Helldivers II, on Feb 10th, has decided to drop another major update. With its last major “Into The Unjust” update being dropped in September of last year, with many new bug enemies and even a boss. Helldivers fans have been waiting to see what’s next, and it seems they have found it with update “Machinery of Oppression.” It finally shows the Automaton/Cyborg home world, “Cyberstan.” After Super Earth intelligence found out the Automatons had stolen the plans for the DSS (Democracy Space Station), the Helldivers have marched towards Cyberstan, intending to liberate the Automaton threat once and for all. Along with the march to Cyberstan, the Helldivers Discord and other social platforms appear to have been “hacked” by the Automaton as they send messages in binary, attempting to convince the loyal citizens of Super Earth to stop the valiant Helldivers.
Fortunately, the Automaton scum attempts have been futile, as the Helldivers have completed their mission and reached Cyberstan. Now they set foot on Cyberstan with one goal in mind, to liberate the Automaton capital. With the new update, the Helldivers have a new threat to face, the cyborg legion. With the new update comes 3 new enemies, the Agitators, fully armored cyborgs with robotic arms and legs, with one of the arms having a small laser cannon. The Agitators have a special ability to control the Automaton robots that it fights alongside, giving them a significant accuracy and speed increase. The armor that they wear seems to be medium, and with enough bullets, it can be shot off, exposing their weakpoints. Next are the Radicals, fast moving unarmmored cyborgs that have a shotgun laser weapon embedded in their arm. These cyborgs can also use smoke grenades to hinder our Helldivers’ vision to get up close and personal and attack them in hand-to-hand combat. Last but not least, the “Vox Engine,” a massive cyborg-controlled machine with dual heavy laser turrets and 2 side guns, but those are the least of your concerns as the Vox Engine also has a small missile silo behind it, allowing it to flushout Helldivers from cover as it spews propaganda from its front two speakers.
As far as we know, Cyberstan is the only planet with the new enemies and their mega factories. We don’t know when they will be moving to other planets. One thing that I noticed when playing the new update was the lack of factory striders (the previously hardest enemy on the Automaton front), but we dont know when they will be seen alongside the cyborgs yet.
There are still some issues with the new missions introduced in the update, with some of the missions having a chance to softlock your game, making it unplayable. I think it would have been the best update in the game’s 2-year history if all of the enemies were available to play against at lunch, and if some of the missions worked more consistently. I asked a Helldiver named “MasterCh1ken” when playing the game myself how he thought about the missions and the new enemies, and he said, “I think the update has been really fun, but it feels bad whenever I finish a mission just for the game to break.” He also said, “I think the Voc Engine thing is the coolest part from the update.”
In concluson the update was well-received by the community. There were some problems with the missions, but I’m confident that they won’t last long. The Helldivers II community has been having a blast fighting the new cyborg enemies and enjoying the new mega factory maps.
