Previously Sony mandated, perhaps to the surprise of hundreds of thousands of players, that a PSN account would be mandatory going forward despite me and potentially many others weren't even made aware of it when launching or playing the game with the promise of protecting players when the negatives outweighed the positives. Some, if not all, of the points simply did not make sense.

This requirement has been rolled back, at least for now. However, at the time or writing this, the game is still delisted for over 170 countries[steamdb.info] so Sony could still very well implement the mandatory account system once they figure that the flames have been extinguished.

Moving onto the game itself, the visuals of maps make the game, at worst, borderline unplayable and causes me eye strain.

Light sources in night time maps are extremely bright in clusters (like the yellow biomasses on Terminid planets) and street and weapon lights potentially obscuring your view, causing me to immediately shoot any light I see turned on.

Daytime maps sometimes suffer from the same issues, as dusty maps can cause you to be seen by enemies instead of being the other way around or being something that, on paper, shouldn't be possible.

The damage you take seems inconsistent, you could take more damage from falling than a charger trying to run you over as if you were a bioluminescent federal agent, compounded with the fact that sometimes ragdolling immobilises you forcing you to die without having any means from recovering from it. You can get stuck in corpses of enemies or in rare cases, bug holes if you dive straight into them (what a terrible idea that was), prompting you to either have a teammate to try to beat you to get you out or to immediately kill yourself and respawn.

While on the subject of ragdolls and physics, in rare cases you can be sent flying for no explainable reason other than someone or something having shot a plant(?) that causes massive knockback, causing you to take potentially lethal damage as a result.

Ragdoll physics is also just borked. You could be killed immediately from falling in place or one or two meters while holding a ballistic shield or you could take little to no damage from falling from the sky while making use of the smoke pods to boost traversal speed for giggles.

Some enemy balancing is all over the place, mostly with how Bile Spewers and Nursing Spewers are essentially midget Bile Titans, they do not make you immediately aware of their presence until the possibility of it being too late, can kill you with a similar or lower TTK compared to the Titan and are seemingly rather nimble for something that is essentially a chronically overweight and bloated alien.

Automatons, or at least the barrel of their gun can sometimes clip through solid walls and terrain, causing me to be shot and sometimes die without any reasonable means to fight back or even shake them off. I even had one instance of an Annihilator Tank firing through a small gap between the foot of a Factory Strider and the ground.

Sometimes you will slide around in this state in spite of how much friction the ground may provide, occasional clipping through the floor, causing me to be crushed by a factory strider with no input of my own and taking too long to get up from a ragdolled state makes this one of the most frustrating systems to deal with.

A lot of the combat in general is centered around getting an optimal TTK, however that is sometimes impossible with how precise you have to aim, especially for a game that:

• Console players can play, who usually do not have better aim without any form of assistance compared to mouse and keyboard users, and
  
• Has weapon sway when you're moving or even standing and aim disrupting flinching when you are shot, the latter of which can be solved by being behind cover, while punishing people for shooting centre of mass rather than the most optimal weakspot, most notable with Devastators, Berserkers, Chargers (weakspot kill to the head is impossible if you do not have anti tank weapons) and Bile/Nursing Spewers.

The suboptimal time to kill is noticeably longer than if it were optimal, especially with the Automaton faction where some of the enemies have a decent amount of shielding against low power firearms and perhaps even some weapons with medium AP capability.

This also does apply to high level Terminids, mostly just the Bile Titan as one of its "lethal" weakspots, its face, is small and sometimes hard to hit compared to its overall size being impervious to most gunfire except a select few special weapons and stratagems.

In spite of the intrusive nature of this game's anticheat, there are people that seem to be able to exploit the game, most notably being armed with a metric truckload of grenades being thrown by some Helldivers like it was just an infinite reserve of pocket sand.

I really do feel like there is some form of Stockholm Syndrome with this game, I hate it sometimes in spite of the gameplay being mostly fun.

