejanado's limited edition perfume mist collection at Sephora. Sprits on lush notes of rainforest orchid and crisp sea breeze with ha fresco paraizo. Embrace a floral and fruity scent inspired by Rio's nude beach with chiqui bikini or caps or Unkissed Bliss with Limonada Jolada, where zesty Brazilian Lemonade Accord meets coconut milk and golden brown sugar. Don't miss Sol de Janeiro's limited edition perfume mist collection only at Sephora. The failure of not liberating a planet early on in this game's life cycle has really set a tone and made the stakes of these events feel real, right? And that's similar to the way that Friendly Fire is making this game better. like the prospect of failing to do this objective that everyone is working on is also adding

great tension to the experience for everyone. And because when you look at this map and you see like this red section of the mecs coming in on one side and they're like kind of pushing towards Super Earth and then you see the bugs on that side and like there's a bit less of the bug threat but the mechs are harder now and they may not take a certain section but like we need more people on this side because this is going to get more out of hand. The game never explicitly tells you any of these things. Like the fact that the community and the actual small updates

from the orders that you receive in world are really the only things that you have to go on and then you're just off finding your own conflicts. But then there becomes these like communal-based things where you find out that like people had read from illegal broadcasts that like the Mets are looking to go not, towards Super Earth, but north in their sector because apparently their masters are there. There's a different, like, rumored section of another enemy type that we're going to be talking

about. So don't let them go north because that's when we're going to be fighting new things. All of those things, like, are typically things that we would see, like, influencer campaigns and different, like, community marketing managers of amassed teams from the likes of Activision or bungee or whatever to engineer this type of fervor when the community here just does it themselves. Right. And it is literally based on you made a great

game when you come down into the world and start shooting things with your friends or complete randoms. It's the best. And it's not like this is season one. Season two will start in two months and the next season, the next thing will happen. They really set a tone of like things

could happen at any time on any day. Yeah. And there's an artificiality to it that I think we all just kind of forget about intentionally, right? It's like wrestling. We're keeping K-Fabe and pretending that this is all up to the players. You know, I was playing at Angels Venture, one planet, most of the weekend, and the liberation percentage was seemingly stuck at 54.2% the entire time. Is that accurate? Is that not? I mean, no one exactly knows how the liberation percentage is work. Super Earth Ministry of Truth right now?

Are you sounding like a bug, Ben? I have some questions, yeah. And so I wonder whether it ever will wear off on people, whether that initial hit of like, we can control what's happening here. You know, obviously it is someone who's sort of stacking the deck and putting their thumb on the scale because they want this to be a win and they want this to be a defeat and there's only so much that we can do to control that. And does that ever get old, do you think?

ever feel like we'll be, oh, we're getting jerked around here. We're just, we're puppets dancing on the strings. I mean, I don't think I would ever really tire of it. And I think it's because of the fact that it is not nearly as eventized or it hasn't made, it hasn't been made that big of a deal of it. Because at the end of the day, the game is still fun. If none of that happened, I'd still want to jump down onto this planet and kill a bunch of bugs. With a bunch of fun people. Like, none of that will ultimately matter. And I think the people that are making this game are aware of that because all they need to do is just give a little push and then the rest will follow. That's the, that's the thing that actually matters because you can't engineer this.

You literally can't engineer this level of enthusiasm for a game. So when you have something that's this fun, all you need to do is just give light bits of encouragement to your community and then the rest will make itself. The real things that the community and the devs are actually trying to be concerned about is like quelling any levels of toxicity, how to punish hosts of games that are shitties of the people that try to join them because like people will find a way to make anything toxic on the internet and just try to make sure that people are engaged as much as they can. And that's at the end of the day really all we need. I keep scratching my head. I'm like, wow, it really could really could be this simple. We really can have it all. Yeah, it's working so

far. And I don't know whether it's because there's no PVP, because it's just inherently cooperative, or because everyone's just having so much fun with this game and there's so much goodwill toward this game. But I've been playing almost exclusively with randoms, with strangers. I've just been in quick play, matchmaking. And, you know, I just don't have a whole lot of friends who are playing regularly these days. It's like, oh, are you free? Like, you have to schedule a gaming session in advance, you know? It's not like in high school where it was like, well, when we get home, we're going to play Halo 2 for 12 hours. So I have been dependent on the community and it has not let me down. I've only had one game so far where the people I was playing with were not team

players. Matt, you're laughing because of one game that we had last night, which I will describe in a second. But there's only been one game I've had where people were just intentionally not reinforcing and then trash talking each other and calling each other's names in the lobby afterward. That has happened once. That's so rare. It is. It's incredibly a novelist. I was like, oh, wow, I guess this can happen in Hell Divers because that's just a common experience in so many other games.

And it was the exception here. It stood out. Now, Matt, we had a game where we played with a couple people who didn't realize they were playing publicly. So it was like a level four guy teaching a level one guy what the buttons do. Literally his first game. Yeah, that was a different kind of frustrating, but sort of wholesome in a way. But on the whole, I've just had a fantastic experience where for the most part, people aren't that talkative, I feel like. You know, people are not talking constantly. They're not cursing constantly. They're just going about their business. They're marking things on the map. Let's go here. Let's do this. Maybe occasionally saying something. But that's it. And everyone's working together. It's just been such a refreshing experience compared to so many other online gaming experiences.

They put in a lot of ways to communicate nonverbally in the game. The marking of the map and just, how easy it is to yell out, like, you know, follow or, you know. Yeah. They've done a really good job of encouraging you to communicate in whatever way possible, because ultimately that's what the enjoyment of this game hinges on is cooperating with your teammates. So the focus that they put on that nonverbal communication is a big help. I think that to add to like what makes a good communal experience

actually is the fact that there will not be PVP in this game. They've said they're never adding it. Yeah. Frankly, I incredibly respect that because A, there are enough of those games. B, they don't want to have the opportunity to make something that's toxic or for something to go downhill with its community. And that's really great. That's a very good awareness of what they want this game to be and not want to simply

count out to what a small majority or like minority. in this case, wants a game to be. And I think that that's exactly what a game should do when it's not listening to either a committee or a major amount of influence outside of itself. Yeah. That's kind of what makes it great. And like even as you said,

like the very, very rare exceptions of where people are being shitty online, that's literally happened once to you, maybe if even. Like that, that's never happened to me and I'm genuinely shocked that it has ever happened. But like that's, again, it's a,

testament to how well of a experience that this has been made to be. And I think it's instructive to compare Hell Divers 2 to Suicide Squad, kill the Justice League, which we potted about previously. These games came out one day apart. And Suicide Squad was seen as confirmation that we've overloaded with live service games, right? Too many live service games. It's just lardes down what could be a good game.

We're trying to add these live service elements. WB has said that Suicide Squad's sales have been disappointing, though I, I certainly wasn't expecting them to be great to begin with. I think we all sort of saw that flop coming. And yet, WB is doubling down on, yes, we want to make more live service games, even as many other companies are coming real soon. Are canceling them. And I don't think that live service was what was bad about Suicide Squad necessarily. I mean, just in terms of seasons and unlocks and everything, it was just the core gameplay loop was not very fun.

and that was in part because it was built to keep bringing you back so that you will keep spending money on stuff. And of course, everyone compared to previous Rocksteady games and said, you were good at this thing. Just keep doing that. Give us this great single player polished experience that you were so excellent at. Don't try to conform to these industry trends. Not everything should be live service. Now you have Helldivers come out, and it is also a live service game, and yet everyone has completely positive experiences about it. And I think that's because of the way it's built.

As you were saying, I haven't spent a cent on this game other than the purchase price, and I don't intend to. There's just no way. There's no need to. There genuinely is no need to. There really isn't. And, you know, look, they gave us a taste of the mechs. There's an in-universe reason why we unlock the mex.

