This week on Fully Ramblomatic, Yahtzee reviewed Helldivers 2. Support us on Patreon: / secondwindgroup Second Wind Merch Store: sharkrobot.com/collections/se...
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Isn't his name on a blacklist or something for being an actual critic, so they have to get his review codes from retail? I remember something along those lines back at the Snatchet & Clank review when Sony wasn't happy with the "tone" of his reviews.
Meh, to be fair, I didn't know anything about this game until last week and this week 😅 I was like "oof, rough launch. Well, hopefully once they get going, they'll smoo- *2 MONTHS?!* " 😂
It's competely non-canon, but i like to think that when you're picking out the name of "your" starship, the Super Earth Government just looks at the options you chose from the pre-determined list, ships your cryogenically frozen arse to the part of their immense discretionary military spending budgeted fleet with a matching title, and when they thaw you out as the next chunk of patriotic pork to be thrown into the meat grinder, they tell you that it's "your" ship.
"You" are not the diver playing. You're the ship! The standard setting for diver's voices is random, and when you log into the game, you get thawed out of cryo when you either didnt make it last mission or connect to a different host ship. The logistics officer also welcomes you to the ship in that case as if you had never been on it. That's because you haven't been. Your frozen as is coming straight from basic to be dropped into the next hellscape. The ship upgrades and stratagem unlocks are all for the ship, one can argue even the cosmetic and arsenal unlocks are the ship deciding what their stock of divers is equipped with.
@@technomusicaddicted Which makes it kind of awkward when you do missions with others, and it requires you to be unfrozen on their ship. Especially if the host just quits and you get booted back to your ship. Like you just unfroze a guy only for him to go back in the freezer.
@@Ceece20 You always come from your ship. Your ship joins the host in space. The ships only have one way on: the cryo containers (AKA the devs couldn't be bothered to animate another loading screen). So you freeze yourself, get sent to the other ship, then unfreeze there. Any reinforcements mid-mission come from your ship.
My friends headcannon that supercitesens deserve to be cloned, cause they were so invaluable they have got a whole ship of one dude. The rest are implanted with a hivemind like tool
The one thing that I think Yahtzee might’ve appreciated more is if he realized what the “Free Spaceship” thing actually was. Whenever you start your game you come out of a cryo pod, from a long conveyor belt of cryopods with other helldivers. The implication isn’t that you specifically get a ship and are coming back. But rather you’re unfrozen after training “Welcome aboard!”, drop down, die, the next person gets de-thawed “welcome aboard!” Drop down, die, repeat ad infinitum
*_SHAME THEY FUCKED IT UP._* really see that english lit, published author talent on display. The sheer emotion behind those 5 words really speak to you.
The sheer amount of disappointed hatred in that delivery, backed up by over 15 years of watching the industry commit similar blunders on a near-daily basis.
@@Kuplung57 Fleek is definitely a very competent new entrant into this review style. It's nice to see newer reviewers can still get traction here despite RU-vid's obviously rigged algorithms
@@iller3 Agree! Admiral fleek has the artistic energy of early Yahtzee works. Cannot help but see the similarity between him and Yahtzee when he delivers the geniusly loaded metaphors and references.
Yahtzee you've done the composer dirty here. Not in my life have I ever heard the conflicting themes of "epic hero-boner avengers assemble space-man battle music" and "clearly taking the piss" woven so beautifully into a single piece. Wilbert Roget II put on a masterclass in understanding the assignment, and deserves a Grammy.
The thing I love about the opening is how they refer to the Helldivers as cargo the minute you're frozen. They make it pretty clear you're as expendable as your bullets.
I will always have a soft spot for the beautifully cringe "muh-porg" uttered by a journalist on French TV way back in 2010, but Yahtzee's version is great as well.
"You know what? Considering the irony of Starship Troopers went over so many peoples' heads the first time, probably wouldn't hurt to give it a second crack." Brilliant.
@@alfredosaint-jean9660 you aren't smart for pointing this shit out, it's done all the fucking time. It doesn't matter because the book fucking sucks and the movie was awesome
But considering some people screamed murder when HD2 tried to explain some of their backstory and said HD2 was meant to be unpolitical.....yeah, I wouldn't pin much hope for them.
3:08 To be fair, it's not like that spaceship is yours per se. The military stuffed each one full of frozen Helldivers to replace the ones that get minced. It's even implied that each time you load into your ship, it's that specific Helldiver's first day on the job. Also, that addendum is the angriest I've ever heard Yahtzee.
Yeah, Yahtzee didn't read the Helldiver Contract (which is good, because reading the contract is a breach of the contract). The Helldiver and their family members (and the successor Helldiver and their family members, when the one you're playing as is killed) are personally financially liable for the Super Destroyer.
Thanks Yahtzee, been following your reviews since the early days and it's lovely to see you taking a proper stab at our title. As always, laughs were had. Especially "Dial-A-WarCrime-System" and "SHAME THEY FUCKED IT UP" :D
I wonder how Yahtzee would have compared it to the first game, had he played it (I don't think he did, but I'm not 100% sure on it). Anyways, keep up with your awesome work! You guys at ArrowHead were always one of my fave dev teams, ever since I spent countless hours laughing my ass off while playing Magicka 1 (and the Vietnam DLC).
Yatz, Imma level with you. It's hard out here. I'm barely making it by and i think i may have sleep for dinner at least once a month, but I'll tell you this; I have been watching your reviews for many years now. i have enjoyed every one and sometimes find myself playing games after i watched your review like Damn, He really nailed it! Things are looking up now and i think i can afford a dollar! I love this revival to second wind and i cant wait to see what happens next for all of you.
Its been well studied that asking for likes and subscribes in the video has a massive impact on getting people to do it. So while its annoying to have every RU-vidr do it all the time, they do it for a reason. It works, and its important for them.
@@earthen105 I wonder if this changes drastically by demographic too. You see every kids channel drop those reminders early often and loudly but not nearly as much elsewhere. I personally have stopped watching videos and hit "don't recommend" on channels that drop a lengthy "only X% of my viewers are subscribed" reminders mid video because that's how much it irritates me. This applies much more to a new channel I'm giving a shot to. Nowadays sponsorblock thankfully lets you auto-skip that to make some channels tolerable. Also for the record a reminder like yahtzee's here is about as a good as it gets. At the end of the video, mid-credits, phrased genuinely but still with some snark and personality rather than as a blank command to a dog.
The thing is, it's also, at its core, designed around teammates, for complementing loadouts with your kit that can't cover *everything* at once. So it's more fun with friends because you'll won't be stretched thin on your lonesome trying to cover chaff and heavies and as much of the map as possible by yourself.
I think there's a difference between games being designed around being fun with friends and using it as a crutch to cover base game design failures. Helldivers covers this pretty well by just... not pulling punches. You're going to a simulated battlefield, if you choose to go it alone, prepare for the consequences of not having someone to back you up! You *can* do even the hardest difficulty solo and you don't need any fancy loadout options to do so if you're good enough and have a deep enough understanding of the game, but the simple nature of having a well-coordinated squad of friends will make things far easier. Yahtzee mentioned some high level with fancy stratagems going off and doing objectives solo, but I was capable of doing this in difficulty 7 by level 13.
They say it's a free spaceship just for you but when you load into the game they unfreeze you from a section of the ship where they keep a hundred backup "captains" for when they send you to go die
By the way, the reason you are given a spaceship is because you are more or less the spaceship, not the recruit. The recruit is replaced with a new recruit every time you die, and that new recruit takes over the spaceship but reaps the benefits you unlocked. This is why you are unfrozen each time you return to your ship (that's a new recruit), or why the bug juice stays on you if you survived the mission (that's the same recruit). The spaceship is the only constant throughout your playtime. This also why the default for the voice of the player is set to random by default. None of the recruits you control are the original recruit you did during the tutorial after you die once.
Later; Sony: So I ended up going back on forcing players to link accounts even though I REALLY wanted to. 'Why?' Sony: I'm paying you to extract all these boots from my arse, you tell me.
Considering how big of an advocate Yhatzee is for games being a medium for creating new ways of storytelling, I'm surprised he didn't mention the "live war" system the game has, because it's a way of storytelling only a live-service game that constantly changes can provide. which is one of the first times a live-service game model has been used for something other than sucking as much money as possible from their customers.
I feel like I've seen something like that in other mmos though usually it's PvP territory control. Warframe has a semi-regular defense event triggered by players doing too many missions for one of the enemy factions, which causes that faction to launch an assault against one of the relay stations and start a defense event. (Relays are hubs that provide various trade, faction and other services.) The defense event gives the community 3 days to deal enough damage to destroy the enemy ship before it permanently destroys the targeted relay. The defence event was first introduced in 2014 as part of an Operation (limited time events) which ended with the destruction of 4 of the 7 relays (The destroyed relays varied between consoles and PC, though it has now been standardised as part of crossplay support). One of the original destroyed relays was rebuilt as part of a 2018 Operation. I don't believe the community has ever failed to defend a relay since the original Operation.
