Video Gamers Podcast - [Deep Dive] Heroic Helldivers 2 - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

Video Games Hosts Paul, Ryan and Josh are spreading democracy across the galaxy and shining the light of liberty as we deep dive Helldivers 2! Join us as we break down what makes this video game special and why the video game world is losing their collective minds over Helldivers 2. We dig into the various gameplay aspects, progression, game mechanics and more in this absolutely can’t miss gaming episode! Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Gaius214, YayaArizona, Disratory, Jwaf and AceofShame Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hello, fellow Helldivers! Welcome to Super Earth, where prosperity, liberty, and democracy are our way of life, but freedom doesn't come free. We are the Video Gamers Podcast, and we are here today to deep dive the smash hit Helldivers 2. I am your host, Paul, and joining me, he is running straight into that orbital strike straight ahead, it's Josh. Ryan, is that your freaking mortar again no bring in that ryan you killed me again oh boy and joining josh and me you know josh you beat me to the punch he just can't help himself mowing us down with his mortar century over and over again it's ryan josh there's a mortar don't go by the enemies. Don't,

no, don't. Oh, I'll get you. I'll get you back. Oh man. We will have to settle the debate of who's done the most friendly fire. And I think all three of us know who the answer is. We know who the answer is. Yeah. Well, we'll have to reveal that a little later if you, if you can't already tell. All right. Before we jump into hell divers to Josh, I think you're going to read a review or two. We do have, Hey, we've been, you to Josh, I think you're going to read a review or two. We do have, Hey, we've been,

you know, what is awesome is we've been getting a good bit of reviews lately. So thank you to everybody out there that is taking the time to leave us a review. It really helps the show. So if you love the podcast, if you want to help us out, take just a few seconds and leave us a review.

There's a good chance that we'll read them on the show. If you are listening on Spotify, you can rate us five stars. But yeah, these really help the show out. It's a great way to just say thanks for the content and we appreciate it. And we'll read a couple like I'm going to do right now. This first one comes in from Nolan the Turtle and it's titled Finally. And it says, I've been listening for about eight months and just have been so lazy I didn't write a review. This podcast is great because all of the hosts are always very funny. They always give great game suggestions, and I have gotten into great games with my friends because of them.

Some examples being Bopple Battle and The Finals. Overall, it's an amazing podcast. Nice. Oh, thank you, Nolan. That's so sweet. And by the way, shout out to Bopple Battle. Still one of the best indie games we've ever played. Absolutely.

And you know what? Hey, it's okay to be honest and just say, hey guys, I've been lazy. I like the show, but I just haven't left a review. We're not going to pick on you. We're just thankful that you took the time. As long as you still do it. As long as you still leave the review. Yeah, exactly. All right. And then this next one comes in from Tech Cat 13, all the way from Great Britain. And it says, this podcast is a hidden gem waiting to be discovered by those

who have been cursed so badly to not have heard the beautiful voices of Paul and Ryan and then the voice of Josh. This is the podcast of three gaming dads who just want to put their opinion out there in the most fun and wholesome way until Josh starts yelling.

In short, if you don't listen to this podcast, you can suffer in the silence that you have created for yourselves. I love it. That's the best one yet. Yeah, that kind of counterbalances the to only Josh, I love you. Hey, you know what? Tech Cat, I love you anyway, man.

So Paul and Ryan need their own separate love sometimes. Yeah, I don't think anyone's ever called any of our voices beautiful, but I will take it. Yeah. And also if you have played hell divers with me, you're going to realize that I am, I am this loud and boisterous in life in general. This is not just for the podcast. So, Oh, playing hell divers with you versus like our buddy, Steve, I was running with Steve and two of our other friends. We're just talking Steve and two of our other friends. We're just talking about like my time working for Progressive. We're chatting the whole time.

When we're on with you, it's just nonstop yelling about Chargers and Bile Spewers and Bile Titans. It's just nonstop yelling and screaming. I live in the moment, guys. What can I say? All right. And then Ryan, tell the guys. What can I say? All right. And then Ryan, tell the people about why they should support us on Patreon. Well, podcasts may not be as lucrative as most people think. Most of our income is from you supporters out there, all you listeners.

MultiplayerSquad.com is a way you can help us out. We're entirely funded by you guys. It really helps us out. It really keeps this train moving. Again, MultiplayerSquad.com. You can sign up for as low as five bucks a month. You get a lot of awesome perks on our Discord, and you can reach out to us.

We can play some games with you, too. It's all kinds of cool stuff, so go ahead and shoot over there. Help us out, and then if you're lazy for a while and then still want to leave us a review, we still love that also. And you'll get a shout out on the show. And we owe two of them here today. We want to say thank you so much to Alex, who signed up with Epic Status. He has been super...

Active? He has been super active in our discord lately we want to say thank you to him and also ace of shame who has come up several times on the show he has re-signed up with legendary and that's going to lead to another hijack a host episode down the road if you sign up at the highest tier which is legendary you get to actually pick a game and a host and they will have to play it and then we will deep dive it on the show. So yes, if you want to go check it out, like Ryan said, MultiplayerSquad.com is the place to do it. All right, let's get into our deep dive of Helldivers 2. This one has been waiting for

such a long time. Let's start out by reading the Steam description, as we always do. The galaxy's last line of offense. Enlist in the Helldivers and join the fight for freedom across a hostile galaxy in a fast, frantic, and ferocious third-person shooter. All right, we have been waiting for a multiplayer shooter for such a long time. We thought the finals might have been the answer to that. Josh was a little bit higher on it than me and Ryan. Ultimately, it didn't really go anywhere. We finally have Helldivers 2. We have talked about it a lot on this show in anticipation,

just in case any of our listeners out there didn't hear any of it, or maybe this is the first episode that they're listening to. Josh, just kind of give us, like, in a nutshell, what is Helldivers 2? Freedom never sleeps! Oh man, how do you explain Chaos Incarnate? Helldivers 2 is a up to four player co-op game. You are basically sent down to a planet that you can pick. And then you have a series of missions that you need to complete on this planet.

Depending on the planet, you are fighting either the Terminids, which are straight giant bugs that are something right out of like Starship Troopers. Some of them are huge. Some of them are little. Some of them are fat. Some of them are fast. I mean, there is a good variety of bugs in this and then you get to hop into terminator world because you get to fight the automatons and those guys are nightmare fuel with their cyborg bodies and human skulls and giant buzz saws and laser guns and all this stuff. I mean, it is bananas, man.

That is the best way to describe Helldivers 2. But you get to go in with your buddies. You have guns. You have these, we're going to call them skills to just make it relatable, but they're basically called stratagems in the game that you select before you go into the mission. And then it is just chaos, survival, screaming, and joy all mixed together in this crazy package. I know we were hype in this game forever. You know, we were saying, hey, this looks like this could be the next big game that

we're really excited for. And we're here to break it all down and tell you if it satisfied us or not. And, by the way, it's got some friendly fire as well. Oh, yeah. Don't forget that part, Ryan. There is? Oh, I didn't know. Ryan wouldn't know.

