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At an underground crossroads between the floors of a dungeon, I was fighting for my life against a skeleton that had a buckler shield and an axe. I thought, "man, it sucks fighting this skeleton. It's blocking most of my hits with that shield." Then I remembered I was playing as a thaumaturge with psychic powers, so I used a mind ability to make the skeleton trust me for a brief moment - just long enough to open its inventory screen and unequip its shield. After that it was much easier to cave its skull in with my mace.

It's been in Early Access for almost a decade. It updates once a year, if that. It's a tech demo for another game the developers are working on, and it'll take you ten hours to master the controls enough to pass the first floor. Even so, there's no game quite like Exanima.

[UPDATE]: Sony has reversed their decision to make linking a PlayStation Network account on PC mandatory. I have edited the review accordingly.

Helldivers 2 is a live-service game, which means several things for you as a consumer. The first is that you cannot play the game without an internet connection - no local co-op here. The second is that the game is dependent upon external servers; too many people join the game at once, or something screwy happens with the backend? The game is now a digital paperweight taking up space on your SSD, go play something else until the issue is resolved. Lastly, the live-service model opens up the possibility of Helldivers 2 being shut down permanently in the future (like what recently happened to Ubisoft's The Crew.) What, you wanted to play this ten years from now? Video games are disposable media now, get with the times.

Helldivers 2 also features in-game microtransactions (MTX). To gain access to the latest battle pass ("Warbonds," released monthly) you first need to unlock them by spending 1000 Super Credits (SC), which can be purchased in the in-game store for $10.00 USD. Do some math, and 1SC = $0.01 USD. Simple, right? This premium currency CAN be found in-game for free; but unless you win the RNG lottery, each pickup only nets you 10SC ($0.10 USD.) So your choices are to either scrounge each mission site for hidden caches that have a CHANCE to contain Super Credits - a time-consuming process that isn't particularly stimulating - or, you can pull out your real-life credit card to gain instant access at any time. I like to call this predatory monetization tactic "Pay2Skip," as those either unable or unwilling to shell out cash on a regular basis will find the game simply does not respect the limited time they have to play. (I know Arrowhead needs money to keep the servers running and develop the game further, but I won't pretend their monetization system isn't scummy just because it's less egregious than, say, Diablo IV or Crossout.)

The Steam/PC version of Helldivers 2 also includes nProtect Gameguard, a kernel-level anticheat solution. Whenever you run the game, you are also effectively running a rootkit that has greater access to your system and files than even Administrative privileges on Windows. If compromised by a bad actor, this level of access would be devastating; therefore I would recommend against running Helldivers 2 on any computer that is also used to store sensitive, personal or confidential data.

Lastly, for existing customers on PC to continue playing the game they paid for beyond June 4th, 2024, they have to create a PlayStation Network (PSN) account and have it linked to their Steam account before the cutoff date. This move likely cannot be reversed, as it is part of a legal agreement between Sony Interactive Entertainment and Arrowhead Game Studios; regardless, it is an awful decision to force this on players almost THREE MONTHS after the game's initial release.

All these issues aside, the underlying game is fantastic. As a long-time player and fan of the first Helldivers, it was practically an instant buy (no pre-orders, no exceptions), and even now I cannot say I regret my purchase. Hell, I'll probably keep playing until Sony twists the knife and tries to make PC players pay for a PlayStation Plus subscription. But to date I haven't paid a cent beyond the $40 base price (plus sales tax) - no MTX, no Super Citizen upgrade - and I plan to keep it that way. If the game shuts down as a result of this debacle, or for any other reason, I'll chalk it off as a case study for why the live-service game model as a whole needs to be radically changed or phased out entirely.

Receiver 2 is a more fleshed-out game than the original 7DFPS prototype, but in its current state I can't recommend it. What does work, works well; but a select few design choices make the game too frustrating, even in comparison to the first Receiver.

THE GUNS

The gun roster has expanded from three to nine, and all of them handle fairly well. The control scheme carries over from the first game to the second, save for the addition of firearm malfunctions and misfires - both of which are relatively easy to prevent or clear up. Easily the best aspect of the game.

THE ENVIRONMENT

Receiver and Receiver 2 both have an interesting system for setting up environments. Rather than going for full procedural generation, levels are composed of a limited pool of carefully designed set pieces, which interlink in a three-floor grid running lengthwise. This means that if you play the game for an extended period of time, the environments can become familiar, but the layout rarely will. On top of this, many of the rooms from the first game have returned with higher fidelity and a sharper appearance, lending to the dreamlike quality of the setting by stitching together industrial settings and construction equipment with rooms that have the aesthetic appearance of hotel lobbies, hospital hallways, high-rise rooftops and studio apartments. Overall a solid design choice that lends itself well to gameplay.

THE STORY (Spoilers):

Receiver 1's story was condensed into 11 cassette tapes scattered across the game level that the player had to collect to win the game. In it, a cult claims to hear a message from beyond our world, warning of a nebulous entity (dubbed "The Threat") that is weakening people's minds through their media. Those who can hear the message, called Receivers, are tasked with training cult initiates in the use of Mindtech, a technique used to strengthen one's mind in preparation for a widespread psionic attack called the Mindkill. In a shocking turn of events, the cultists are telling the truth, and most of humanity is killed off - save for the Receivers and those trained under them, who are instead put into a coma-like state called "The Dreaming." The player, a Receiver, is tasked with collecting the eleven tapes (The Perpetual Set) to absorb the minimum teachings required to achieve an "Awake State", in which the mind is both active in Reality A (the boundless luminescence) and Reality B (our world, where we live and work in our "shadow bodies.")

