Helldivers 2 delivers a solid, smooth experience on both PS5 and PC
Helldivers 2 is one of the most refreshing - and straightforward - multiplayer games I've played in a while. It's a thi…
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Helldivers 2 is one of the most refreshing - and straightforward - multiplayer games I've played in a while. It's a third-person bug-shooting blitzkrieg, offering simple sets of objectives and a broad armament to help satisfy them. The actual action of defeating the game's foes is a lot of fun, with hordes of enemies to shoot into gibs with a four-person player squad. But does all that multiplayer chaos come with strings attached? Few games try to achieve destruction at this scale, especially factoring in the unpredictability of multiplayer gameplay, so what kind of visuals and performance should we expect in the game's console outing on PS5 and how does the quality of the PC port fare?
Visually, Helldivers 2 hardly advances the state of the art, but that's not to say that its visual make-up - and its environments - aren't compelling. There's a typical mix of modern graphical staples, but they are deployed effectively. Volumetric lighting is heavily used, for instance, with shafts of light shooting through rocks and trees. The quality level is high, presenting without obvious aliasing, even on the PS5 in its performance mode. The clouds are also volumetric in nature, at least at lower levels of the atmosphere, and resolve without distracting artifacting. Low-lying fog also appears to be part of the equation, with ground-level fog often giving planets a certain ethereal quality.
Environmental density is impressive. There's a lot of scattered rocks, shrubs, and tufts of grass throughout the various planets. Given the size and scope of the game I have to imagine that procedural systems have been used extensively here, but the final results look quite natural. Foliage in particular can be generously placed, with some especially verdant garden worlds. I did note animation issues with the foliage on at least one planet but on a more macro level, lighting and assets come together to make each world feel distinct, giving each environment some nice vistas.
Helldivers' performance mode runs smoothly. We're mostly at 60fps in typical play, with a very smooth readout, especially when combined with the game's motion blur. The game can suffer from extended dips into the 50s though, typically during larger firefights. In my gameplay the worst I saw was about 50fps, so the game does manage to stay pretty close to 60fps more generally, although it can spend a long time hovering in the 50s in extended firefights. The quality mode also manages a tight lock on its 30fps frame-rate target, but it clearly has issues with bouts of inconsistent frame-pacing. There are some genuine frame-rate drops in the mix, with the game dropping to the high 20s, although these aren't very common.
The various settings options mostly speak for themselves. There are two options of note though. The volumetric fog option seems to alter the resolution of the volumetric lighting in general, with lower resolution results at lower settings, while the anti-aliasing toggle actually does work properly on PC, completely turning off any AA treatment. It's weird that this setting doesn't do anything on PS5 but at least it functions as described on PC. However, the lack of any form of reconstruction option such as DLSS, XeSS or even FSR 2 is a real shame. Instead, a simple spatial upscaler is used, which bears the hallmarks of the OG FSR, just like PS5.
Unfortunately, the unexciting visual settings do mean that the upgrades over PS5 aren't as large as you might expect. There's little difference between the PC at max settings at 4K and the PS5 in its quality mode, absent some slightly higher resolution shadows and a bit of a cleaner image. It still doesn't provide a pristine image though and aliasing remains a significant problem. On a high-end system using a Ryzen 7 7800X3D with RTX 4090, we're typically looking at frame-rates in the 90s with settings fully maxed out at 4K resolution. That's solid performance, but you'd probably want to engage some amount of resolution scaling if playing on a high refresh rate display. Normally,toggling on DLSS would be a no-brainer, but of course temporal upscalers aren't supported in this game at the moment.
Both the PS5 and PC versions of Helldivers 2 provide a good experience, and the game is attractive enough for a large-scale multiplayer shooter. I would like to see some additional features on PC though: temporal upsamplers are a must-have in my opinion, and frame generation would be great as well. The 1080p resolution on PS5 in performance mode is bound to be a source of controversy too, but I think it's a sensible trade-off given how taxing this game can be. Perhaps experimentation with FSR 2 might yield decent results, especially considering the unimpressive quality of the existing TAA, but this is a tough game to run at high resolutions. So Helldivers 2 is a compelling multiplayer package, and it's technically sound as well. Players looking for a fresh co-op experience are unlikely to be disappointed.
As a multiplayer experience, I think Helldivers 2 hits all the right notes. The gameplay basics are fun and the open-ended environments give you a fair amount of flexibility in how to tackle each objective. It seems like quite a tactical game too, though the need for advanced strategies wasn't too pressing at the lower difficulties I had the time to unlock. It doesn't seem terrifically complicated, nor does it come packaged with the kind of comprehensive content package that modern players often expect, but I think those omissions are more than forgivable at its asking price.
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