All of the nominees for 2024’s iteration of The Recreation Awards have been finalized and the ultimate waves of votes at the moment are coming in, with Geoff Keighley’s extremely anticipated awards present now only a brief two days away from airing reside. As you’d anticipate, gaming circles are abuzz with debates about which of the nominees ought to take residence the celebrated Recreation of the 12 months (GOTY) title and different awards. Right here, although, I would like to debate a recreation I really feel bought completely snubbed this 12 months — a recreation that delivers among the best and most artistic multiplayer experiences I’ve loved in years.
That recreation is Helldivers 2, and albeit, I am astounded that it’s not within the GOTY operating. Arrowhead Recreation Studios’ third-person co-op shooter exploded onto the scene in early February and was an prompt hit with PS5 and particularly PC gamers, with lots of of hundreds of followers taking part in constantly for your complete spring and properly into the summer season. A whole two months of my work this 12 months have been spent writing about Helldivers 2 and solely Helldivers 2, as hundreds of gamers have been incessantly trying to find and ravenously consuming information about Main Orders, patch word particulars, guides, and different content material on publications and social media networks.
Unquestionably, the maintain the shooter had on the gaming neighborhood was as tight because it was lasting, and it jogged my memory of how totally hooked individuals have been on Baldur’s Gate 3 and Elden Ring for months when these video games got here out. Even now, Helldivers 2 enjoys a smaller, however fiercely devoted participant base, with many typically coming again to it en masse to take a look at main updates and content material additions.
However what makes Helldivers 2 so good, and why do I feel it deserves a nomination for GOTY? Finally, it comes all the way down to the truth that there’s merely nothing else prefer it within the co-op shooter area. Video games like Warhammer 40,000: Darktide or this 12 months’s Space Marine 2 are nice, however Helldivers units itself aside with unparalleled dynamism — a mix of gameplay mechanics, sandbox, and encounter design that makes each mission really feel like an unpredictable journey.
From the varied unit make-up and different behaviors of the Terminid and Automaton factions to wild physics interactions and randomized map terrain, goal places, and environmental circumstances, all the pieces in Helldivers is designed to maintain you in your toes whereas encouraging on-the-fly methods and ways. In a single second, you will be opening fireplace on a fortified base from cowl and excessive floor, however within the subsequent, a wave of reinforcements would possibly are available from a flank, or a meteor bathe would possibly start that forces you out of place.
Attempting to successfully reply and make “the fitting name” when sudden surprises like these occur is a big a part of what makes Helldivers 2 so partaking, and due to the numerous variables at play — incoming enemy varieties, cowl, terrain, climate, your tools, and your aims — its gameplay feels endlessly contemporary and thrilling. Even now, lots of of hours later, my mates and I nonetheless often leap again into the Galactic Conflict due to this.
One more reason I fell in love with the sport is its emphasis on teamwork; no particular person participant in a four-man squad can carry sturdy options to each risk you will face, so planning loadouts to cowl one another’s weaknesses, speaking, and leaning in your fellow Helldivers for assist is vital. That makes getting via a troublesome operation along with your buddies immensely satisfying, and even in case you fail, Helldivers 2’s hilarious voice appearing and satirical Starship Troopers vibe makes it a recreation you are way more more likely to snigger at than get offended or pissed off with. Certainly, at any time when I by chance blow somebody up with stratagem air assist or get my head taken off by a careless good friend on machine gun obligation, our Discord name tends to erupt in laughter.
All in all, it is a implausible co-op shooter (and I did not even get into its superior cinematic presentation or its nifty player-driven Galactic Conflict metagame), and it is an actual disgrace it did not get a nod for GOTY voting. The very fact it bought handed over is particularly disappointing to me since each Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree and Black Myth: Wukong bought nominated, with the previous being a DLC enlargement for 2022’s winner of the award.
Do not get me fallacious, Shadow of the Erdtree is phenomenal — my review of it was the easiest 10/10 score I’ve ever given — however although it is a large 40-hour expertise that is mainly the dimensions of a standalone recreation, it is nonetheless technically an enlargement, and I do not just like the precedent that nominating a DLC units for future The Recreation Awards exhibits. Black Fantasy: Wukong, in the meantime, is…strong, however not GOTY-worthy, if you ask me. The sport was fairly in style total and fully blew up within the Chinese language market, however its spectacle-heavy boss encounters and lovely audio/visible high quality was offset by extraordinarily bland stage design, a boring and albeit pointless gear system, and considerably poor enemy selection.
It is loopy to me that each of those beat out Helldivers for a nomination, although I do acknowledge that the shooter’s popularity was broken by Sony’s decision to try and force its players to use the PlayStation Network (PSN) post-launch (the agency quickly backpedaled this, but delisted the game from sale in countries without PSN availability). Many gamers have been additionally dissatisfied with the sport’s balancing and Arrowhead’s nerf-heavy strategy to it for some time (although I would argue it has been in a fairly nice state for the previous a number of months). Even so, the sport is however a novel and amazingly enjoyable co-op expertise, and it completely deserved to be a GOTY contender.
A silver lining is that it a minimum of bought nominations for the Finest Ongoing, Finest Group Help, Finest Motion Recreation, and Finest Multiplayer awards; I would give Finest Ongoing to Final Fantasy XIV and Finest Group Help to Baldur’s Gate 3 after all of the superb updates Larian Studios has been making to the RPG since launch, however Helldivers 2 undoubtedly deserves the latter two. We’ll see if it wins them come Thursday, December 12, as The Recreation Awards present streams that night at 4:30 p.m. PT / 7:30 p.m. PT / 12:30 a.m. GMT on The Game Awards’ website, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and Instagram.
