Trying my hand at Profit and Democracy (Side Quest #1)
Games Played: Lethal Company (2023), Helldivers II (2024)
As someone who loves games with a preference towards single player games but who is known to dabble in multiplayer (1K+ hours in the original Overwatch is dabbling), finding a good balance between these two can be hard. Some multiplayer options are easier than others - a Team Deathmatch is pretty easy to jump into, but co-op escapades are much harder to organise. The stars did align and we thought to make the most of it, trying two hit titles. In Space, it’s always an extreme.
My co-op partners for the evening were MissGamerNerd and LionInAWheelbarrow
First up on the list was Helldivers II – I completed its brief but functional tutorial but couldn’t get much further due to playing on the day the community unlocked the Mechs, meaning the servers were rammed. I would go back to it on a later date but in an attempt to salvage games night, we moved onto Lethal Company, an indie and YouTube darling from late last year.
Lethal Company has a simple gameplay loop – as employs of the Company, you are tasked with going to various moons to extract scrap to sell. These moons are filled with randomised dungeon like factories to explore as well as various hostile enemy life forms. Your only defence is a shovel if you’re lucky, but really it’s a torch (if you can afford it) and your wits. You get three days (lives) to meet a profit goal before you’re allowed to proceed. Failure to do so means sacking from the company and death.
Admittedly, I don’t think we played long enough to form any major opinions, and I do realise this work comes from a solo developer but so far, I just felt the game a tad repetitive and limited. The game has incredibly solid framework, I feel like it just needs more. Maybe that more is just around the corner in future levels, I’ll just have to see.
Since I don’t think I’ll get a chance to say it elsewhere – the place you sell your scrap - the Company moon of 71-Gordion has such a cool vibe to it. I don’t know if it would constitute a liminal space, but a huge featureless warehouse on a dark steel platform on a lightless sea just has such a strong atmosphere to it. It’s a shame you don’t spend more time there.
Helldivers II was back on the agenda the following Tuesday and that was when I got a proper taste of what the game had to offer – single sentence verdict? I really liked it. My playtime of roughly 3-4 hours was split over co-op play with 2 then 1 partner, followed by some solo play later on. My time in Co-op did seem a bit like a trip to the museum, with my co-op partner having played a lot longer than myself and thus had access to all the cool toys that come with the higher levels. I still held my own though, the nature of Helldivers means all the snazzy orbital bombardments in the world won’t save you from being a divvy. Despite not being designed to play solo, my solo outings were also fun. That being said, I may have hit the peak of solo play already.
Each of the games many missions over many diverse planets have a difficulty scaler. The difficulty tiers don’t change your health, damage or the health or damage of enemies, instead increasing the number of enemies, the frequency of more advanced units and the like. Of the 9 difficulty levels available (in time, you have to progress through them). Solo I played on Easy (2/9) while in co-op I believe we went Medium or Challenging (3/9 or 4/9 respectively). Solo play’s hard limit for feasibility is Medium, maybe challenging whereas with a good enough group you could go all the way up to Suicide Mission, Impossible or Helldive (7, 8 and 9/9). The trophies for the game only require you to play missions up until Extreme (6/9) and I’ll probably not be playing enough to keep my skills above that level.
The term live service is used a lot in games, but it seems it’s used appropriately and done well with Helldivers. Planets (maps) are phased in and out of availability as the ongoing “War effort” changes thanks to Arrowhead Studios Dungeon Master. Both sides of the conflict – Bugs and Robots can be fought at any times, but game wide XP events and narrative are usually confined to one or the other. Personally I find the Robots easier than the bugs, but maybe that’ll change with further gameplay.
I said at the start Multiplayer can be hard to organise; While Lion enjoyed both titles (like myself), MissGamerNerd didn’t mesh well with Helldivers II but enjoyed Lethal Company. That creates an extra scheduling step. It’s nobody’s fault, some games just don’t appeal to some people, no harm done. Just means that Lethal Company is an easy crowd pleaser. It also occupies the same space as things like Minecraft, Fortnite and Among Us did during the COVID lockdowns, being easy to play or not play kind of titles, meaning there’s no pressure to be constantly playing them. Since I want the trophies in Helldivers II (and the fact that LC is still technically Early Access), I’ve got more “Incentive”? To get more sessions of that in. Nobody gets left behind though, as there was a suggestion for Deep Rock Galactic to be thrown into the mix, alongside the upcoming PS port of Sea of Thieves. There’s gonna be plenty to keep me going, multiplayer wise. It’ll just be about finding the balance.
Side Quest is a new ongoing series on CraigPlaysGames where I detail my experience in Multiplayer games, ongoing games, games unsuitable for Review or games I’m playing casually, just because I wanted to talk about them.