I think the 'live war' is actually kinda lackluster, considering what it could be. Like sure the bugs had that whole "turn on pesticide towers, oh no they fly now" event but that's not much more than any other live service game has done. All the bots got was "go kill them here, oh no now they're somewhere else", no actual gameplay changes whatsoever (even though factory striders got introduced around the same time, with no in-world justification). And the defend/liberate rate is so tightly controlled on the dev side that the playerbase really can't affect the 'story'. So all we have is the illusion of a war that sometimes changes which planets we play on and maybe every few weeks we'll get a new enemy or mission type.
To add to what the other guy also said - The devs pulling a tantrum move because the players performed way too well with one of the earlier events and deciding to essentially DM fiat the conclusion bascially makes the whole system a lost cause. What's the point of participating in the "live world", if the DM will tell you what happens, regardless of the actual results? At this point, I'd dare players into just losing every "critical engagement" and see how willing the devs are to ACTUALLY follow through with a "live world" as opposed to just telling their own story and throwing a tantrum when it doesn't go the way they'd like.
A review so late it not only missed the hype but the inevitable publisher controversy, backtrack and passive aggressive non-apology as well. Nice to see you once again Yahtzee.
I must say im so impressed by the helldivers community how they made their anger heard through reviews and when it was settled everyone like an organism went back and upvoted the game again at steam. Never underestimate a fan base when they set their mind on something and coordinate it well. A win for gamers.
@@YukoValis to be fair the game trained the players to be hyper coordinated and efficient bastards that finish week or month-long, or even supposed to be impossible goals in a matter of a single day, maybe 2
Sony to investors: _"As it turns out, making a game that conditions millions of gamers to thoroughly give a shit causes them to THOROUGHLY give a shit."_
Sony really tried to kill the Golden Goose. These past few days were a rollercoaster with the forced PSN linking, game removed from Steam in more than 100 countries, and Sony walking back.
@@TuriGamer But it was optional at first. If it was mandatory in the beginning, or if the game were free, there wouldn't be too much of a problem. The issue is it was optional first then became mandatory after people in places were they couldn't make a psn account had bought it and played it and liked it. You see the issue?
And? They did a poor arse job from the get go. And the pandora box knowing you can still have crossplay with Sony games without it for pc users means there is just extra scrutiny for when it being forced or required for multiplayer games.@@TuriGamer
Normalize always going this hard and fast on publishers doing anything to slightly inconvenience players to prevent slippery slopes from even coming into question.
I love the ending talk. Feels more personal. Like a parent after yelling about whats being said on the news about the current political crisis or inflation, and then calms down to talk about your day at school. Only to then berate you for doing terribly at that too.
I love that the in game reason for why you just get a personal destroyer is because it’s not really yours. Since they know you’re going to die horribly in about 20 minutes it’s just whatever dickhead is currently active. That’s why it has all those cryo pods. You die and the next idiot in like takes your place
I've found that playing a mission single player is like playing a totally different game. Where as normally you and your squad is coating the battlefield with blood in the color of who is losing the hardest, playing solo is more like a lone soldier dropped behind enemy lines trying desperately to make it to an EVAC point while avoiding patrols, gathering intel (samples), and completing objectives that only a special forces commando could be expected to do and survive. I've done it a few times and while it has been extremely stressful, the times I was able to succeed it felt incredibly fulfilling.
Same. Had one mission early on in my first few days of playing where it was me as the untested rookie being helped by someone who clearly knew how to go it solo. Then while we were en-route to the ICBM launch site, they DC'd. Suddenly I was all on my own on a frozen planet, surrounded by killbots out for my blood with nothing but an anti-material rifle with a bad sight to keep me alive. Still remember the moments of absolute terror when a mere Automaton trooper was standing right in front of me while I lay prone at the launch terminal, praying the damn thing wouldn't see me and just walk away. Made it home in one piece though, with my mentor's samples too.
@@FurnaxIkkiI love the AM rifle against the bots. First person aim and shoot the walkers in the face. It's not great for anything faster though unless you see them coming.
I like running solos on moderate difficulty, it feels like playing Metal Gear Solid V: You're Not Big Boss Edition. You get all these toys and strategems and a battlefield, but you aren't exactly the greatest soldier in the world.
@@Tonbizzle I have heard (and re-iterated) the parallels between Phantom Pain and Helldivers solo in the 4-6 range quite a few times. It really is a great experience..
I love the heads up at the beginning and then the addendum just being Yahtzee shouting "shame they fucked it up!" and then having to do a second addendum after that, lmao. I mean, Sony keeps fucking up, but Microsoft really fucking stepped in it yesterday. Not that they haven't been fucking up majorly before yesterday, but closing Tango is a fucking kick in the teeth.