Josh and I do. Oh, I didn't know. Ryan wouldn't know. Josh and I do. Oh, man. Sweet liberty! Oh, this game has been so much action, so much chaos, so much fun. I love having co-op shooters like this. Now, of course, being Helldivers 2, it's a sequel to Helldivers 1. None of the three of us ever played it. Helldivers 1 is like a 2D top-down perspective,

kind of like a bullet hell kind of game, like Enter the Gungeon. It kind of has that kind of feel. Here in Helldivers 2, they made the change to be in full 3D. And obviously, it helps when you already have lore and an established universe to draw from. But I really want to talk, before we start talking about combat, I want to talk about the game's identity and the game's humor. We loved all the trailers leading up to this game. It has a lot of over-the-top patriotism and bravado about it. The game, I think, is intensely funny. I was not sure if that was going to come through in the gameplay as well. I think it does absolutely in spades. I kind of want to hear from you guys. How does it feel to be in the Helldivers universe fighting on behalf of Super Earth? To me, as a kid, I was a 90s kid. And so

growing up, when I was a little bit older, I watched 80s and 90s action movies with my dad that was like one of our things on tnt or whatever late at night we'd watch arnold and sly and all these guys blow stuff up obnoxiously and say these cheesy one-liners and that's exact you feel like you're in those crazy 80s action movies and you're running around you hear all the yelling and the screaming and then you even hear the one-liners you know throughout throughout the game throughout when you're in the middle of the match and it's just it takes me back and there's just there's so much enjoyment and there's so much fun and even you you know you're you're you hear someone just

just screaming bloody murder because they're on fire you're like josh are you on fire and he's like oh yeah yep and he just hits himself with the stem he's like all right i'm good and then we just keep running so there's just so much comedy in there as well as all the action and and the objectives there's just there's so many layers to this you know it's i just i got i could gush all day there's so much to say i i will say i was very pleasantly surprised by how the the comedy and the way that the game kind of views itself lands i mean it's beyond just the the you know i'm on fire and you hear my character just screaming it it goes beyond my arm gets crippled by a bug. And my guy's like,

how am I supposed to spread democracy with only one arm? You'll never stop me. You know, to a guy being in a turret and just going like, get some, get some. But it is so over the top. It is so campy but it when you're playing the game it works so well because you can't help but laugh man and there's this weird thing where like when you're fighting for your life against overwhelming odds your Your buddies are all dead. They're screaming at you through the mic to redeploy them. And you hear your character just belt out this funny line

or something along those lines. It really just adds another layer to this cake that is, it just works, man. And it's funny because the game doesn't take itself seriously. If it did, it would be a completely different game, in my opinion. But I love the little things that happen in this. It really does add to the overall recipe, in my opinion. Yeah. Sometimes these shooters can feel a little bit too dark and oppressive. And even though this game gets quite difficult, especially if you're

playing on the highest levels, every hell diver in this game, like the characters you play, are just so excited to enter the battle. They drop in, they're going to die within, I mean, at best, you know, 10 minutes, but they're just excited to be on the battlefield. They're screaming, they're yelling, they're kind of like almost narrating what's happening in such a funny way. I mean, they're literally yelling, have a cup of liberty, you know, while fighting the bugs and stuff like it's so hysterical. I absolutely love it. It kind of lightens the mood while you're dealing with the chaos and it just blends together so well i mean even in the fact that when you first do your initial tutorial which by the way is hilarious like yeah they

have you stand in front of a terminal and they're going to simulate a a battle injury and then just a spike comes out and just like stabs you like not like a needle like a full-blown giant spike like you're gonna die if you don't heal and that's how they teach you to use stims and then you finish the tutorial and you get your own ship and you get to name it and i love when just games add little touches like this you just have a bank of words and the format is your ship is going to be the blank of blank. Maybe you're like the dispenser of liberty or the stalwart of justice or something like that. I just wanted to ask you guys, what did you end up naming your ship? Oh, I went, I just embodied it, man. I mean, we're trying to spread democracy

through the galaxy. I went with the harbinger of peace because i'm bringing peace to the galaxy whether you want it or not when they're all dead there's peace right what about you ryan it was like uh man i'm trying to think now because it was a dispenser of destiny or something like that but it was it was destiny because you know josh's destiny was to get friendly killed. Yeah, that's very true. Oh, nice. I named my ship the Stallion of Midnight. I won't say why, but it just made me laugh a little bit when I saw that as an option. All right.

Now, you might kind of be wondering, okay, so this game's funny. It's got like its identity, right? What actually makes this game special? Because we's got like its identity, right? What actually makes this game special? Because we have so many shooters that are out there. Is this just one of many? This is not a AAA title. This is a AA studio. It's a $40 game. It's a little bit on the cheaper side. So what is it that actually sets Helldivers apart? And I would argue that there's actually a few things that do this, but the main bread and butter are the stratagems. So you mentioned this earlier, Josh, you are running around,

not just with your regular weapons, but over the course of the game, you are unlocking stratagems, which are basically, sometimes they're items. Sometimes they are actual offensive attacks that you are calling down from space. So while you are running these missions, you can look up in the sky, you will see your ships up in orbit. And these stratagems, you can carry four with you on a mission. And basically, they give you the ability to call down something that is going to drastically change the battle that's going on on the planet. Now, to give you an idea of some of the things that your stratagems can do, for example,

there's one tree that is called, it's just supplies, right? You can call down a traditional weapon like a flamethrower or a rail gun, something like that. You have orbital cannons, where basically your ship in orbit will send down a barrage for where you mark a target. It does a ton of damage, but it has a little bit of a cooldown. You have hangar eagle strikes that happen much quicker because they're flown in by jets that are already on the planet's surface. That'll come in and it can destroy buildings or enemies. You also have an engineering bay where you can call down some kind of machinery, like a little barrel that'll spin in a circle and shoot out mines that are going to destroy enemies who walk over them. And you also have a robotics workshop where you can call down sentries. Ryan is very familiar

with the robotics workshop. These are sentries that will drop down and they will automatically fire on enemies. Now, stratagems do carry their own refresh timers. Some of them you can only use once and then you have to wait for a cooldown. Some of them you can redeploy multiple times. But Ryan, I'm going to let you do the honors here. How do you call in these stratagems from space? So this is one part that I thought was so neat. And such a cool fold within the game. As you're playing. You have these stratagems.

Like Paul explained. So you pop open this menu. And it gives you a list of all your different ones. And then it's got your arrow keys. Like a code to call down these stratagems. So in the heat of battle. You have all of these bugs. Or all of these Terminator guys running around you. And you got to hit left, left, up, left, up, down, right, or something like that. And you hear the buttons as you're going, and you can hear your teammates' buttons too.

And it's like, I need a respawner. I need resupply. Or I need a war striker. Any of those things. And you got to stop or, as Paul found out, there's ways to get it to where you can keep running and you can still hit those codes. And you can drop the stuff down. You get like this kind of a ball and you throw it down

and a big beam comes down in the air and you can either see your strike come down or the resupply or any of those things. So it was just such a neat feature, I thought, that in the middle of all this chaos, you got to input a code and to try to to you know help yourself to advance throughout throughout that little match or that little battle in that in

that moment so it was such a cool feature it was it was really unique to have that kind of like i said that fold in there to to have to do that well everything is is going crazy. And you're going to get hit. Sometimes you have it in your hand. You've entered that code, and then you get blasted by a tick or something, and he's spraying acid on you, and you drop it right on. Guys, run! Airstrike, run! Run! Run!