Previously Sony mandated, perhaps to the surprise of hundreds of thousands of players, that a PSN account would be mandatory going forward despite me and potentially many others weren't even made aware of it when launching or playing the game with the promise of protecting players when the negatives outweighed the positives. Some, if not all, of the points simply did not make sense. This requirement has been rolled back, at least for now. However, at the time or writing this, [url=https://steamdb.info/sub/137730/info/]the game is still delisted for over 170 countries[/url] so Sony could still very well implement the mandatory account system once they figure that the flames have been extinguished. Moving onto the game itself, the visuals of maps make the game, at worst, borderline unplayable and causes me eye strain. Light sources in night time maps are extremely bright in clusters ([url=https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3258275549]like the yellow biomasses on Terminid planets[/url]) and street and weapon lights potentially obscuring your view, causing me to immediately shoot any light I see turned on. Daytime maps sometimes suffer from the same issues, as dusty maps can cause you to be seen by enemies instead of being the other way around or being something that, on paper, shouldn't be possible. The damage you take seems inconsistent, you could take more damage from falling than a charger trying to run you over as if you were a bioluminescent federal agent, compounded with the fact that sometimes ragdolling immobilises you forcing you to die without having any means from recovering from it. You can get stuck in corpses of enemies or in rare cases, bug holes if you dive straight into them (what a terrible idea that was), prompting you to either have a teammate to try to beat you to get you out or to immediately kill yourself and respawn. While on the subject of ragdolls and physics, in rare cases you can be sent flying for no explainable reason other than someone or something having shot a plant(?) that causes massive knockback, causing you to take potentially lethal damage as a result. Ragdoll physics is also just borked. You could be killed immediately from falling in place or one or two meters while holding a ballistic shield or you could take little to no damage from falling from the sky while making use of the smoke pods to boost traversal speed for giggles. Some enemy balancing is all over the place, mostly with how Bile Spewers and Nursing Spewers are essentially midget Bile Titans, they do not make you immediately aware of their presence until the possibility of it being too late, can kill you with a similar or lower TTK compared to the Titan and are seemingly rather nimble for something that is essentially a chronically overweight and bloated alien. Automatons, or at least the barrel of their gun can sometimes clip through solid walls and terrain, causing me to be shot and sometimes die without any reasonable means to fight back or even shake them off.[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EIVtwkt-PI] I even had one instance of an Annihilator Tank firing through a small gap between the foot of a Factory Strider and the ground.[/url] Sometimes you will slide around in this state in spite of how much friction the ground may provide, occasional clipping through the floor, causing me to be crushed by a factory strider with no input of my own and taking too long to get up from a ragdolled state makes this one of the most frustrating systems to deal with. A lot of the combat in general is centered around getting an optimal TTK, however that is sometimes impossible with how precise you have to aim, especially for a game that: [list] [*]Console players can play, who usually do not have better aim without any form of assistance compared to mouse and keyboard users, and [*]Has weapon sway when you're moving or even standing and aim disrupting flinching when you are shot, the latter of which can be solved by being behind cover, while punishing people for shooting centre of mass rather than the most optimal weakspot, most notable with Devastators, Berserkers, Chargers (weakspot kill to the head is impossible if you do not have anti tank weapons) and Bile/Nursing Spewers. [/list] The suboptimal time to kill is noticeably longer than if it were optimal, especially with the Automaton faction where some of the enemies have a decent amount of shielding against low power firearms and perhaps even some weapons with medium AP capability. This also does apply to high level Terminids, mostly just the Bile Titan as one of its "lethal" weakspots, its face, is small and sometimes hard to hit compared to its overall size being impervious to most gunfire except a select few special weapons and stratagems. In spite of the intrusive nature of this game's anticheat, there are people that seem to be able to exploit the game, most notably being armed with a metric truckload of grenades being thrown by some Helldivers like it was just an infinite reserve of pocket sand. I really do feel like there is some form of Stockholm Syndrome with this game, I hate it sometimes in spite of the gameplay being mostly fun.