Contemplating what armor to wear is one of the most important decisions players will have to make in Helldivers 2. No one suit of armor is an end-all-be-all solution to every scenario players will encounter, for example, such as what map or mission type they’re embarking on and what boosters players’ teammates are equipping in their loadouts. Likewise, while fashion is probably of the utmost priority in Helldivers 2, each armor provides stat increases or passive abilities and belongs to either a light, medium, or heavy weight that drastically affects stamina and health.
Helldivers 2’s Servants of Freedom Warbond was recently released and, in keeping with its theme of righteous self-sacrifice, debuts two new medium-weight armors that share a unique passive: Integrated Explosives, which causes the armor to explode 1.5 seconds after its wearer perishes. How a Helldiver dies is irrelevant, but their corpse’s detonation is meant to avenge them via a posthumous retaliation. This would seem epic and cinematic if not for how underwhelming it is in practice, and there is much more Helldivers 2 could achieve with the premise of a suicidal piece of armor or collar that disincentivizes any unpatriotic or non-democratic actions.
Helldivers 2: Why the Fate of Melee Weapons May Be Sealed
Melee weapons are officially a part of Helldivers 2, but beyond a fun gimmick here and there they may never amount to much more.
Helldivers 2’s Integrated Explosives Fizzle Out Before They Can Make a Splash
As of this writing, the Integrated Explosives armor passive doesn’t amount to much. Sure, the pulpy detonation that occurs can squash a few bugs scrambling atop players’ corpses, but in instances when players are taken out by a particularly large, formidable foe, the explosion is too weak to deal lethal damage. It’s fun to see the player’s corpse quickly erupt into an airborne, dismembered torso, and yet it isn’t necessarily the crowd-control or defensive tool it could be when players are desperately attempting to cap a hill on Spread Democracy missions or thwart a wave of enemies on Evacuate High-Value Assets missions.
Instead, Servants of Freedom’s new Helldivers 2 stratagem, the B-100 Portable Hellbomb, unmistakably takes the cake in that department.
The futility of the Integrated Explosives passive is cemented by the fact that most players don’t seem concerned when they see squadmates wearing it. If there was a concern, a repeat of Helldivers 2’s Firebomb Hellpod controversy would certainly be stirring. Unfortunately, it isn’t a big enough threat that anyone standing idly nearby even has to worry if the detonation will affect them.
Helldivers 2’s Integrated Explosives Should Encourage Objective Play at Risk of Death
Helldivers 2’s Integrated Explosives armor passive is merely a way to get revenge on an enemy at close quarters. But, to make it more impactful as a fun gimmick, it could be neat if the passive worked like a suicide collar a la Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s neck bomb implants.
This way, it could be neat to have players instantly explode if they fall behind the map’s combat zone boundary or stray too far from a mission’s critical objectives. Having the armor detonate beyond an objective’s radius could be tricky, though, with objectives scattered randomly across any given map. Plus, players may never want to wear Integrated Explosives armor if they prefer to spend a mission’s half-hour duration exploring points of interest for rare samples and resource bunkers.
Regardless, Integrated Explosives aren’t as thrilling as they ought to be and future patches will hopefully make the IE-3 Martyr and IE-12 Righteous suits more exciting or influential. Moreover, it would be terrific if this passive wasn’t exclusive to medium-weight armor and had light and heavy variants as well, perhaps with heavier armor resulting in a greater and prolonged explosion compared to lighter armor.
Helldivers 2
-
OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 83 /100 Critics Rec: 91%
- Released
- February 8, 2024
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, In-Game Purchases, Users Interact
- Developer(s)
- Arrowhead Game Studios, Nixxes
- Publisher(s)
- Sony Interactive Entertainment, PlayStation Publishing
WHERE TO PLAY
- Engine
- bitsquid
- Multiplayer
- Online Co-Op
- Cross-Platform Play
- All platforms
- Franchise
- Helldivers
- Number of Players
- 1-4 players (online)
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC
- Genre(s)
- Third-Person Shooter, Extraction Shooter, Action, Science Fiction
- OpenCritic Rating
- Strong