And everybody's got to scatter because it's going to hit there. And if it's one of the eagle strikes, it's going to happen in a couple seconds. So it was such a cool feature that i absolutely loved and i'm sure you guys could talk more on it but yeah it was one of my favorite things was the stratagems i i will say never in a million years did i think that something so simple as having to input a code yeah would affect gameplay and the feeling of being in combat so much like there's people listening that are like, I don't get it. So you hit a series of directions, right? And it's like, but having to do that in

the heat of combat when you are being approached by 50 automatons or you have 40 bugs chasing you and you're the only guy left in your squad and you know you have about a half a second to throw that stratagem because the stratagem is also how you redeploy your squad mates so when people die they don't come back automatically you have to summon them by throwing the stratagem that redeploys them. So this lends itself to insane like stress and like amazing like clutch plays at the same time though. When you're running and you've got a horde of 40 bugs chasing you and I'm the only one left and I mean you have to redeploy stratagem, it doesn't change. Now that's the thing. These codes don't change unless there's a modifier

which we can get into a little bit later. But, I mean, up, down, right, left, up, you know, to throw the redeploy. And it's like, you have to do that so fast. And if you whiff it, you have to start over. So then you're freaking out. Your

buddies are all freaking out. I mean, it is, it seems simple, but it adds an incredible layer to this game that it's hard to describe. This is one of those things where you have to experience it. You have to be in the heat of battle. And some of them are long. Like, honestly, depending on how good the stratagem is,

sometimes they're like eight key presses. The rover dog? Yeah. Yeah, that one's long. I mean, some of them are long, and it's this incredible thing where you might have a gigantic bile titan, which is this colossus of a bug,

stomping down on you. You have aggro. You see it coming, and you're like, well, I've got something that can help deal with this, but you get one chance to summon that stratagem and throw it before you get obliterated by this guy and it's like if you make it it is glory for your squad and if you whiff it you are dead in a very spectacular fashion and it i love it man it's something so simple

in this game but it really adds something just tangible to it oh 100 it is so simple to just have to enter this code but the fact that you don't just enter the code but then you have to throw the grenade and you have to try to time it and you have to manage your cooldowns this is where you are doing most of your damage i think is probably fair to say i mean running around with your shotgun or your sniper that's doing damage as well but it's the stratagems that are wiping out an entire patrol at once or destroying buildings or closing nests that are spawning more bugs uh believe it or not it's already time for our first break so we're going to take just a short break and then we're going to come back and talk about our favorite stratagems. Okay, we are back. I want to say

that one of my favorite stratagems is the reinforce. And here's why. When you call someone in for battle, they drop in in a drop pod. Now you have about 1.8 seconds from the time that pod enters the atmosphere till it hits the ground, but you can pilot and control that drop pod. And if you land on an enemy, it will absolutely do a lot of damage to X. There are times that I've died and I've said, guys,

I need to reinforce, chuck me on the bile Titan and I'll kill it. It's bleeding. It'll take it out. We just did that last night. And I love the fact that when you die and come back, that's actually part of like your strategy and fighting. I have never seen a game use a respawn mechanic better than this. In most games, like if you die in Mario, you just come back at the beginning of the level. Right. And that's fine. That's how most games like if you die in mario you just come back at the beginning of the level right and and that's fine that's how most games handle respawn here it's part of the lore it's part of the story it's part of the strategy i think it's completely ingenious i mean is it my

absolute favorite stratagem no but i absolutely love how reinforce works and i just kind of wanted to hear from you guys do you have any favorite stratagems? And Ryan, why is it the Mortar Century? We'll let Ryan try to defend his love of the team killer. You know, this is another cool part of the game is there's a lot of stratagems. I don't know the exact number, but I mean, I would say it's 30, if I had to guess.

Maybe even a little higher. Yeah, 30 or 35, somewhere around there. There is a wide variety. Now, some are very effective at certain things. Some of them are going to clear a horde of little guys. Some of them are going to target these giant armored enemies, but not do anything to a horde. So I love that they really do add to how you are going to approach the missions.

And they're different depending on whether you're facing the bugs or the robots. Like, honestly, I bring different ones depending on who we're fighting at the same time. There are two stratagems that I never leave home without, it seems like, honestly. One is the heavy machine gun turret. It is a giant turret that you get in. It's got dual cannons and it turns very slowly, but it obliterates things, man. It feels like a heavy turret should feel. And there's just something fun about calling this thing down, getting in it, slowly turning to where the hordes coming from, and then just

mowing them down while you guys are like on foot like just trying to survive i i absolutely love it it does really good against the big guys uh as well um it's very risk reward and when i see you get in that josh i try to pay close attention to your back because you're stuck like if someone comes up behind you you're gonna die and in this game you die fast it could just be anywhere from one to maybe five hits at the most and so that's part of the team play when i see you doing crazy damage with the hmg i'm trying to watch your back at the same time yeah because if you don't i'm getting i'm getting one-shotted you know and then now i'm not in the hmg anymore either so i love that it's also

hilarious like we mentioned earlier to just hear your character start screaming because you're just mowing down bugs and it's like this weird joyous scream that he's got going on it's great and then so great and then the other one is a little bit later in the game but it's called the orbital laser yeah i mean imagine a death star beam from space just and like paul said this is the beauty of this game we're going to get into some of the aesthetics of it here in a little bit. But this laser comes from your ship that is in orbit. So you can literally look up in the sky and see this thing beaming down this Death Star laser. And it has like tracking. So it will just sit there and scour the battlefield, obliterating everything.

And it's so good for like the really heavily armored guys. Now, it takes a while to kill them this is not like a one shot but it's just this glorious like it's the light of liberty guys just beaming down from the heavens it's great man oh that's awesome yeah i i uh there's there's so many that are awesome within this. It's so hard a lot of times to pick one because you have so many cool options. And they're actually, they're always, it's not just a tool. They're fun to use.

They're enjoyable. Every time you use one, you're like, yeah, all right. Every time. And real quick to get back to just the overall basis of the stratagems, how much different would it be if you click down your little slot and you just selected which one it was?

You didn't have to put in the code. Or if you just hit like one, two, three, four, and that was it? Like think of how- Oh, it would not be nearly as fun. No, it would still be cool, but think of the difference that creates just having to put in that code.

I wanted to mention that real quick. But aside from that, I'm sure everybody on the Discord knows about what my favorite strategy is. The team killer? The team killer. I'd say it's equal team kills because I'm pretty sure I got a lot of screenshots where Josh had more accidentals than me. But there's one that is a great amasser of death for the bugs, and that's the Mortar Sentry. I absolutely love it. Andy, our good friend, turned me on to it,

and I used it once, and I was hooked. I was like, oh, oh, yeah, this is the one. You just hear, boom, boom, boom, boom, and you just see the mortars going in the air, and it's just kill, kill, kill, this is the one. You just hear, boom, boom, boom, boom, and you just see the mortars going in the air, and it's just kill, kill, kill, kill. Josh dead. Paul dead. Andy dead.

Hey, guys, I got 30 kills on that little run. It was worth it. I'll respond right now. Worth it is Ryan's catchphrase, man. That's all we hear. That's all we hear. Paul and I are dead. We're like, now you have to call us in, Ryan.

Ryan's like, I'm busy fighting, guys. And we're like, you killed us. No, I will die on this hill. When I get 250, 300 kills and I have two accidentals, it's worth it. It's worth it. You can complain and whine and cry all you want because you died, but you're going to die anyways, and I'm going to get 300 kills. I love that we have posted so many memes about ryan and his mortar century one of them

is from uh tim robinson where he's in the hot dog suit but he's got like the hell divers helmet he's like we're all trying to find the guy that killed us and it's just clearly the mortar century uh we also have the one with the car salesman slapping the roof of the mortar this bad boy can kill so many hell divers did you see the Uno one? Oh, yeah, the Uno one. Go ahead. What does it say? Do what?

Draw 25? Yeah, it was, what was it? Don't have the mortar or draw 25 cards. And then it just says Ryan in it. He's got a whole stack of cards. Yeah, that's 100% accurate. The Mortar Century absolutely has its time and place. Which is always.

