Helldivers 2 Review
Friendly fire, satire and stratagem chaos make Helldivers 2 one of the best co-op shooters around, and two and a half years of free updates have made it bigger and better.
Most live-service shooters sell you power fantasies. Helldivers 2 sells you a punchline: you are a disposable shock trooper for a cartoonishly fascist Super Earth, dropped onto hostile planets to spread "managed democracy" and very likely to die in the attempt, often at the hands of a friend. The joke would wear thin in a lesser game. Here it is the glue for one of the best co-op experiences of the decade.
Developed by Arrowhead Game Studios and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, the sequel to 2015's top-down Helldivers launched on February 8, 2024 for PlayStation 5 and PC, and reached Xbox Series X|S on August 26, 2025. More than two and a half years in, it is a very different and much bigger game than the one that buckled under its own launch-week servers, so this review covers it as it stands today.
Stratagems, friendly fire and glorious chaos
Squads of up to four drop from orbit in Hellpods onto procedurally generated maps and chase objectives while enemies pour in. The defining mechanic is the stratagem: call-ins from your Super Destroyer, from support weapons and sentries to orbital barrages and Eagle airstrikes, each triggered by punching in a directional code while the world tries to kill you. You bring up to four, plus a squad-wide booster, and deciding who carries anti-tank firepower and who handles the swarm is half the tactics.
Friendly fire is always on, and that single rule does more for the game than any feature list. A misthrown beacon or a careless sweep of a machine gun turns into shared slapstick, and the tension between helping your squad and accidentally flattening it never goes away. The third-person gunplay is weighty, and the moment-to-moment thrill of calling in an Eagle 500kg Bomb and diving clear is still unmatched.
Three fronts, ten difficulties
The war is fought against three factions that demand genuinely different approaches. The Terminids are bug swarms that overwhelm by numbers, the Automatons are a robotic army that punishes you from range, and the Illuminate, who returned in the December 2024 Omens of Tyranny update, bring mind-controlled Voteless hordes and stranger technology. A loadout that dominates one front can be dead weight on another, which keeps the stratagem screen interesting long after the credits would have rolled in a campaign game.
Difficulty runs from Trivial all the way to Super Helldive, the tenth tier added in 2024's Escalation of Freedom update, and the top end is brutal in the best way. Before you commit four slots to a high-difficulty drop, it is worth checking these stratagem rankings for the current patch, which sort support weapons, orbitals, Eagles, sentries and backpacks into tiers and name picks per enemy faction. Our main criticism is repetition: missions are built from a limited set of objective types, and over long sessions the rhythm of drop, destroy, extract becomes familiar.
A galactic war with a live pulse
What lifts the loop is the Galactic War. Every completed operation feeds community-wide Major Orders that liberate or lose planets, and the story unfolds in real time based on what the player base collectively achieves. That has produced genuine moments of shared history, from the defence of Super Earth against the Illuminate to the invasion of the Automaton homeworld of Cyberstan. When it works, you feel like one soldier in an enormous, ridiculous war. When it doesn't, outcomes can feel opaque, a problem Arrowhead's own game director acknowledged in June 2026, the same month a Control Center arrived on the Super Destroyer to track Major Orders, campaigns and rewards.
Monetisation is refreshingly fair. Warbonds, the game's battle passes, never expire, the first one is free, and premium Warbonds are bought with Super Credits that can be found in missions as well as purchased. Legendary crossover Warbonds for Halo: ODST, Killzone and Warhammer 40,000 cost more, and the deluxe edition's Warbond Token can't redeem them, which is a small but real sour note.
What's changed since launch
The post-launch road has been bumpy. The Escalation of Freedom update in summer 2024 drew heavy criticism, and Arrowhead's game director admitted publicly that "we didn't hit our target", followed by a 60-day plan that delivered a balance pass on more than 70 weapons and stratagems and reduced armour on heavy enemies such as Chargers and Bile Titans. The game has been on firmer footing since.
The free major updates have been ambitious. Into the Unjust in September 2025 added Hive Worlds with randomly generated cave systems; Machinery of Oppression in February 2026 sent squads into Cyberstan's factory cities to face the returning Cyborgs; and Devoid of Liberty on August 12, 2026 opened the Illuminate's Void, introduced new Wretch and Crusher enemies, brought AI SEAF platoons into the fight and raised the level cap from 150 to 300. Arrowhead is clear that the gear that matters unlocks by around level 25, so the higher ranks are prestige, not a paywall. The same day, the game joined the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog for Extra and Premium members.
Together Helldivers, we’ll even the odds and show the bugs, bots, and squids the true meaning of democracy. See you on the frontlines – HELLDIVERS 2 is coming to Xbox Series X|S on August 26, 2025! Get ready to give ’em hell.
— HELLDIVERS™ 2 (@helldivers2) July 3, 2025
Performance, platforms and the PSN saga
Helldivers 2 runs on the discontinued Autodesk Stingray engine, which left Arrowhead's engineers building much of the tech themselves. Its technical story has improved markedly, largely thanks to PlayStation's port specialists Nixxes, who handled the Xbox version. On PC, a de-duplication overhaul cut the installation from around 154GB to around 23GB, and a May 2026 patch added DLSS 4.5, FSR and XeSS upscaling alongside NVIDIA Reflex. Cross-play spans PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Launch was rough, with server and login problems through the first two weeks, and in May 2024 Sony's plan to require a PlayStation Network account on Steam sparked a backlash that it reversed within days. Those episodes are history now, but they explain the lingering wariness some PC players feel.
Official resources
- Helldivers 2 on PlayStation
- Helldivers 2 on Steam
- Helldivers 2 on the Xbox Store
- Official Helldivers 2 news and patch notes
- Arrowhead Game Studios
- Helldivers 2 on Wikipedia
The verdict
Helldivers 2 is at its best with a full squad of friends who don't mind being bombed by each other, and at $39.99 with no expiring content it is exceptional value. Solo players and anyone who needs a traditional story will get less from it, mission objectives do repeat, and the balance whiplash of 2024 is a reminder that live games can wobble. But few shooters generate so many unscripted, laugh-out-loud stories, and none wrap them in a satire this sharp. It is rated M by the ESRB for blood and gore and intense violence.
If you want a more demanding solo counterpart that rewards mastery in the same explosive way, our DOOM Eternal review is your next stop.
What we loved
- Stratagems and always-on friendly fire create endless unscripted chaos
- Three enemy factions demand genuinely different loadouts
- Fair Warbonds that never expire, plus ambitious free updates
- Sharp Starship Troopers-style satire
What held it back
- Mission objectives repeat over long sessions
- Much weaker for solo players
- A rocky launch and 2024 balance whiplash
- Legendary crossover Warbonds cost extra and exclude the Warbond Token