We liberate this planet where the mechs are manufactured. Then they give us a sampling of the mex. And then they'll take it away again. And you'll have to get to level 25 to unlock it. Fine. that just gives us some incentive to keep going. But it's not like you need to buy the mechs, you know. It's not like there's some inordinate amount of time you need to spend in this game

in order to unlock the mex or that it's not fun until you unlock the mex. The experience of leveling up and unlocking stuff is part of the pleasure, right? Right. And it's not unbalanced because, again, you're not competing with anyone. It's not a pay-to-win sort of situation. And because the story is dispensed so organically that, yeah, it's not just an arbitrary okay, here's a season. A season is three months.

Now it's time for the next season, or you got to do all your battle pass stuff before the season is over. No, it's a story. It's a narrative that they're telling us here. And so it's fun to keep coming back. I'm going to be wanting to come back to Hell Divers to see what's new.

What did they introduce here? Not just because they put the Joker in the game or something, you know, but just because there's new planets, there's new enemies, there's new ways to play. This is exciting. This is the model. And I think a lot of people were saying, oh, the live service genre, it's too crowded.

I mean, there are only so many fortnights, and there are a few games that are just the Titans, and they got in, and now they're just owning this space, and it's tough for anyone else to break in. I think there's some truth to that, but then Heldivers 2 comes along and breaks in quite easily because it's just such a great game. The microtransactions are practically a tipping system for them,

because they are so unnecessary. Like buying super credits is unnecessary. It can't save you some time. but yeah but it's literally that thing that you find on the map every mission you go right yeah literally almost every mission and i mean like i've hated microtransactions for as long as they've been in video games i i knew that like the nba 2k series was was just dead in the water for me as soon as they started selling you know ability points to to shortcut your way online it's just terrible and and it's taken over this you know microtransactions are just taken over

and battle passes. And it's just this gross, gross system. And so it almost makes me want to actually throw them a few extra bucks and get some super credits. It's like, I want to encourage this form of micro-transactions in games because I know it's not going to go away. It has too much profit potential for companies. But maybe, perhaps, this can sort of set a tone

that there is a way to do it without everyone hate. you without charging $20 for a minor skin change to a character. You know, this is, this could be a path forward. That actually gives me an idea because I'm looking at the, I'm looking at the Steam page for Helldivers 1 right now. And the amount of purchasable DLC that's available for this game is a lot. There are weapons packs. There are vehicles packs.

There are pistol perks and terrain specialist packs. Not only is this like kind of like a brief little window of, of like all the things that could come to Hell Divers too. But do we think that it's going to remain this pure and not just like a $2 thing here, a $3 thing here? Because we could easily imagine a world where all of this becomes very microtransactione.

And it could really turn in a profit really quickly. The insidification of Helldivers, right? If Arrowhead gets acquired by someone, right? And they say, and who's to say that it couldn't? Because this is getting PlayStation support. This is like more or less like a first party game and experience on both PC and PlayStation. There's been like massive like change.orgs to like please God let this come to Xbox for the people that want to play this.

Is there a world where we could see like all of these things kind of going away and like becoming hyper-transactioned? Why do you have to say that, Steve? I don't want to live in that world. the world. We live in a society. Let's just pretend that hell divers will always be wholesome and fun. No, but at so many companies, it's just the underpants, gnomes business plan, profit plan for success. It's just like, we'll make a live service game, and then our users will just mint money for us. It'll just be an infinite profit machine,

and you've got to remember to make a good game that makes people want to keep playing it. That is the necessary and very difficult step. Do you guys have any favorite ways to play, whether it's strategies, mission types? Is there something you find yourself returning to over and over again in Helltivers? Steve, you want to start? There has really, really, really been a trend that I love of doing defend campaigns and then doing C-partillery runs with anything that's attached to it. Because I love the idea that they give you your stratagems and loadouts to pick from, but there's this

great thing called the Seaf Artillery, where if you find this in World, it's basically like a payload system of specialized types of weapons and ammo and stratagem drops that you can load up in World and then use as like an extra thing to your arsenal. And it's basically like you see all of these like little like little videos of Hell Divers like carrying these massive like shells that are being loaded into this giant gun and then we add it to our arsenal. And it's like, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, and then one bit of like payload ordinance that's like fire based,

which is incredibly fun and funny because I love adding to somebody's arsenal and then seeing where those things can go because the amount of things that enemies and the environment can respond to in this game is actually incredible. Like you said that in the beginning of this kind of looked like a PS4 game.