Which to Ryan is always. It's great for defense as long as you're not near any enemies. As soon as you're near enemies, you're dying to it no matter what. The stratagems in this game are such a blast. It is very fun to swap between them, to test out new ones. So let's talk a little bit about progression. So there's actually one second, Paul, because I got to say this because I don't, we haven't touched on this either. When we talk about the stratagems and calling in giant orbital lasers in mortars and napalm strikes. And I mean, the list goes on and on and on. The one thing

that is hard to capture is how visceral these things are. Like Ryan touched on it earlier, but it is like, I mean, there, I have seen a hundred napalm strikes get called in and I have never, not once just gone like, Whoa,

you know, like honestly, this game, the effects in this game are second to none. Like, honestly, I don't know if i can think of another video game that does it as good as hell divers 2 does it it is it's like glorious is the only way

that i can describe it and it's everything man like even ryan's stupid mortar which i hate like he mentioned it it makes this thunk sound and you can literally watch the mortar go up in the air 50 feet yeah 50 feet and then come crashing down right on top of my head and killing me but it's like you can watch it the whole time a napalm strike is one of the coolest things i've ever seen him in the game you know like yeah the ibm the i just unlocked like a new one like it's a orbital rail cannon where this red laser comes and targets something. But then you can see. Now, it's super fast, but you can see this shell come whizzing in at like 1,000 miles an hour and just explode something, dude.

Even something as simple as mines. You mentioned that at the top of the show. You get this thing that lays down this giant minefield. It comes down looking like a little pyramid with the top cut off. And then it opens up these four doors and it starts spinning around like crazy. And mine's just shooting out everywhere. And you're just watching this stuff and you're just like, yo, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen. A comical amount of mines. It's ridiculous. It is hard to describe. And I have seen video of people using these things. And until you're in

the game and you are hearing the sound effects and your screen is shaking because of some giant bomb that just got dropped, it's hard to describe, but man, the effects in this game are second to none in a video game. Like they honestly are have to give them credit for that because it adds to that feeling like you are in combat. It is awesome, man. Oh yeah, that's a great point. It's very visceral. The screen shake, the audio, all of it just makes you drop your jaw

the first time you see these things. And sometimes they get dropped very close to you and we all start yelling like, oh, that's a 500 kilogram eagle, get out. And everyone just starts scattering. But if they drop like right next to you and we all start yelling like oh that's a 500 kilogram eagle get out and everyone just starts scattering but if they drop like right next to you and and sometimes it will blast you off your feet and it won't even necessarily do damage and of course it can kill you if you're like right under it but they they all look and feel so different like i don't even have to see it

or like i don't have to see the actual laser because if you look at a laser coming down from space, it'll tell you like, oh, this is an eagle airstrike five, four, three, two, one, and then it lands. I can tell what they are just based on the sound. They did such a good job designing all these stratagems. I can tell right away. Oh, I hear Ryan's mortar going off. By the way, life pro tip, stand next to the mortar and you will hardly ever die. That's the trick. All right. So let's talk about progression because we all love progression in games like this. A lot of times this lens like into longevity. Does the game have legs? Are we going to play this game for one weekend and be

done or does it have more long-term play? This game actually has several progression mechanics. Let's first talk about the ship management computer. All right. Now, whenever you run a mission at the end, you gain XP for finishing the mission. So your character does level up as you hit new levels, new stratagems become available. You also earn currency, which are called requisition slips for completing objectives. If you do optional objectives, you gain additional requisition slips. And you also get a certain bonus for how much time is

left on the clock. Because some missions are short. They have a 10-minute timer. Some are 12 minutes. Some are 40 minutes. And basically basically the carrot that keeps you coming back to play match after match is leveling your character having new stratagems available and spending that requisition slip money on it you also have ship modules that require rare materials that you can find in the game and you have to extract with it. And then you can spend that, which will upgrade an entire tree of stratagems. So maybe you increase all of your orbital strikes. So now they all call down one second quicker. Now these upgrades for the ship take far longer than the stratagems. It requires a little bit

more play. I wanted to kind of ask you guys you know how do you feel about the system of unlocking stratagems and ship modules i i thought they did it brilliantly um first i'll touch on because that's what's at the top of my mind right now the ship stuff with the with the minerals or the the rare samples and stuff like that that's just another layer like we keep talking about layers it's just another factor in the game that I absolutely love that brings more, you know, unintended chaos to the game. Cause you spent all this time,

you're defeating all these bugs or all these robots and you've collected all these samples and you die. Well, all those samples you have are on the floor. Now you get respawned, but maybe you're not close to the rest of your team. You to run back and try to get them hold on guys i got to get my samples back so you guys can all extract extract with them and so it's just one of those things where you know it it just makes more panic and chaos and and depth to the game where you have to you have to

get those so that you can bring them home and extract them and then further progress your ship or your guns or whatever you use them for. So I absolutely love that factor. As far as the rest of the stuff with the advancement in your equipment, all of those things, I love how you have the different pages. You can keep kind of scrolling through. All right, I got to spend this much. You can't just save them all. You got to spend it.

It's one of those things where we got to get all this stuff spent before we get to the next page, and then we can unlock these. And they do have those little carrots there. You get some credits, or you get a cool, unique emote, or something different like that. And then, oh, look, there's a cool gun. So as you go through, there's just those carrots dangling to keep you progressing throughout get those war medals get those samples and just just keep dispersing liberty throughout the galaxy

i i really enjoy the progression system you guys know know I don't stick with games for too terribly long. And this was a concern, right? Like when we first started playing, we got the combat, it's there, right? And it's like, okay, I don't care how good the combat is. If there is nothing to do but combat, like that's going to have a short life. And so I was very, very pleasantly surprised when I started to kind of see the progression systems. Early on, it's, hey, you just got to acquire money and levels. As you level up, you'll get access to new stratagems, but then you have to be able to buy

those stratagems. So you've got the progression of going up in levels. Well, now you've got the progression of you need to have enough money so that you can buy the stratagems that you want. And certain ones unlock at certain levels. So you've got this nice little progression route that you can go. And then like Ryan touched on, you have the ship progression route. This is where you upgrade your actual main ship. And that, in turn, then affects a series of stratagems that you have. So it's like, well this is cool this

is more long-term upgrades and then you get medals when you complete a mission and then you can you realize that you can spend your medals on these like battle pass type things but it's like like you said it's maybe it's an armor set that actually affects the gameplay maybe it's heavy armor where you don't take as much damage or you get two extra grenades or you get extra stems or extra stamina. You get these team boosters that you can select every so often. So now you get a buff that affects your whole squad. So then you've got like that progression route. Then you've got the route of the difficulty levels, you know, and you can play the game on easy, but then it goes all the way up to hell divers. And I mean, that's just chaos incarnate at that point. And for me, seeing these multiple systems of progression

is what I really needed to be able to like settle into this game and say, okay, this isn't like fun for a weekend or two. This is a game that people can actually play for a very long time. A hundred percent. Yeah. yeah and and one thing too is how many times did we say dude i can't wait to get to level 8 so i can unlock this oh man i'll get the tesla tower at level 15 oh dude level 20 we're gonna get the rail gun like that's that's what i haven't had in such a long time to where you're just looking forward to every little tick of your xp to get to that next level so you can unlock certain things that you want to try out. Because like we said before, everything is so impactful. Everything is so fun to use.

