s what I call democracy!” with every airburst strike they call in. I do wonder sometimes how many are in on the joke, and how many think they actually are the good guys. But who cares when you’re covered in insect guts, the smell of cordite lingering in the air?

Make use of your Stratagems often. The tutorial does an excellent job of covering how important Stratagems will be for you throughout the game. But when you're out on your very first mission, you'll see just how essential they really are.

Helldivers 2 lets you play as an elite soldier among the Helldivers, the greatest military force the galaxy has ever seen. Join the fight for freedom as you eliminate monsters who threaten the peace.

The game is still as chaotic and as fun as the first game. With the added caveat that the game is now third-person so that you don’t commit as much friendly fire as before. Of course, this isn’t to say that the game doesn’t have friendly fire or even self-inflicted damage, but that’s part of the fun.

If you’ve ever fantasised about starring in your own version of Paul Verhoeven’s blistering sci-fi satire Starship Troopers, you can now rest easy: your wish has been answered. Helldivers 2, the sequel to the 2015 topdown co-op shooter, is an em linha game in which beefy space marines blast down to alien planets and, spurred on by jingoistic slogans, pulverise anything that moves with super hi-tech weaponry.

The same faster-than-light travel technology, heroically liberated from the Illuminates, that gave Super Earth access to the galaxy, has since been used to colonize it. This period has come to be known as The Great Democratization.

After your Helldiver defrosts on your ship, you and your squadmates must prepare for a mission by customizing your armor, your weapons, and your stratagems together. 

The various settings options mostly speak for themselves. There are two options of note though. The volumetric fog option seems to alter the resolution of the volumetric lighting in general, with lower resolution results at lower settings, while the anti-aliasing toggle actually does work properly on PC, completely turning off any AA treatment. It's weird that this setting doesn't do anything on PS5 but at least it functions as described on PC. However, the lack of any form of reconstruction option such as DLSS, XeSS or even FSR 2 is a real shame. Instead, a simple spatial upscaler is used, which bears the hallmarks of the OG FSR, Helldivers 2 Gameplay just like PS5. Unfortunately, the unexciting visual settings do mean that the upgrades over PS5 aren't as large as you might expect. There's little difference between the PC at max settings at 4K and the PS5 in its quality mode, absent some slightly higher resolution shadows and a bit of a cleaner image. It still doesn't provide a pristine image though and aliasing remains a significant problem.

The Automatons are fully mechanized soldiers of a kind never seen before. But their emblem is eerily familiar …

The good news is that, even if content is light initially, what I played of it was more than enough to get me excited about laughing with friends as we blast our way through killer robots, and I can’t wait to play more.

But don’t sleep on those defensive stratagems either. While one Helldiver is handling the heavy fire, another Helldiver can call down a shield generator to protect teammates as the enemies push back.

Those small details contrast against the environment especially nicely because of the game's use of relatively high-resolution shadowmaps. Other elements of the lighting perhaps don't fare as well. The worlds are generally lit convincingly enough, but when you get up close you can spot some light leak in places, and shadowed regions tend to have a bit of a flat look. I'm not sure we're looking at pre-calculated, 'baked' lighting. I think instead we're seeing the typical mix of screen-space ambient occlusion and shadowmaps to shade in some of those finer details, which works well for the big picture stuff but doesn't hold up quite as well on close examination. The same can be said for reflections, which exhibit typical screen-space reflection 'skirting'. After surveying the game's graphical tech, I wasn't quite sure what we were looking at. UE4 seemed like an obvious choice, but it didn't seem well-suited for this kind of big multiplayer game with open-world environments.

As with all Automaton units, the plodding Hulk is brainlessly optimized to do nothing except deliver heavy firepower.

Even if you’re in a full squad, the smallest bugs pose a real threat, whether it’s killing you themselves or overwhelming you until their bigger, scarier cousins catch up. Thankfully, bugs aren’t immune to specific limb-related injuries either; you can also shoot their legs, tails, claws, and other parts off in a gory spray that can render them alive but harmless — though still extremely gross. This little gameplay and gore nuance, combined with the ammo limitations, mean accuracy is paramount, and every little encounter feels like life or death. All of this makes for an infectiously fun gameplay loop.