Like, I don't know, this looks kind of incredible on PC. Like I've seen like volumetric lighting and different types of planets that you get to go on. The environments look gorgeous. I do like that. Yeah, there are some times where the draw distance is great. You could see forever. And then there are times where you can see a foot in front of you, right?

And there are giant bugs. I went on like a giant desert planet. And it's like you can see three feet in front of you. And it's just like you see the massive sun just like shining this god right through the sand. And I'm like, oh man, like this is like an immersive experience. I'm just like, I don't know what bugs are around the corner or what's around the sand dune. If I'm going to meet shy a Lood or whatever, like it's going to be a wild time. Yeah, I'm on performance mode, so maybe that's part of it.

But yes, it feels variable. Not only are there just so many planets, which I guess are the equivalent of maps or stages, but also those planets look different depending on the game. And it changes the way you play. Matt, how has your play evolved? I just prefer to fight the robots personally. That's an insane thing to say. Yeah, I am more of a bug guy myself, but I don't know.

Yeah, I feel like I'm in the minority on this. but the bug stress me out, man. There's just a lot of them. It's all, you know, melee damage to you. I sort of prefer the format of shooting at things, shooting at you, and less of a melee swarm. Are you morally bothered by your mass extermination of the bugs? We don't even know why this war started exactly.

Are we the baddies? Are we on the right side of history here? Who knows? Time will tell, huh? Again, it sounded like a bug, basically. I don't really trust you right now. Friendly fire is on. Those robots sounds kind of creep me out.

I'm much more of a terminated man myself, but I try to do a bit of both. And there is so much to do. So as we were saying, Arrowhead has not released a full roadmap yet. They are going to, but they've adjusted it on the fly because the game has gotten huge

beyond their own expectations, and so their ambitions have grown. But what do we want in this game? Because there is so much space on that map, so much space in space. And Hell divers has already evolved very quickly. So first you fight the terminids, then very quickly, the automaton show up. Now we have mecks.

Obviously, there's been balancing going on with some kind of controversial buffs and nerves as well as much-needed improvement to server performance, which was pretty debilitating early on and honestly is still far from great, but is better, is playable at least. So we know that there's almost certainly another enemy type. coming. And Steve, as a Hell Divers OG, I guess you remember the Illuminate, the third faction that you fight. And it certainly seems like that will most likely be coming soon to Hell Divers 2. But what do we want? Steve, what do you want to come down the pike in Hell Divers 2? So Arrow had released this like YouTube trailer of like a couple of armor sets and like maybe a couple

additional weapons that they were going to be releasing in the next month or so. And it felt weird because it kind of felt like their first like foray into making like a, again, like a destinyified, call a dutyified like, here's what's to come. And I'm like, I don't like this. It's not that I don't like the idea of new content coming to the game. Of course, that's fun. But there's such an inherent great sense of discovery when you either unlock or find another gun or thing on the map. Like, half of the guns that I've ever used in Helldivers that I've enjoyed, I found when it was just like sitting there in like one of those like supply caches or one of those like two button door push things like I was like oh there's a flamethrower in this game let's figure out what that is

turns out it sucks against the robots and there's no point in that it's pay to lose there but I enjoyed that like oh fuck like I got to figure out how to use this thing yeah and to be fair I don't think I really need much I don't think that I want to actually be sold that many more things because the game is so good anyway, if you give me more things to either discover or play around with, even if the guns suck, I'll have a fun time

with it. Like, I had the arc thrower and I'm like, this is a piece of shit. I'm never using this again, but like, it was cool to try out and I'll certainly try it out again if they ever try to buff it, but I'm like, what does this Tesla coil do? Oh, nothing? Okay, great. Like, let's try it again.

Like, I like that. Like, even if they give me something that's an absolute troll weapon, I like the idea of trying to figure it out for myself in the moment and knowing that it sucks. I think that that's kind of the magic of this game. Yeah, and there's nothing better than a surprise. This game was sort of a surprise. We knew it was coming. We didn't know it would be anywhere near this huge.