It's just overall, the progression is just awesome. And I feel like the pacing is about right because in the very beginning, I thought, oh, wow, it kind of takes a while to level up like once you hit level four you got to run like three missions to hit five and then i was like oh if it's going to start slowing down that fast maybe this is going to be too slow but then 27 hours in i've unlocked a vast majority of the stratagems but not quite all and i feel like that pacing is about right and i do feel like we have to touch just a little bit more on the war bonds, which is their quote battle pass. Now battle passes. I usually do not

care about at all because they're usually cosmetic. I never pay for battle passes. If you're going to have a battle pass system, I actually really love the way they do it in hell divers. Basically you earn these metals when you complete missions, by the way they do it in Helldivers. Basically, you earn these medals when you complete missions. By the way, missions combine where if you run multiple missions in the same area, it's an overall operation. And if you do that, you get even more medals. Well, when you finish a level, you can bring up your Acquisition Center and you can start spending those medals on your unlockables, but it gives you an element of choice. It's not like a traditional battle pass. Oh, you're level five. Here's a spray you're never

going to use. Instead, I have multiple options. Maybe I do want that emote, or maybe I want a background card, or I want a victory pose for my character, but this is also how you unlock new weapons. So whether you're going to unlock that new smg or a sniper or a shotgun or whatever it may be this is where you are unlocking things over time there are 10 pages of of gear or different mechanics in the game you can unlock and then you can either pay 10 for the premium warband which i think is called like the hardened veterans war bond or something. But you can also unlock all of that with the in-game currency. You don't have to spend any additional money.

Every single thing in this game can be earned just by putting in the time and playing. If you want a little bit of a shortcut, you can pay $10 for the optional warband, but you're going to get it there anyway. And that's only three pages. 10 out of the 13 pages are the same for everyone. You just get access to the last three when you complete the first one. So, I mean, do you guys like that?

I think it's so much better than a traditional battle pass. I could care less about battle passes. You guys know this. But this is how it's done. I really like the idea of mixing something fun. I mean, all of us went with the finger guns, victory pose so that we were all in sync after, you know, a successful mission.

But then at the same time, I was super excited to unlock a new grenade type, you know, or a new sidearm or something like that. I mean, I literally was talking earlier today. I'm making it further down. I'm going to get a new team booster soon when I have 75 medals. And it's like, I can't wait, right? Like, I mean, I'm saving my medals and I cannot wait.

Like, let's run more missions, guys, so I can get more medals, so I can get this booster for the team. And I really enjoy that. I'll be honest. I don't care about the Steeled Veterans War Bond. I've looked at it, and I get that people are paying $10 to access that, and it's like, but that doesn't matter

to me. Yeah, there's a neat gun in there, but I like my gun. It's just one of those things where it's like, I will likely never dig into that, the Premium War Bond, because it just doesn't affect my gameplay whatsoever. And you're going to get there eventually for free anyway.

And that's exactly the point because you can unlock it using super credits. You get super credits like, you know, on some of the planets by finding these cool, like rare caches and things like that, or just buying them in the normal war bond. They give you a hundred premium credits at that point. The thing I really do like about this

system though, is you have to spend the metals. So you start off on page one and I think there's probably 10 options that you can buy. Well, to unlock page two, it will say spend 30 metals. So it's like, well, I have to buy these things. So I don't wind up with choice paralysis. I don't wind up with the, I don't want this stuff because it's like, well, I have to spend these medals. So I might as well go with the victory banner, you know, or something like that. And I'll be honest for somebody like me,

that works really, really well because a lot of times I'll just hoard this stuff because I have like choice paralysis or I don't really know, or I don't care. But in this case, I like the fact that they're saying, hey, just spend them. When you spend them, you'll unlock a new page of stuff at that point.

And it really just kind of keeps things moving along. And on the fact of the premium war bond thing or whatever, this is only a $40 game. Yeah. Like you could buy that and you're still less than $60. You're not even up to a $60 game. This is more fun than I've had on a game in forever. And it's $40. Yeah.

I was actually going to say the only reason that I would buy the premium Warbond is because I literally want to give them more of my money. I don't need the Warbond. It's worth more than $40. I don't need the Warbond. Now that's some liberty right there. Here's a tip for you, man. Thank you for making this video game. an extra ten dollars that's exactly what i was gonna say if anything it's just

to support the game yeah all right well let's go ahead and take our last break and then we'll come right back okay so guys one thing that we haven't even mentioned up to this point is that when you go out on these missions everything's procedurally. And I think this is part of what keeps the game really interesting. There's all these planets that you can choose and they all look and feel a little bit different. Objectives are never in the same spot. But I think one of the coolest things is some of the optional objectives affect the gameplay and the planet in really cool ways. Like, for example, sometimes you drop on the terminated planets with the bugs, and there's almost like a thick fog everywhere. And that's because as you run through these levels,

there's like these mushroom spores. And if you run over them, they slow you down as you get this big puff in the air. Well, there can be a massive spore spewer tree that is creating that fog on the planet and if you go run around and find that tree and call in an eagle airstrike it'll blow up the tree and then very slowly everything clears and now you have visibility like how cool is it that they're just adding in little optional objectives it's not as simple as go blow up that building and then go on your merry way it's actually impacting the gameplay yeah i i love these little things that they do like that you don't have to do these objectives they do reward you fairly well for doing them though like initially when we first

started we were just beelining the main objective. Yeah. And then we didn't realize, yeah, we soon realized if you do the side objectives, you actually wind up making a lot of money and you know, they're fun and things like that. And there's a good variety of them. Some of them are, you know, Hey, you have to like download data. So you have to protect this one guy while he's standing around, you know, like waiting. Or like you mentioned, the spore spewer tree. You know, there's the, like the soil sample ones. Like there's a wide variety of like the side missions, but then there's also a really good variety of the main missions as well.

And we see it in the really cool thing is they're different between fighting the bugs, which are the terminates and fighting the robots, which are the automatons. And so like, even though sometimes it's similar, like it's like, Hey, go destroy the nests, you know, with the bugs, the nests are in the ground and there's a giant hole in the ground. And there's usually like four or five of them. Whereas when you're fighting the robots, they have like a fort and you have to go into this fort that is walled. So there's only one or two ways in, and they have these little houses that have like vents at the top and you

got to chuck a grenade in this little vent to when they open, yeah, to blow up this little hut thing that's producing these robots. So the variety that they give you is honestly really good. And I like that you have the main missions and the secondary missions and what people don't realize is like with this spore spewer tree you can't see nothing man like you can see like four feet in front of you do you know how crazy it is to be in the super thick fog and then come across a giant bug that

is in front of you that wants to rip your face off but you can hear them yes yes yeah it's like that's what adds to this overall feeling in this game of like dread and fear and like you feel like you're on an alien planet and the fog lifts and then you see like 40 bugs you're like oh yeah oh no you think you're good and then all of a sudden the terror comes right back to you this is one thing back i'm scared dude paul and i were talking about this today or yesterday i forget when it was we were just just gushing over the environment we were just talking just it and this is seems so lame but i'm like paul look at this crater dude like i just called down this strike

look how it just took out the ground and destroyed these buildings he's like dude i know isn't this awesome and that's that's the stuff we we look at this game like we're in there just looking at the environment and what damage we've caused i i've always been i i love call of duty i love modern warfare i've always been a Battlefield guy because I love the effects I can have on the environment within where I'm playing this does that brilliantly it's beautiful I call

these strikes down I'm trying to destroy these bugs and these towers or these vent factories and it does it destroys them and it puts a freaking crater in the ground man you just blow up everything and you feel like you have impact on the world other than just shooting guys and that's what oh yeah that's what makes it so cool to me well and i know we're really waxing poetic

about it but like we ran a mission where we were waiting for the extraction so that's like one thing we haven't really mentioned when you, once you finish all the main objectives, you have to get to the extract, you call in your evac ship, and you have a countdown, and you have to wait it out. Now, we did an evac where we were surrounded by buildings, and we're like, okay, there's like three ways in.