Receiver 2 greatly expands the number of tapes featured in the game, but in the process the presence and clarity of the original story is diluted. The new writing instead works to highlight firearm history trivia, gun safety tips, and hamfisted suicide awareness PSAs (which can actually get you killed ingame if you don't unload your gun fast enough.)

THE THREAT

Shock Drones and Ground Turrets make a return, alongside the newly added Ceiling Turrets and Security Cameras, the latter of which has no weapons but will alert Shock Drones to your location. Armored variants of the ground and ceiling turrets show up in later levels.

Combat with turrets is usually reductive to a high-stakes game of peekaboo where you pop out and try to shoot its camera before it can turn far enough to see you; shock drones are easy to evade on account of their poor midair turning, compounded by their apparent difficulty getting past door frames. Despite the predictable behavior of these killdrones, however, combatting them is always a tense matter due to their inherent lethality. Out of all the live rounds a turret can fire, it only takes one to kill you - same with the shock drone, whose taser will send you into cardiac arrest upon contact. The end result is combat that feels at once both rote and terrifying, like having to manually defuse twenty identical bombs one after the other. After a while you're just going through the motions, but your hands still shake as you go to snip the next wire.

THE LEVEL SYSTEM

While the first Receiver took place on a single level, Receiver 2 splits the game into five levels, with the ranking themed around rising to a higher level of consciousness.

Level 1 is a timesink. All it has are ground turrets, and requires five tapes to advance.

Level 2 contains shock drones and ground turrets, and is roughly on par with the first Receiver's difficulty level. Another five tapes are required to continue.

Level 3 throws ceiling turrets into the mix. Four tapes this time.

Level 4 adds metal shielding to the front of some turrets, and adds security cameras that alert shock drones to the player's location. Another four tapes.

Level 5 contains an abundance of shock drones and security cameras. Three tapes are required to finish the game.

While the leveling system ties nicely into the story's themes - rising gradually out of a dreamlike state - in practice it's frustrating to deal with. I'd much rather try to collect eleven tapes in a level that gradually gets more hostile as you progress than get killed once and be forced down to a lower difficulty (and it's far easier to die in this game than it is to collect tapes and progress.) On top of this, leaving the game penalizes you by dropping down a rank, and if the game crashes it resets you all the way back to Level 1.

Furthermore, the game gives you less ammo to work with on higher levels, meaning that in a game where the primary gameplay hook is figuring out how to manually operate a handgun correctly, you can run out of bullets even if you're being conservative with your ammo. This turns the game from a first-rate handgun simulator into a third-rate stealth game where your only hope is to sneak behind an automated gun's camera range, fiddle around with the hacking minigame, and hope it drops a few bullets after you've deactivated it.

And if you do manage to beat the odds, sneak past or deactivate every killdrone, and collect all 21 tapes across five levels - what's your reward?

The screen fades out to a loading screen, then drops you back into Level 1. Going to the stats menu in the pause screen reveals the true reward - the win counter has ticked up from zero to one. No cutscene, no fanfare, just a crappy metanarrative in the last three tapes and it's back to the start again.

I want to like this game, but the parts that frustrate me ultimately outweigh the positives.

Imagine the sort of dedication it takes to work on a total conversion modification of a game for fifteen years, just so you can see Half-Life (1998) with Half-Life 2 (2004)'s graphics and engine. (Well, they've moved to the 2013 branch of the Source engine, but that's besides the point.) Absolute mad lads.

Why do we all have to wear these ridiculous ties?

Klei Entertainment will forever be my go-to example on Early Access done right.

Whereas other developers might take your money through Kickstarter or crowdfunding only to stall out development three patches in, Klei releases a functional (if somewhat barebones) game and implement regular updates that advance both the art direction and gameplay to new heights. They use both Steam forums and their own personal forums to address bugs and issues brought up by players who opted into playing a game still in development, and their DLC packs offer gameplay-altering, high quality content as opposed to reskinned weapons or optional cosmetics. And above all else, they release tools so players can freely create mods to tailor the gameplay to their tastes, free of charge.

But is the game fun?

Of course, what would the point be if it wasn't? It certainly isn't everyone's cup of tea, but this top-down world exploration survival RPG with gameplay elements centered around starvation and loss of sanity is a beautiful looking, solidly executed game that's good for if you want to play in short bursts during your spare time, or marathon for hours in an attempt to survive the cruel winter while hounds bay in the distance for your blood. Just remember to make an effigy of yourself out of cooked steaks and beard hair to counter the permadeath mechanics through the power of magic science.

If a movie were to be made of this game, it would go somewhere along these lines:

A man wakes up from a healing coma after getting some cybernetic implants out of a shady deal, then spends the rest of the movie running down corridors crying and screaming while he bashes mutants and cyborgs with a lead pipe.

I don't know about you, but I'd watch that movie.