Hi folks, so you wont be noticing my absence at the weekend cos I rarely play then. But currently when not playing CoD, myself, Lord, Bullitt and Cringe are playing Helldivers 2. (don't accidentally pick 1)

The game is a tactical play area which you enter as a four man squad (you can solo it if you like but unless you're very good I highly recommend you try it...at least once, you'll understand more about the importance of team work) This is very much a your team vs the AI enemy. The maps are varied, from desert to woodland, huge canyons and wide plains. Visual effects include night time, dust storms and so on. In addition to the actual enemies there are various local hazards which include (our latest new way to die) fire tornados. There's a variety of kit and guns and weaponry.

You pick a map and an objective, and a difficulty level. The simplest type of mission is kill x many, the more complex involve you going places and doing a variety of things (whilst you are also trying to survive and keep your team alive too.) Achieving your goals and successfully extracting gets you a variety of rewards and experience which you can use to increase the arsenal that you can call on.

What's bad about it?

Squad size is limited to 1-4.
You are not playing against other humans, so no fighting another tr squad.
There are a few minor bugs such as not showing friends for some people (me!), but it’s a known thing possibly to do with steam user names. Presumably it will get patched.
Whilst there are cheats for the game and cheaters who use them, because you can put a team together of just your friends you never have to play with the public.
Cheating need only effect you if you care where you are on the world rankings. Or if you want to play with 3 strangers.


What’s good about it?

Well it’s fun.
And funny. The tongue is definitely in the cheek.
Friendly fire is on and not friendly.
Honestly this is a thing that suffers tremendously from (mostly) unintended team kills which can very much screw the individual left alive. Your team mates matter. (Even as you’re laughing in ts as you frantically try to call in reinforcements) FUBAR
Communication is key. Calling at aerial strike on a location where your buddies are does not go well.
The team has a limited number of lives (tickets) so when you’ve used up all your tickets (respawns) the team is dead and the match is over. You can only return to the game by a surviving player calling you back in, or if your entire team is dead (tickets providing).
You can play with public or friends, using either in game chat or ts or discord etc.
The people playing it so far do not seem to have the toxic attitude that smothers other games. (As said, I’ve not played with the public so I don’t know what it’s like to do so, but with friends in ts it rocks.)
The intentional bugs (one of the enemies) are varied in size, type and damage, need different strategies to deal with and are exactly a taste of Starship Troopers.

The other enemy so far is a robot race with equally wide and varied types and strengths.

Both enemy types use melee and ranged attacks.
Most of the time you run around with an over the shoulder view but you can switch to ADS if you want a first person view when shooting.
Rounds tend to last between 15 – 40 minutes, depending on the mission.
At the end of each game there is a pause to allow you to fiddle with bits.
The next mission isn’t started automatically instead requiring the leader to put it in play.
For me the game is not less stressful than CoD, but it is more fun, with more chatter, laughter and so on.



If inserting this didn't work could an admin fix it please. [done.V]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mohhTIBK8B4&t=180s

If you are enjoying cod and want nothing else, then have at it.

I suspect I’m going to be playing this more through the next few weeks/months etc.

Sounds interesting, there are four of you playing a game that only allows squads of four, so a fifth/sixth person cannot playt with you?

This game appeals to me; I always been a huge Si-Fi fan.

If it wasn't third-person I'd be interested, but I don't like that type of game.

If just one joined us we could rotate players in the team (after all the rounds are just 15 - 40 minutes) the one sitting out can have a cuppa.
Or you could have a team of 3 and a team of two in separate rooms. And again rotate the pairings.
Or 1 could try the joys of single player.
It's doable I'm sure.
We're currently using discord but again we can either bring people into discord or grab rooms in ts.
If you do decide to get it, be sure it's the version 2.

I'm sure Falky could set up a dedicated TS channel - it's a 15 user server, so we have room.