Josh gets on his HMG in the one channel. Ryan pops a mortar. I pop a Gatling Sentry to take care of this path. And over the course of battle we've destroyed all the buildings around us and now it's just a flat landscape and we were joking about that like guys we destroyed all of our cover but that's like how destructible the environments are and it's just fun to see like the impact of all this stuff now shockingly there are still main things about combat we have not even touched on or talked about and i want to talk about what is i can't believe i'm about to say

this one of my favorite things about this game and it's the dive mechanic oh man guys yes this game let's see ryan's acting it out you get to dive and it's a directional dive, but you can still fire your gun while diving. And this might not really translate like over a podcast. Sometimes you're diving just to get out of the way of like a bug that's charging you and you kind of know, okay, you dive at like a 45 degree angle and that way you don't get hit. But there are times that you have to like, like some of the bases you'll see have like a broken bridge and you dive over it and you're firing while diving. It's hard to describe what it's

like, but diving backward while firing your gun is so satisfying in this game. Yeah. It's another one of those you feel like you're fighting for your life. Like, I'm going to keep using the term visceral because it really just describes things. But yeah, I mean, you've got bugs charging at you. And I mean, they leap at you, man, with their little sharp bug claws out and stuff like that.

And so if you're running, you can just dive backwards. And it's this mid-air like heroic you know arnold schwarzenegger sylvester stallone dive where you're firing while your guy's in the air and then when you land you land on your back so you're now prone shooting at these things on the ground that are towering over you at this point. And they can stomp you sometimes. They'll die. Oh, I know. They definitely stomp you.

And it's like the same thing. Yeah. Like there's these big armored bugs, man, that they're called chargers. Because guess what they do? They charge at you. And you have to like dive to the side then. So it's like your guy will literally dive sideways. Now there's, again, risk reward here.

Because if you dive, now you're on risk reward here because if you dive now you're on the ground and you're not moving so then you're spamming space bar to try to get up as quickly as possible so that you can start running for your life again um but you have you also you also get like an increase to accuracy with the machine gun because it's designed to be shot while prone right so yeah and then so now you've dodged this attack. You're laying on the ground. You're lighting up all these little bugs that are pouring after you.

It's like a last stand kind of thing. And again, it's just one of those magic moments like in a movie or a video game where you're just holding off this horde on your back, shooting for your life. You know, it's funny. You can dive off of like tall buildings and stuff like that um the physics in this game honestly are really good uh if you melee something it's got

weight to it you could i i may laid ryan off a cliff the other day which was hilarious you know but yeah i i mean i will say the dive mechanic adds yet another really neat thing to it, because for me, you have to dodge some of these attacks or they're just going to wreck you. But once you dive, you're on the ground now and you have to spend time to stand hulk with a buzzsaw that is getting closer and closer yeah while your guy is slowly picking himself up off the ground and you're just in your head screaming like get up hurry you start yelling i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm dead you know you hear that a lot well and what we what we've been doing too is like we – I mean a lot of times when we've been running suicide or these like really higher up levels of difficulty, when we're at the end, we're kind of out of everything. And we're just trying to kite guys around until we can get the extraction and get out of there. So you're running and like you said, those little like claws will just at you, and you get a little stun lock.

And so what I've tried to do is you're kiting them around, you run around the corner, and you dive and turn and try to take out a couple and get back up as fast as you can and then run again. And then you just keep trying to repeat it as you run around. And it's just so crazy that just a simple dive mechanic brings so much to a game. And that's what all of these features do. It's unbelievable, man. Yeah. It's like they added the perfect amount of stuff that's useful and fun. Yeah.

And there's no fluff on top of that. I mean, even the emotes, some people might say the emotes are fluff. I think it's hysterical to have my guy go out there and stick out his fist and wait for a fist bump where if one of you come up and press the emote button, now we're doing an explosive handshake at the end of it or hugging and things like that. It's absolutely hysterical. Just a couple other real minor things here. I love the fact that when you reload a magazine magazine you lose any ammo that was in your clip yeah like games always do like the magic ammo where you've got 200 bullets and when i

reload i don't lose the 20 bullets in the clip ryan you and i in our first few matches were like dang it i hit reload and now you lose an entire clip first yeah we had to get used to it because yeah i have a really bad habit of reloading too often and this game has kind of cured me of it yep and then we got to talk about how at the end of every mission you love looking at that stat sheet baby baby you get to see kills how much friendly fire how far did you run how many stim packs did you use all of it pops up on that final screen and then we all get to go yep r Ryan had the most accidental kills every time. Ryan points out that he had the most kills. And then I go, yeah, of your teammates too.

And Josh and I are like, yep, you killed all the little guys. Good job, buddy. Oh, it's so great. He'll never quit using the mortar either. The fact that there's so many better He'll never quit using the mortar either. The fact that there's so many better stratagems to use too, and Ryan will just stick with that mortar until the end of his days. I honestly have like one loadout. I have one loadout, and it's my strikes,

and then my rover, and then the mortar. The mortar is so good. You just have to use it at the right time. Yeah. Like waiting for extraction, pop that baby down. It helps immensely protecting the citizens as they run out of a building to the hangar to evac. Mortar is great. But if you pop a mortar on something you're trying to run in and attack, it's instant death. I will say the closest to a fight that I think ryan and i ever got into in a video game was him using the mortar and me whining about it and then i realized that

i can just blow up his mortar anytime he summons it so i would just tell him ryan if you're gonna use the mortar i'm gonna shoot it and then he'd be like no you're not and he'd drop the mortar down and i'd turn and shoot it with my shotgun and then it would blow up and then ryan'd be like josh what are you doing? And I'm like, dude, I'm not dying to that thing anymore. Cause it's like a five minute.

It's like a five minute cool down. Yeah. When we're on the lower level, that's only like a minute or two and the suicide, it was like seven minutes to get it back. And I'm like, go, come on,

man. Yeah. So now it's just him going, Josh, do not blow up my mortar. And me going, Ryan, do not summon that mortar right now.

Yeah, eventually we just learned to start calling it out. So I would see all of a sudden that blue laser from space. And I look at it and says, Mortar Sentry, eight seconds. I'm like, Josh, here comes the mortar. Just start running. All right. So leading up to the release of Helldivers 2, I feel like the one thing we were most concerned about was longevity. We talked about the in-game progression stuff

already up to this point. Do you guys have any concerns about longevity? Because there are some things here that we still haven't even talked about, like mission modifiers or the tweet that went out. I think it was just yesterday. And then you get it in game where they say, Hey, here's a news alert. The automatons have issued a cowardly attack on super earth. All hell divers are being redeployed to the automaton levels. They have done a lot of things to help keep the game fresh.

And I am not really concerned about longevity at this point. This is not a game. You're just going to play for one or two weekends. Not, not at all. That's why I i i don't know like i said i don't know if this will fade but i was filled with so much liberty i saw that and i was like oh no they didn't and i went right to that planet and i said oh let's go i'm gonna destroy as many automatons as I can. So I, I don't, I, man, I hope this keeps going. Cause I've been having nothing but an amazing time the whole time. So I, I really hope this keeps going. I don't foresee it. Like obviously like every game it's going to bleed off, but man, this,

this has been a wild ride so far. Yeah. I will say I was, I was concerned about the longevity of this game. At this point, I've I'm 35 hours into this game. I've unlocked all the stratagems. I got a little worried when I was like, great, well now what do I do? You know, I'm not, I don't want to grind the, the war bond, you know, to get that other weapon or something like that. But then they came out and they did this breaking news with the automatons attacking these planets and all hell divers need to report, you know, as we're going up in difficulty levels,

we're realizing that there are actually new enemies that they introduced at higher difficulty levels. And that's when like I caught that glimmer of hope and I just went, dude, if they keep this up with this like live service type thing where they have these weekly events and they're talking about, they're going to release new stratagems. They're going to release new creature types.