And we love the just, oh, this game is out. We're not just announcing some game that's coming out several years down the road. You can play it right now. And you didn't even know it was in development. So if you could do something similar like that with the drops, that'd be great. that would keep me hooked. I'd want to keep coming back for more. And it also helps maintain the illusion that this is just an organic, ongoing campaign.

How can we predict what the next thing will be? It depends on you, hell divers. Yeah, the surprise and discovery is essential. And it also keeps the community at like a fever pitch. You know, like you said, Steve, like the announcing of things to come is kind of, we don't even really want that. Like, just drop them in the world and let some random Reddit user be like, look what I found.

It's like that's right. It'll be way more exciting. Half of the great things that I was able to do in this game are because I either saw somebody on YouTube, like discover it or I got told by a friend of mine like this is how you do. I'm like, did you know that if you hold the reload button, you could actually adjust the settings on your gun? Like you could adjust your scope.

You can adjust the rate of fire. You can turn your flashlight on and off. Like small things that are just like, oh yeah, they poorly trained the hell divers, first of all, because that wasn't in the tutorial. Yeah. Second of all, like I love the fact that people are still discovering things in this game. That's the actual, that's the sauce. That's the juice right there.

And just the idea that anyone, anyone can be the person that finds this thing that, you know, like you could stumble onto something that no one has seen before, just an average user. It's exciting. It probably won't happen. But it's a possibility, you know, that you can be the one to see this thing first. And I like that there aren't classes also just to go along with the simplicity that we're talking about because you don't have to specialize. It's not intimidating.

everyone sort of starts the same, and you can specialize in the way that you play, of course. It's kind of fun to be a support player almost. I like nothing better than when I can give someone a stim or, you know, you carry around the backpack to rearm people, or, you know, you bail someone out of a bad situation. That's fun, but I wouldn't want to be a support player in a dedicated way or a healer or something. You know, you can customize what's your armor type. Do you have heavy armor? So you're kind of a tank, or are you running around? a little more quickly, you can experiment with that stuff, but you're starting with the same

base skill set, and I appreciate that. I think that's also welcoming to new players. I'd like, in addition to further server improvements and less just getting booted or stuck staring at a screen forever that never loads, it would be nice, like some minor quality of life improvements, like filtering by mission type or being able to target a certain type of mission, because I find that sometimes I don't have time for a full 40 minute mission. Not that they always last 40, but it's tough to say, I just want to do a 12 minute or a 15 minute. You can kind of hunt around on the map,

and then by the time you try to get into that game, it's gone. And if you quick play, it's just random. It'd be kind of nice if you could say, I just want to play this mission type. The surprise is also sort of nice, but sometimes I have time constraints, so that'd be kind of cool. And I don't know, like more players.

Would we ever want to see bigger battles? going on if we supported more than four players potentially. Would we want to see, you know, if the illuminate come in and you have maybe airborne enemies of some sort, is there more of an airborne aerial element to this other than just the jump pack? You know, can we go in a different more vertical direction? I'd be interested in seeing them explore the space in some ways, but be careful because what you have here is beautiful. It's working great. So I think for me, this will probably will be like Rocket League, where I just get the urge to pick it up and play it again indefinitely, and I'll keep coming back whenever there's a big update.

And if anyone hasn't tried this out yet, we encourage you to do so. We want to end, though, here by talking briefly about a few other games, because I think we'll hit a little lull in blockbusters later in the spring and summer, though you never know when the next surprise it is coming. But the start of this year has been about as packed with great games as last year. And right now we're in a bit of a breather between the big releases later this month. If you blow through Final Fantasy, which isn't really possible, but let's say you do it. And if somehow Helldivers hasn't taken over your life, you might be in the market for some maybe smaller, Indier experiences in the meantime. So we just wanted to end here with five rapid fire recommendations.

