Helldivers 2 made me love friendly fire again

Image: Arrowhead Game Studios

Friendly fire has been a personal scourge ever since it turned me off in Tom Clancy’s original Rainbow Six, where I quickly got tired of waiting five minutes to respawn after being mowed down by over-enthusiastic teammates in the first five seconds of each match. Games franchises like Counter-Strike have taken some meaning away from what was originally meant to make gameplay a multifaceted experience, turning friendly fire into a mere penalty for bad play rather than an incentive to develop skill. Helldivers 2 isn’t the kind of game I expected to change the status quo on that, with its gritty attitude and extensive array of weapons, but the third-person squad-based space marine shooter by the makers of Magicka goes a long way to redeeming it as a fun and refreshing gameplay mechanic.

No, I haven’t gone mad, nor do I have a masochistic wish to see myself or my co-op mates pulverized in a flash of tomato-colored vapor – although that can be extremely funny at times. On the contrary, I play Helldivers 2 like I do just about any co-op game; I’m target driven, I want to win and that means not being a total flapjack with my weapons fire.

What’s refreshing about friendly fire in Helldivers 2, though, is that it’s not just an afterthought of the development process, where the devs have gone and made a stellar game only to add it in because everyone else is doing that, spoiling the gameplay and annoying the heck out of players that keep getting smoked by their friends. That’s obvious by the fact you can’t turn it off in the game settings, but it’s also obvious in the gameplay. A few minutes into the game proves how integral it is to the fast and frenetic action; it’s intertwined with the damage system, and it relies on you knowing the game, developing skill, and also letting loose at times and resigning yourself to the fact that, at the end of the day, there are some parts of your game that are out of your control.

The weapons in Helldivers 2 play a big part in why it works so well. Weapons like the SG-225 breaker shotgun are futuristic, almost comical, which fits perfectly in with the game’s Starship Troopers vibe. Unloading these strange and exotic weapons is deeply satisfying when the bugs get the brunt of the fire, but some will take out your teammates in creative and dramatic ways too. This of course means there’s an emphasis on learning the intricacies of the weapons and the team play, which adds a nice complexity to the game.

Where in Call Of Duty you might simply get away with lobbing a grenade or two around a corner, Helldivers 2 makes you use your noggin a bit more. You have to wait for breaks in the play, ins and outs, think about the weapons you’re using, their blast radius, and any damage the equipment you might call in does. The stakes are high, which keeps you on the edge of your seat and more invested in the game than you might be in a game with, say, WWII rifles or submachine guns. When you get it wrong in Helldivers 2 it’s usually with great dramatic effect – a release that will have you screaming with joy, delight, and or frustration. Yes, this game can really move you, which is what a good game should be able to do.

That brings me to what I love most about friendly fire in Helldivers 2 – the spontaneity it brings. For the same reason that Goat Simulator was so fun, Helldivers 2 delivers a randomness that you won’t find in other shooters. Having interesting weapons and creative ways to deploy them means there’s also a million ways to slay your teammates. While the bugs that attack you will try to suck the life out of you (not a very tasteful way to meet one’s maker), dying at the hands of your teammates is a lot more varied, culminating in hilarious moments that will cause the laughs to roll out like barrels of brandy. Those moments become the perfect food for the comments you’ll inevitably drop in team chat – like: “Dom did you just wallop me with a 500kg Egale Bomb?” “Errr… no… that was Tony,” I’d say, in the most convincing tone I could muster.

One minute you might be blown into the air by an Orbital 380mm HE Barrage and the next a teammate may drop a load of landmines on your head like a sack of potatoes. They mostly won’t mean to, nor have I with my various deployments – it just happens, which makes for a surprise each time, and gameplay that never gets old.

But friendly fire in Helldivers 2 goes just beyond encouraging you to become more skillful or just merely adding an element of spontaneity. It’s deeply entrenched in the decision-making process and vital to the strategy that will win or lose you a game.

I’m talking about knowing when to use your stratagems – the strategic equipment drops and player reinforcement each round. In any one map you’ll be swarmed by more enemies than you can safely handle alone. Damage from your enemies needs to be carefully weighed up against the firepower you have at your disposal. In a split second you may be forced to decide whether to let your teammates stand and take on an overwhelming force of bugs alone and surely die or risk teamkilling them by dropping a 500-pound Egale bomb on their heads (then bringing them back to life with a reinforce stratagem). These micro calculations are tremendously fun to make.

There is one caveat to what I’ve said here about friendly fire: that you play Helldivers 2 with friends you know and like, rather than random players online. There’s just something about being blown to bits by a friend that’s a lot funnier than a complete stranger. Make sure you have some pals at the ready, and you’ll have a blast in Helldivers 2, even though you’re almost certain to lose your cool once in a while.