They're going to do new mission types and things like that. A whole new enemy type. We only have two out of the three so far. And that's the crazy thing, right? Because in hell divers one one there was a third and the thing that i love is you do five or six missions against the bugs and then you go guys let's go fight some robots the game feels completely different like the robots are so different in the way that you fight them and the strategies

involved that it's like a completely different game so So then I'm like, if they come up with a third one, like, Oh my goodness. You know? So I, I will say, I mean, I do think there's a world where they could botch it.

And if they do, I mean, we still got our money's worth hands down, but if they can actually land this, if they can bring this home with this live service and constantly evolving this game and these neat events the groundwork is there this could be like a historic level game if they pull off this like continuation of this like galactic war that's going on absolutely and i'm so glad

that this game turned out so good we had had such high expectations. I was a little worried that no matter what, we were going to feel let down. And instead, I feel like it exceeded every single one that I had. I mean, this is the point of the show that I love most when we've been able to play some kind of game co-op or even PVP in nature. I just want to open things up where we can just share some funny stories or interesting stories. And I have one. I'll go first. Oh, here we go. Now, I'm sure Josh remembers our very first game together.

We drop down for our very first mission. We pick where we want to drop on the map. Our three pods drop in. Boom, boom, boom. We each step out of a pod. And I just immediately see Josh turn to me and shoot me in the face and I'm dead. It was literally 0.3 seconds

into our first mission. Of course we all laugh and I'm like, are you going to call me back in Josh? Because I had already played like a couple missions without Josh and Josh is like, oh, I have to call you in. What do I do? I'm like, you got to enter the stratagem. So then Josh calls me down and I did not

kill josh back i'm not one to get revenge but later that same day i unlocked the laser cannon and we drop into a mission i immediately call down my laser cannon josh runs over and yoinks it from me so i shot him in the back and josh died He's like, dude, I'm like, you stole my laser cannon. And to this day, it is the only time I have intentionally killed someone. I was going to let the first death go out of humor. But once Josh stole my new shiny toy to play with, I finally got my revenge.

You're a better man than me, Paul. Yeah. Oh, what are some stories that stick out for you guys? I on the same vein, Yeah. What are some stories that stick out for you guys? On the same vein, because we did mention Friendly Fire is 100% of the time in this game. You will die from your buddies gloriously, and it will happen a lot. I mean, it is just built into everything that happens in this game. So usually Friendly Fire is one of the fun stories about the game ryan you mentioned it

earlier if you if you call down a stratagem your guy holds it in his hand but then you have to chuck it to activate if you get hit if you get knocked off your feet if you throw it and it bounces off of a creature that is in front of you it will then redirect somewhere where you do not want it to go and so one of the funniest things in this is just somebody going if you hear the words uh-oh yeah yeah it doesn't dude it doesn't matter whether you're fighting a giant bug or you know you've got a horde chasing you everybody scatters like if you hear the words uh-oh, it does not matter what you're doing. Everybody runs in four different directions because there's some

giant explosion that is coming to wipe out your team. Anytime uh-oh happens, it's always hilarious. One of my favorite stories actually happens to involve Ryan's son because Ryan had to step away from his

computer for a minute. So he let his son take over who is six or seven. He's seven and he loves talking to us. He's he's hilarious, but Josh is his favorite person in the world. I he's I love talking to him. Honestly, don't tell him I said that, but so

Jackson gets on and he goes, hey guys, and he's like, I'm gonna play for my dad for a minute. We're like, okay, what Hey guys. And he's like, I'm gonna play for my dad for a minute. And we're like, okay, what's up? And he's like, I'm really good at video games. And I go, Oh, this game's really hard. And he goes, I won't die. I'm really good. And I say, you're going to die because everybody dies. And he's like, I'm not going to die. I say, I bet you $10. You're going to die. And he's like, I'm really good. I'm not going to die. You guys can trust me. And I go, I bet you $10 you're going to die. And he goes, you're on, Josh. So I did the exact same thing to him that I did to Paul.

Oh, no. Poor Jackson. So we land, and Jackson's still talking trash about how he's not going to die. And I literally just turn, and I shotgun him in the face. And then he just goes, Hey, you shot me. And I lost it, dude.

And I, the whole night I just kept telling him, I want my $10. You owe me $10 now. And it was just the best thing, man. He took it like a champ. Like,

so to his credit, when he hops on, he still goes, I'm going to have your $10 for you. My wife actually reached out to me. She's like, yeah, I don't know why Jackson's yelling a ton. She's like, he's yelling in the room. He keeps yelling at Josh.

That was so good. Yeah, it's just so hard. Every match, you run into just a crazy story. Like every time there's something crazy that happens. I mean, even right before recording, I was playing. I hopped on. I was trying to get a few matches in real quick. And I was just trying to farm samples.

So I jump in. I forgot that I left on public. So I got grouped up with a bunch of people. No big deal. I thought we were going to run it through. These guys were just throwing strikes at single enemies. Full on strikes.

I'm like, oh man, really? This is going to take forever. And they're going and it's taking forever. And then they keep like striking on me and stuff. So what I, this may not be the best thing, but I ended up, i killed them and then i didn't bring them back because i was the only one and then eventually they all left the the the game you know and so i was able to do it through after that i was able to cruise through pretty

pretty uh okay and i got like 15 samples and stuff but they were it was it was ridiculous they were just constantly killing me or killing somebody else or or just wasting all their strikes putting hell bombs in the middle of just nowhere because there was a guy there and then i'd shoot the guy and then there's just a hell bomb sitting there because we all got one for free and it was just one of those things where i'm like come on guys so yeah that was that was my uh evil deed but it was for liberty there you go anything anything for liberty yeah the the last one that i wanted to talk about was one of our earliest missions when all three of us were on it was the first time that we did the nuclear strike mission oh yeah so like we haven't we haven't really talked

about the specifics of the missions but like one of them is where you have to launch a nuke. And you actually get to the location. You activate a terminal. You have to enter a code. You got to undo all these latches that are blocking the launching pad from opening. Then you have to activate the terminal. And then we launch the nuke. And I think it might have been Josh, where Josh was like, wait, we can watch this.

And we see like the rocket come out from underground. It takes off. It starts flying. And then it goes way off in the distance and then detonates. And you get the mushroom cloud, the whole planet kind of like gets like the orange sheen and you see it in the distance. And it was like,

you could feel it. And that was like you could feel it and that was like a moment for me where i was like i have only felt that like felt that kind of elation probably only one other time since we started the pod so we're talking like almost four years now the only other time i felt like that was the first time josh, when you, me, and Todd fought a troll in Valheim, where we were using those really dinky arrows and kiting it around, and it took us 20 minutes. That, to me, was the only other time where I was like, this is an epic moment that I'm not going to forget. It was one of those landmark things, and it was just so much fun to see. And it hasn't changed. Every time I launch it... Dude dude i just today right before the recording i was like

i was with my son and i launched it and i'm like dude watch and i move out of the way of the big mountain to the side so that i could watch the blast and see the the wave come towards me every single time i look at it and that's just one of those other factors that we talked about with the environment is like all these little things you watch it go you're like oh which way is it going and you see and then you go all right here we go and you just sit and wait and you just what game do you go and you just sit there and wait to watch something happen like that you know oh we all stop in our tracks every every time and it's it's just one of the coolest things and it blows up you're like okay let's go and then you just go off.

