After many months of dogged campaigning in the face of zealotry, atrocity and propaganda about fake WMDs, the heroic avatars of the Illuminate have finally invaded Super-Earth. In just a few short days, the humans and their fanatical and clownish “Helldiver” enforcers may be wiped from the face of the galaxy, ushering in a brave new era in which the surviving bots, bugs and squids link clamps, mandibles and tentacles and dance around singing. You ever hear an Illuminate sing? Literally mind-blowing.
All of which is to say that Helldivers 2‘s Heart Of Democracy update is upon us, following teasers earlier this month. It lets the game’s sordid playerbase of perfidious human stormtroopers blow the shit out of some ace nano-tech molluscs on the streets of planet Earth. The new Earth maps are also full of NPC human soldiers who can be left to fight for themselves or enlisted as cannon fodder. There are crowds of panicking civilians, too. The PlayStation blog post announcing the update’s release suggests that you’ll be “punished” for accidentally shooting them, but that’s not the impression given by the below orgiastic trailer.
“Last week, we released a powerful primary weapon customization system and expanded surplus options to fight against the Illuminate as they emerged from the singularity,” adds the PlayStation blog. “Now that you have learned the tactics of these new squid troops – like the Crescent Overseer and the hulking Fleshmob – you must master these tools to continue the fight on Super Earth. Use every available resource, divers, and decimate their forces!”
Those newly customisable primary weapons aren’t the beefiest bullet-throwers you’ll find on Super Earth’s streets. There are planetary defence cannons that must be woken from their slumber and turned against the majestic Illuminate fleets, lest they succeed in bringing about a future in which the brutality and idiocy of the human race is just a bedtime story for wide-eyed space plankton.
Let the Helldivers enjoy turning their own cities into battlezones, I say. Let the strutting caped vermin relish the spectacle of their own ruination. As for us squid sympathisers in the shadows, let’s all cross our tentacles and pray that the flag-fellating bipeds are unambiguously vanquished. Framing jokes aside, it would free Arrowhead up to work on their unannounced new game.
