They Finally Made The Perfect Starship Troopers Video Game (But It's Not An Adaptation)
If you're tapped into the video game scene at all, you've probably spent the past few weeks hearing the name "Helldivers 2." The new release from Arrowhead Game Studios has taken the world by storm, and for good reason — I can't recall the last time a multiplayer cooperative shooter has been this fun and addictive. Game fans have every reason to rejoice.
But so do movie fans. Because while "Helldivers 2" is technically its own franchise, set in its own universe, it owes a massive debt to one of the greatest movies of the past 30 years: director Paul Verhoeven's 1997 science fiction satire "Starship Troopers." In fact, "Helldivers 2" is, with a clear wink from its creators, a brilliant video game adaptation of that just-about-perfect movie, which tells the story of fascist soldiers in the distant future battling alien bugs on distant planets. "Helldivers 2" has the same set-up, but the similarities go beyond the cosmetic.
Much like how "Starship Troopers" is an exciting adventure movie full of gnarly violence and giant, superbly-staged action that also happens to be a brutal evisceration of right-wing ideology, "Helldivers 2" is an exciting adventure game full of gnarly violence and giant, superbly-staged action that also happens to be a brutal evisceration of right-wing ideology. And most importantly, both are hilarious. Constantly. Continuously. And often in surprising ways.
Helldivers 2 is the rare action video game that's truly funny
"Helldivers 2" is a phenomenal video game experience — the controls are tight, the action intense, and the customization for your uniform and weapon loadouts truly let you play the way you want to play. While playing with random folks is fun, it's at its best when you team up with three other friends, with headsets, and really try to tackle each mission like a proper squad. You'll watch in real time as your best planned strategies collapse into screaming, running, and calls for giant bombs that misfire and kill your allies instead of the enemies. It's awesome.
And it's the whole "strategies collapse" element that has won my heart through and through. While the game's actual writing is very funny and clever (I can't get enough of the bombastic propaganda that plays in the spaceship hub between missions), most of the comedy emerges during the course of actual gameplay. You accidentally call an airstrike down on your allies. You talk a big game about your new grenade launcher, only to blow yourself to pieces with it seconds later. You march into an area with an air of confidence, only to find yourself on the run, surrounded by hundreds of enemies, panicking and screaming. It's one thing for characters to say funny things, but it's another, more special thing for a game to be inherently hilarious in how it plays, to keep the laughs coming because your best laid plans have gone so awry.
That's what connects "Helldivers 2" to "Starship Troopers" at the DNA level, rather than just a cosmetic one. Verhoeven's film plays its satire with a straight face, its actors treating the material like it's not the most ridiculous, goofy stuff in the world. One can imagine certain viewers watching it and not getting the joke at all. "Helldivers 2" operates on the same level. You can play it as a straightforward shooter, and try to maximize your character build and construct a perfect meta, but you should really lean into the chaos and embrace the comedy that lurks beneath every single encounter. What better way to send up fascism than to send you into a never-ending meat grinder?
I spoke about "Helldivers 2," as well as a number of other topics, on a recent episode of the /Film Daily Podcast, which you can listen to below: