Helldivers 2 has been hit with a fresh burst of negative reviews on Steam over the past couple of days, and it looks like the reason for this uptick is rooted in an alleged Galactic War messaging mix-up involving Chinese players keen to defeat the Illuminate.
The good news is that the squids may soon suffer that exact fate, with the battle for Super Earth now in the final stage of its final stage. Though, it has taken Super Earth’s president getting killed in action to get us to that point.
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Taking a look at Steam, HD2 has clocked up just under 3500 negative reviews across May 29 and May 30 so far, as opposed to 1514 positive ones. It’s a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the mass of over 220,000 negative reviews that came with last May’s PSN account linking controversy, but still noticeable.
A glance through these recent thumbs downs reveals that a good portion of them are rooted in unhappiness about recent bugs like the stratagem input one. Though, there are also a bunch that cite the percentage “99.9783%” and express frustration at Arrowhead over a recent development in the the Galactic War.
What’s happened looks to be this: with only two mega cities left to defend from the Illuminate invasion – Equality-On-Sea (located in China on Helldivers 2’s in-game map) and Prosperity City (Super Earth’s capital, placed in Sweden, home of developer Arrowhead) – there was a big effort put in by players, especially those in China, to hold on to the former.
Image credit: VG247
Their efforts meant the Helldivers’ hold on the city got to 99.9783%, but because the Illuminate are still invading en-masse in a manner the divers couldn’t put a full stop to at that point because the current order was still ongoing, there was nothing they could do to make Equality-On-Sea 100% theirs.
According to an alleged “level 150 Chinese Helldiver veteran” with the Reddit username Valkyrie_Yukikaze (thanks, GamesRadar), this lead to frustration among Chinese players, which they claim to have not been helped by the game’s Chinese translation apparently explaining defense percentages in a way that “makes it [seem] like that the city can be completely taken back from the invasion”.
Cue anger, coupled with conspiracy theories about Arrowhead and its game master J.O.E.L railroading players into specific outcomes or plot twists in the war, rather than rewarding them for their efforts and reacting dynamically to them. How you feel about that comes down to what you think the job of a D&D-style dungeon master is, but there are plenty of examples of Arrowhead embracing stuff players have done out of the blue in the past – hello mines people decided to save children over.
Anyway, here’s hoping everyone can chill out and come together for the climax of this pivotal major order. While Super Earth’s president has been killed in action overnight, Arrowhead’s latest news briefing says that the squids are “taking heavy losses” that could soon result in them being “forced to abandon the assault” of Super Earth. That’s assuming the divers can keep on holding out, so here’s hoping they stay strong.