"Has the seven headed beast risen from the ocean already?" Shows a picture of the very defunct band S Club 7. It's a niche audience you're going for here isn't it Yahtzee?
"I was playing with friends and "Fun with Friends" is bullshit praise. That just means you like your friends." 'nother quote for the hall of fame I would say.
3:21 Shout out to the 5 other people who get that subtle Ender’s Game joke, even the ones who saw the film first like me. (In the movie they were renamed the Formics so kids wouldn’t run around swearing, like the opposite of naming the baddy Faarquad)
My wife and I were the only people in the cinema to laugh at the screening of Starship Troopers when it was soooo obviously satire and anyone who had watched Paul Verhoeven's other work should have expected as much.
@jays.6843 The grand irony of this is Heinlin (the author of the book) has been accused of both supporting fascism and supporting communism in Starship Troopers. He was supporting neo-Roman "citizenship through service," and taking shots at both extremes (not always successfully). The movie was...very much not that.
@@jays.6843 Even if I don't use any insult of any kind and keep it as clinical as it can be, either youtube will remove the comment anyways or you will ignore the absolute gold that would come out of my mouth. In short, no, you have either never read the book or you are a terrible person.
These companies don't realize that their business model depends on their clients trusting them. Like taking away the bottom cards in a house of cards and expecting the whole thing to float in place.
@@mauree1618 Yes. They have a short, snappy title on a single interesting concept, and go for 1.5 hours, 20-30 minutes of which is spread here and there discussing the topic. (don't get me wrong, I LOVE listening to any of these guys talk to each other, even off-topic, but there's just not enough hours in the day)
Wait a minute... Yahtzee kept me listening through the Patreon credits long enough to learn that FR still has the endcard gags from ZP! Well now I guess I HAVE to rewatch every FR video to see the last little jokes at the end. You got me!
Won't be surprised to see a Cold Take or something on the whole Sony debacle. Going forward I think we should make executives run through the Helldivers training course before they're allowed to make any decisions against the devs wishes. And yes, this should be for every game.
@@monkeyskitz The Tarkov one and the one before that definitely touch on similar ideas (luring players in only to kill the game with a bad executive decision) but there's probably something to be said about how particularly foolish this was because it would slash the player base and not actually increase revenue, just make the number of PSN users go up. It's also unique because players were successfully able to force the decision to reverse and the devs were vocal about it not being their choice.
I think we can safely say that all of these folks’ stuff is just better on Second Wind. They’re more able to speak about whatever and use whatever tone they want to do so. I’m so happy for success stories like these.
“Since the irony went over peoples heads the first time probably wouldn’t be bad to give it a second crack” How do we tell him the entire fanbase missed it and is arguing with anyone pointing out it’s meant to be satirical
For some reason I expected a calm, ‘oh and it may be gone in a few months’, but as usual Yahtzee’s wild nature got the better of me. Love that Addendum.
All i could think of while smiling during the credits commentary was listening to one of Yahtzee’s audiobooks. That alone is worth another trip to patreon.
Sony really decided to attack a game where the community has been collectively fighting together for months like we wouldnt nuke the reviews into orbit💀
They didnt attack nothing making a psn account takes 2 minutes where they messed up was the countries that where getting screwed.if you think makong a psn account is so mich a hassle that you would quit an amazing game you aint no gamer you a karen or activist.
@@lordhorg999 Some countries' "2 minutes" includes uploading a scan of your face or your gov't issued ID card to prove you're an adult (like the UK and Canada), so it's not quite as easy as shitting out another throw-away account you'll forget about in a week if it wasn't for auto-saved logins.
@@DrakonLameth Or the other part where at least 75% of the world does not have access to PSN to even make a PSN account, meaning people in those areas would not be able to play the game at all, leading to Steam delisting the game
I was really curious on how these fully rambling would go since I loved the Zero punctuation but I can say without a doubt now that you still have the same charm and now I'm looking forward to more episodes and I'm going to watch the older ones thanks Yatzee you guys are the best I'm so grateful that your continuing something that you guys love to do
You can absolutely solo, I do it all the time. You don't get much XP but after level 25 XP has almost zero value anyway - more importantly you can get requisition slips (extremely valuable until you have bought all the stratagems), medals (always valuable for the regularly released warbonds), super credits (always valuable to access the aforementioned warbonds and for armour), and samples (technically limited value, but you'll need hundreds and hundreds for all the upgrades).
