Video games: The new feel of combat in two hit sequels
“If you’ve ever fantasized about starring in your own version of Starship Troopers, your wish has been answered,” said Keith Stuart in The Guardian. Clearly that 1997 sciencefiction satire of military jingoism inspired one of the surprise-hit video games of early 2024, and “like the movie it borrows from, Helldivers 2 is a stupendously entertaining joyride.” The premise is simple: Teams of up to four players descend via drop pods to hostile exoplanets, where they race to complete tactical objectives while using high-tech weaponry to fend off swarms of alien bugs and Terminator-like robots. Amid nonstop explosions, these space marines shout imperialist slogans about spreading freedom and democracy. “Everything about this game is ridiculous, including how good it is.” Each mission generates slapstick comedy, said Austen Goslin in Polygon. A squad’s success depends on the careful deployment of stratagems such as supply drops and napalm strikes, but a poorly aimed bomb can send your whole team flying, and during each chaotic skirmish, you’re either fighting or running for your life in a way that’s “both extremely nerve-wracking and absolutely hilarious.” In the world of a well-built action game, “the player owns every chastening loss and every exhilarating victory,” said Lewis Gordon in The New York Times. That design philosophy likewise underpins Dragon’s Dogma 2, a single-player game set in a rich fantasy world. Developed by Capcom, the studio behind Street Fighter and Monster Hunter, this “ambitious, action-oriented” role-playing adventure “crackles with the cadence of its fighting forebears.” The main narrative is “more elaborate than it needs to be,” and my experience “has been a tumultuous one: glorious, thrilling, accidentally hilarious, frustrating, maddening,” said Fraser Brown in PC Gamer. Dragon’s Dogma 2 “still feels like a singular game overflowing with memorable moments,” though, because “the combat system is just so phenomenally tactile and kinetic.” There are several ways to approach each encounter—with a hulking ogre, say, or a griffin that can pick you up and drop you from the sky—and “every few minutes, a new anecdote is generated.”