We did like one minute reviews of like a dragon, infinite wealth and Tekonate. So in that same vein, if you're looking for something to check out between the blockbusters behind us and the blockbusters to come, you guys have both sampled some other games that I just want to hear your quick pitches for. So first, Matt, please pitch me on a game that I will never play no matter what you say. Bellatro. Yes. That's no shot at Bellatro. It's just as we talked about with Queen's Gambit. I'm not a card game guy.

It's Queen's Blood. Queen's game. How dare you? Look, I played it one time. I'm getting Justin Charity on the line right now. I'm forfeited. I'm showing my ignorance, but I'm proud of my ignorance. No, I'm not.

I'm not saying you shouldn't enjoy these things. But Marvel snap aside, I'm just not a card game guy. I'm a card game hater. I'm not a poker player, you know, even real-life card games. It's not for me. But Bellatro is a deck builder available on all platforms from a single one-person developer known as local thunk. So Matt, give me the quick Bellatro pitch.

First of all, you don't need to know how to play poker. If you don't know how to play poker, it's fine. Because it's really just kind of like the framework for how this card game works. And if there's anything you don't know about, like it sort of ends at like, you know, flush straight, four of a kind. And these things are explained in the game. If you have literally no background in poker and card games, it'll explain it to you. most of it is not related to poker.

And even some of the terms in poker are present here, but mean different things like the blinds are different. Anyway, the point is this is a really interesting deck builder. It's very addictive. It's challenging. It's super fun. I think there's a demo. Is there a demo of it?

I think there's a demo. There is a demo, yes. Yeah. If you've ever enjoyed a card game, just give the demo a try. Well, I'm out. Yeah, Ben's out. Man, just like Allen Wake 2, Ben Lindberg is afraid to have fun. That's right.

Marvel stuff is really good. Sorry. But yeah, you make the numbers go up, right? You want to construct your... They're multipliers and really interesting ways in which the power-ups affect things. And each run, you're sort of encouraged to go with the flow a little bit and experiment and say, like, okay, well, if I've got this card, then maybe I'll build my deck kind of this way, even though I'm not, you know, I think normally I want to try this,

but I'm really getting a good opportunity to try this thing. And it's really interesting how many different ways you can try to build a winning deck in that game. Big recommendation. Next up is a game that I might actually play. You don't have to persuade me here because I was anticipating this one. Now, I don't play cards in real life. I also don't drive in real life, but I do sometimes drive in video games. games and Pacific Drive, which is a driving survival game available on PC and PS5 from Ironwood

Studios. I was really looking forward to this game. I'm still interested in checking it out, but having watched and read more about it, I am also daunted by some aspects of this game. So tell me about Pacific Drive. Pacific Drive. I've been playing this. I've been enjoying it. It takes a little bit of time to get into this game and understand the gameplay loop of it. I think intentionally, at the start of this game, there is a lot that you don't understand. And it wants you to feel that way. You are slowly discovering how this world works, what the weird things going on mean. So at the top, there's very much a sense of sort of discomfort and overwhelming.

And gradually, as you start to get around, I would say around seven, eight hours in, you start to be like, okay, I get this. I'm getting this now. You control every aspect of the car in kind of an analog way, right? You're flipping switches and opening the trunk and closing doors, and it's not just to flip a switch and stuff happens, which makes the car kind of a character, but also means that you suck at first.

You do suck at first, yeah. But it's very rewarding to tinker with the car and upgrade little parts of it. And the game does a lot of really unique things with its upgrade system. And there's just a very mysterious air about it. So if you like game three, you're kind of discovering things and gradually building up, this is getting better every hour

that I put into it. So I'm looking forward to continuing that. Yeah, kind of a rogue light, you know, you make runs through this strange world, which is kind of a Pacific Northwest, X-Files-E, but paranormal stuff is going on sort of situation.