The class and professionalism to add a note at the beginning of the video that an addendum is included. Wow, Yahtzee is one of the most morally sound journalists alive today.
Nice review, appreciate the focus on the presentation, I will add a couple of things to feed the RU-vid gods though. -Weapons feel fun to use with great effects & feedback, even when the balance is off it still has STYLE. Even shots that ping off enemy armour for zero damage have a flashy and readable blue "ricochet" effect. -Enemies are fun to shoot, which is a big deal in a shooter. Lots of crunchy robot sounds, sprays of bug juice, and an array of different animations for enemies that lose limbs or get decapitated, cut in half, etc. Most enemies feel a lot more dynamic than just a bag of hit points, though again there's a couple of (animation) bugs that can break the illusion. -HD2 isn't *entirely* hostile to solo players, but I don't recommend buying the game unless you've got a playgroup or you're okay with pubs. Solo play basically means "stealth challenge," some of the strongest weapons in the game are intended to be used by two players in tandem, etc.
As someone who has used ZP videos as sleeping aids long before Escapist released their own official yearly compilation, Im glad Yatzee immediately addressed him playing an online only muliplayer fps in the first 10 seconds of the review or I was going to literally shit everywhere in indignation. As soon as I saw this on my timeline I scoffed in disbelief. also Yatzee's speech pattern reminds me of Rick Mayall, R.I.P
Sony: "Hey, you know the folks who play that game where the players get rewarded for all pushing in vaguely the same direction at the same time? Let's piss them off. What are they gonna do about it?" Players: *all push in vaguely the same direction at the same time* Sony: shockedpikachu.jpg
The opening is exactly my reaction to this video. Yahtzee usually won't even consider reviewing these kinds of games. Even if he does, he rarely actually praises them. But im glad he can appreciate Helldivers 2 for what it is. Just a well put together shooter with non predatory business practices
2:36 Yep, exactly. Unfortunately, it apparently went over the heads of a lot of Helldivers 2 players, as well. And if we're being realistic - like tying it back to real life, which was certainly the intent - I don't think it's really just saying "humans suck" or something. It's a commentary on capitalism-imperialism (the stage of capitalism we're currently living in), specifically the militaristic aspects of it. Probably best exemplified by the US state (though not limited to it). The motivation is capturing markets and spheres of influence. It's all in the service of capital (and the capitalist class). Also, as you probably know, I think that PSN account requirement thing they tried to do was the fault of Sony, not the dev. But yeah, great as always, Yahtz. No one will probably see this comment anyway, huh? 😆
"Your free spaceship" Yahtzee, the tutorial ended with *hundreds of rockets stuffed full of freshly trained helldivers* being rocketed up to the super destroyers. There are oodles of helldivers stuffed in "your" ship, waiting for you to die so they can get thawed out and be your respawn. Check your career in the armory, check your deaths, and yep, that is how many freshly trained recruits (the ship manager lady says congrats on completing basic training every so often, as you come out of your cryo pod) have been thrown into the meat grinder whenever you accidentally grenade yourself or get eaten or whatever. It's "your ship" you the player. They tell the helldiver it's their ship, but the moment they die on a mission, they send a second diver. And if they come back, it's "their ship". But if they die too, they send a third diver. And if they come back... You get the idea. Or at least, you *should* get the idea, it's extremely obvious how I'm spelling out what you missed despite the game spelling it out. Humanity isn't fighting bugs because they're bored, the bugs decompose into the fuel they use for FTL travel. Also, we're kicking them off of certain planets so we can have more room to do science and have population on. We literally saw a major order *just* for killing bugs *because we needed more FTL fuel to fuel our war against the bots more* for crying out loud. Also, the bots are an actual menace, they've taken so many planets now... And they put humans in death camps, btw. Rounded up into pens, slaughtered, dissected, heads mutilated... You really just took a passing glance and didn't even read any of the major orders you were told to go follow, or listen to any of the crew talk about the TCS failure, the bots being the scary terminators from space, or listen to *any* of the videos that play in your ship if you so much as have a sip of a drink.
The tightness and focus of the design really blows me away, and makes the game so fun. The interplay between objectives, types of enemies (and armor levels), effectiveness of weapons vs those threats, and the fact that you can’t ever bring/be wielding everything you need to properly deal with it all by yourself… it all comes together to make the game team-based co-op fun, right down to it’s very bones.
I am level 65 I have rarely seen toxic players in this game. Maybe like one or two missions where team killing happened on purpose. Also, it helps massively if you initiate voice comms and talk first to get the other randos to talk as well. My best interactions in this game were with randos chatting it up while shooting bugs in the face.
