Video game review: Helldivers - blast the bugs
Players count the bodies in interactive game Helldivers.
Arrowhead
Enlist with the Helldivers, a super-soldier squad of gun-toting freedom fighters. Destroy hideous bugs, cyborgs and misunderstood aliens! Shove democracy down the throats of all who dare challenge it.
Numerous games have taken influence from the cult sci-fi film Starship Troopers, Paul Verhoeven's thinly veiled and incredibly violent take on America's fascist-like foreign oppression. But few have been so blatant in their imitation. Helldivers is not as clever in its satire - despite a number of tongue-in-cheek cut-scenes and one-liners - but it recreates the horrific battles and grand us-versus-them campaigns.
Like the film, it shows a disregard for even the slightest political correctness. Using an appropriate top-down viewpoint, the game is a simple series of loud, brash battles, over-the-top, blood-soaked skirmishes and an indifference to life except as a body count.
Players are thrown headfirst into the war between Super Earth, and the three factions threatening our blond-haired, blue-eyed existence. There's the Illuminate, with their mastery of technology; gun-wielding cyborgs; and finally, arachnid-like creatures known simply as bugs.