And you have to figure out what is happening here. So I'm intrigued by the premise and the setting. a little intimidated by the mechanics. Next up, Unicorn Overlord, a tactics RPG available on all consoles from Vanillaware. All consoles, but not PC. They refuse to put it on PC, which I have absolutely no opinion about. Unicorn Overlord is so good. If you like tactics, if you like Ogre Battle, if it's like Fire Emblem, if you like that series,

but maybe that got a little tedious for you. Unicorn Overlord is a beautiful game. It taps into a lot of nostalgia for those tactic-style RPGs. And the combat system is really fascinating in that, and this is going to sound bad, but in the actual combat, you don't enter any commands. So what you do is you build all of these units comprised of three or four characters, and you've programmed each of the characters to say, okay, this is his prime. primary attack, right? And it does this kind of damage. So I will tell this to prioritize

attacking this type of enemy. And then you have passive skills that are programmed to say, okay, well, if a character in my party goes under 50% health, this skill will activate and auto heal them, things like that. So you're kind of programming how these units react. And you have a lot of them on the board at once. And it's really interesting. And it's a complicated game that explains everything super well. Really rewarding. There's a demo of this game. I think it's like a seven-hour demo.

I played through the whole thing and had to wait like five days for the game to release. And it's just dying. Oh, boy. Seven-hour demo is kind of concerning. Yeah, that's not the vibe for me personally. That's what you think? It's capped at seven hours. It's not like there is a demo.

I see. And you have to play seven hours to complete. No, it's more like you're playing the game and you get seven hours to play the game. Got it. Before you're cut off. That's less scary. The demo experience that you could have could be one hour, let's say. You would get the gist of it in an hour or two hours, I would say.

Okay. Your fourth and final rapid fire recommendation, speaking of beautiful games, Ultros, which is a Metroidvania available on all non-switch platforms, so it seems like it should be a switch game. Hey, Doc, Hadoken, we aren't sure. but you're sure it's a good game. Ultras is Metroidvania that is gorgeous. It has a really beautiful neon organic alien vibe going on. If you are a Metroidvania fan, this is definitely worth your time. It's more along the exploration side than the combat side.

If you're not a Metroidvania person, I don't know if this is going to be for you because there's very little handholding going on in this. But I think it's a really unique experience for Metroidvania fan. and also has a demo if you want to check it out and see if you're feeling the vibe. I'm looking at some gameplay footage of this right now, and I don't think I have seen a busier life bar in my life. Incredible music in this game as well.

Yeah, this is art. I was wary of playing it immediately after Prince of Persia, which is such an incredible game, just a great Metroidvania that I thought it would be a tough act to follow, but I'm planning to circle back around to this at some point. Okay, Steve, close us out. our fifth rapid fire recommendation deep rock galactic survivor a shoot-em-up in early access from fun day games yeah well if you like vampire survivor this was yep a note that that is sold yep yep so no this yes this is an early access

adaptation of that formula from the deep rock galactic franchise still has like a bit of a bare bones aesthetic to it there's a couple of runs that you can do and it has four available classes to it and what i really like about this is that the type of progression that is different from vampire survivor is a bit more tangible and in my opinion a bit more fun. What I like about this is that like you obviously have an auto shooter, you don't actually programming the attacks, you just walk around the map, you mine for resources, you find new weapons, you upgrade those weapons and different reload speeds and all these other different buffs. That's also very fun. But I think what the actual sticking point for a game like this is,

is that there are always different sub-objectives to do and find. There's always something to be doing and hunting for more in this game that is actually really good. It's bite-sized combat. I think a run would probably take no more than 15, 20 minutes if you were really pushing for it, but it can get hard, it can get difficult, it can be very challenging,

and you will likely fail a couple of times before you actually get the right combination of upgrades, but it's very addicting. You make the numbers go up, and the numbers are really, really nice. All right, check out all these great games, but don't let them distract you from the existential struggle for the future of Super Earth.

Helldivers, democracy prevails once more. Our mission is complete, so it is almost time for the flexes and the finger guns. Let's proceed to extraction. Steve, Matt, with you two on the podcast. Victory was never in doubt. Thank you for your service. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

Thank you to Devin Ronaldo for production assistance and to Arjuna Remikpal for his senior management. Stay tuned to the Ringiverse this week for further coverage of Invincible and Dune and the Verses, contact us at RingiverseGaming at gmail.com. But Mesh, we'll be back later this month. Until then, stand by for future orders from SuperEarth High Command.