I did just remember one last thing, and it was that same mission. It was the first time I ever noticed the explosive barrels, and I picked one up. It was us and Steve. And I turned to you guys, and I go, guys, I'm holding an explosive barrel. Josh immediately shoots it, and now it has a hole in the barrel, and it's spewing flames. And I immediately hit the interact button to drop it, and I hit dive backward, and then the thing exploded. And I don't think I died.

I think I took some damage. But I was like, oh, my gosh. I can't believe Josh's immediate reaction was let me shoot it. But it worked out so perfectly. It was such a funny moment in playing the game. I can't believe this game is only $40. What a value. I know.

And they're not paying us to say that. That's the sad thing. All right, guys, it's time for our last segment. Let's go to the leaderboard and see where this game stacks up. If our listeners don't know, you can go to videogamerspod.com. There is a tab for leaderboards. We have our top 10 games of all time. And we also have our traditional leaderboard. Every time we do a deep dive like this, each of us individually place it for where it stacks up against every other game we've done a deep dive.

So for example, how do I compare Helldivers 2 to Metal Gear Solid 5 or Hearthstone or No Man's Sky or Deep Rock Galactic. Like these are all vastly different games. We each have slightly different lists because we haven't all deep dove the same number of games. But I wanted to ask you guys, where do you want to place this on your leaderboard? Who's going first? Let's have you go first, Josh. You've got a total of, by the way, I haven't updated it with

Ghostbusters yet. My apologies. You have 107 games on your leaderboard. That's a lot of games. Where does Helldivers 2 go? Well, if people haven't caught on to what we're putting down, this game is freaking fantastic, dude. This is one of those games that is tailor-made for me. I love 80 things going on at any given moment. I love hilarious moments with your friends. I love progression. I love good combat. I love beautiful graphics.

This game is gorgeous, man. I mean, there is so much to this that I am honestly blown away. And I know I'm trying to have some temperament with recency bias because we're in just the throes of Helldivers 2 right now. But honestly, this game is perfection for me. I mean, this game would not be as fun solo. The fact that we can play together is what makes it.

If you are a solo player, this game is not going to resonate with you the same way it would. If you have two or three buddies to play with, I think even with one other person, it will drastically improve your experience. Um, I, this is going to sound bananas,

but the, a game that I compare this to is outriders because it's similar in a lot of ways, right? Like chaotic combat group with friends, missions, that kind of stuff. I mean, I was always super high on outriders. Outriders is getting dethroned for me. Wow. I am putting this game at 13 on my leaderboard because it is insanely good, dude. It has no business being as good as it is. I mean, we've been talking,

we've been gushing for an hour and 13 minutes now, and I could keep talking about all these aspects of this game for another hour. Like, honestly, what game has come along lately that has done this? I handle our social media. I can't tell you, I have never seen people so united on social media as they are about Helldivers 2. It is people just saying, come play with me. And then you see that they're playing together and they're having a blast. I've seen people that have resisted picking this up and then saying, you wore me down. And then literally the next day going, this might be one of the best games I've ever played

in my life. Like, it's not going to be for everybody. I get that. But if any of this sounds fun to you, it is way more fun in person playing it than anything we have described on this podcast so far, man. Yeah. This is,

this is a top, top game for me. I'm putting it at 13. It's, it is that good, man. So here's the thing with my leaderboard, which is just slightly smaller than yours, Josh.

Mine's 105 games. My initial gut reaction when I just looked at my leaderboard was to put it at 10, to put it right below Apex Legends and Rust, which are two of the absolute best multiplayer games that you can play still to this day. I don't want recency bias to play too much of a role here.

Now you kind of just screwed up the point I was going to make Josh by plopping this game right in the middle of a chunk of games. Somehow miraculously you and I have a block at 12, 13, 14, where we have the same games. We've got satisfactory Valheim and outriders, um, slightly different order, but we have those three games in the same slots those are all some of my all-time

favorite multiplayer experiences so to honor that and the fact that i know i played outriders probably like 70 hours before i placed it there i'm gonna put it right below those and grand theft auto online i'm gonna put it at 16 which is right above rim world which i absolutely adore it's one of my all-time favorites yes yeah huge praise so i'm gonna put it at 16 and that's only to protect myself over time that might end up creeping up a little bit it might even hit top 10 but i'm gonna go ahead and put it at 16 for now uh ryan your deep dive list is a little shorter because you've been with us for almost a year you've got 35 games on the list hell divers i'm guessing is super high up there i just want to know

are we are we going like four but that was my guess for you i thought you were gonna put it for dude why are you such a mind reader i i like i couldn't gush and and i couldn't say how much i love this game more i had honestly i sat for days thinking about this leaderboard where i could put i'm like man you should just ask me i would have told you i know right i really really like this game i'm like it's not better than diablo right it's not better than middler solid right i i had such a hard time figuring out where to put this but i think four is a spot for me um i just i'm a multiplayer guy i love i love interactions with people i love us doing it together i haven't had a game where all i think about is what do i have to do within my life to get back to hell divers it's true that's that's all it is it's like okay i gotta do this this isn't

this and then i can go play Helldivers. That's what I've been doing for the last week. And I'm happy about it. Every time I get on, I'm like, this is awesome. And it helps that my son comes and plays with me, too. And then he's my little XP farm bot. I just throw him on and sit back and watch and stuff. But I don't know, man. This one might even climb up more for me,

but it's beyond what I ever would have expected out of this game. It's almost like it's a quadruple A title, you know, for $40. Yeah. But yeah. Not skull and bones. Yeah dollars yeah yeah yeah but uh yeah skull and bones yeah yeah yeah so yeah number four is the one uh the one for me such high praise guys we all adore this game it's so good it has zero chance to win game of the year no but it i i have a very hard time picturing myself

having more fun than I have the last... I don't know. How long has this game even been out? A week? A week. Yeah. It's been out like eight days, something like that. I don't know that I'm going to have more fun the rest of the year than this.

And our Discord is never, ever... By the way, join up on Discord. It's completely free, and it's amazing. Awesome community, and we play a lot of this game. But our Discord has never, ever, ever been more active than this. Everybody's always on there. Hey, who wants to play? Hey, I'm getting off at this time.

Hey, I'm getting off at that time. You know, everyone's always trying to get on and play together. So it's wild that the community is even getting in on it. There's something truly special about this game. Like, honestly, there really is. I know we hyped it a lot and we had very high expectations for it, but it has blown all of those expectations away. It is very rare that a game like this comes out and is universally enjoyed by so many people

and creates those moments that gamers love. I mean, that's really the thing is it's like, I mean, co-op with friends, crazy moments, incredible gameplay, polished really, really well. I mean, that's the point we're putting down. I mean, if you can't tell by our rankings and stuff like that, there is something very magical about this game. This game will absolutely pop up at the end of 2024 when we do our end of year gaming awards. This one's absolutely going to pop up, whether it's most memorable moments, favorite weapons,

best game of the year. I have a feeling this one's going to pop up a lot. Dude. Remember when we said, oh man, we're going to catch up on games this year. You know? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's just going to end up being a lot of hell divers too. I think, which is a good thing. Not complaining. All right. Well,

I think that wraps up everything for today. Besides we got to go spread Liberty across the galaxy. They're waiting for us as a reminder, please go check out support options through Patreon at multiplayer squad.com. You can toss us a follow on socials everywhere at video gamers pod and make sure to rate our show five stars and leave a written review. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, happy gaming.

Have a taste of liberty! You have lit the lamps of liberty. All right, see you, everybody. See ya!