Last week, I had the opportunity to play two of the newest shooter games on the market: XDefiant by Ubisoft and Helldivers 2 by Arrowhead Studios. Both of these games are simply amazing. While I only played both for a few hours, I was able to get a good sense of how good they are in terms of graphics and gameplay. I look forward to playing them again.
Lets start with Helldivers 2
Helldivers 2 is an immersive game where you play as a “Helldiver”, a soldier in a future where war is pretty much commonplace. Your goal is to defend the galaxy against hordes of giant bug creatures and robotic engines of destruction. You play in teams, which requires a lot of strategy. The game offers a voice-chat feature, which allows you to communicate to your squad-mates as you play. This is essential when surrounded and needing to find and activate the evacuation point. This is also essential when completing the missions your squad is assigned and most importantly…no man left behind! I can’t tell you how many times I got slaughtered just to have a teammate call for reinforcements, which meant respawning me to the battlefield. The game has a heavy dose of military propaganda…every announcement is all about the military might of “Super Earth” and its commitment to the preservation of peace. The loading screens have helpful “hints”, which at times breaks the fourth wall for a bit of comedy while you’re waiting to get into the action. Think of it like “Starship Troopers”
The controls vary between keyboard and mouse and controller use. I sampled each way and found myself sticking mostly with the controller settings as the mouse and keyboard settings were a bit rough for my taste. Th combat system is well conceived with the ability to swap weapons and utilize specific skills throughout the match. Even at the beginner’s level, campaigns are pretty intense, and I found myself getting killed multiple times within moments of touching down. All-in-all, this is a very enjoyable gaming experience, and I can’t wait to get into it again and again.
I’m sure though, as everyone else is, the elephant in the room with this game involves Sony’s PSN account linking. Originally a “suggestion”, Sony tried to play hardball by forcing gamers to link their PSN accounts to their Steam accounts. This caused massive backlash and many players boycotted the game and review-bombed it negatively. Several days later, however, Sony reversed its stance on this claiming that they still had “lots to learn about pc gaming”. The fact that Sony ended up listening to the gamers goes to show how powerful the gaming community can be.
Now onto XDefiant….
XDefiant is a first-person shooter like Call of Duty or Counter Strike The player “avatars” are characters from various Ubisoft games such as “The Division and “Rainbow Six”. Each has their own unique weapons and skills. You compete in 5v5 matches in either unranked or ranked modes. I had the opportunity to play this during it’s original beta release and I found it amusing. It still was rough around the edges at that point, so I didn’t get that vested in it. However, its release warranted another look. After playing a few matches, I got to say, I’m impressed. The graphics and gameplay are very impressive and variety of characters representing Ubisoft’s best franchises are unique. The game offers up as much fun as Valve’s Team Fortress 2, without the comedic characterizations.
The game is said to be a Call Of Duty replacement. I’m not sure if that’s totally accurate yet. Time, and the player count, will tell if that’s true. Here’s hoping the game’s servers won’t have any huge hiccups like they did on launch day. Outside of that, matchmaking is pretty smooth. The graphics bring the maps, which are derived from the source games, to life. The audio cues, like other FPS games are pretty sound as well. Overall, this is a game that looks to be a major contender to Call Of Duty or Counter Strike.
Despite my lack of skills in shooter style games, I look forward to playing these games again…if only to improve and hone my skills. In the realm of shooters, these two new additions should stand tall alongside all of the others. You can see my gameplay for both Helldivers2 and XDefiant on my Youtube channel.