Helldivers 2 Omens of Tyranny gives players everything they've been asking for - melee weapons, cars, and a third faction that's back with a vengeance

My teammate calls for reinforcements, and my hellpod drops from the sky. On its way, it crashes through a towering, long-legged enemy, smashing them to pieces. It's the kind of moment that makes Helldivers 2 what it is, but this time, when I step from my pod – guns blazing with the kind of arrogance that befits only these most serendipitous of kills – it's not into some blasted wasteland besieged by bugs or bots. Now I'm fighting in the dense streets of a colony city against mind-controlled human shells. The Illuminates are back, and the galactic war is expanding into its third – and possibly most dangerous – front.

Mysteriously absent from the first year of the war, the Illuminates were the third enemy faction in the original Helldivers. A squid-like, mind-controlling force, their return in the sequel has been long-rumored, whispered about by veteran players and used within Helldivers canon to scare unruly children straight. Now, they're officially back, with a Vanguard force using guerilla tactics to gain a foothold in parts of Super Earth space that were supposed to be safe.

That's bad news for the people living there. In the four missions I play against the Illuminates, the new arrivals themselves stride across cities in Harvesters – towering walkers, their huge lasers scything across the ground like something out of the War of the Worlds. When they dismount, they're threatening brutes marching players down with a dangerous staff-and-shield combo, or frustrating aerial troopers flitting about as they pepper you with grenades. But the Illuminates don't want to put their own in danger if they can avoid it, so instead, they're putting your former allies in the firing line.

Just as the Automatons and Terminids complement their ranks of devastating special units with more fragile cannon fodder, so do the Illuminates. The difference this time, however, is that this new fodder used to be friend, not foe. Citizens of Super Earth, their homes invaded, their minds addled, chase you down, zombie-like, through the streets of their former homes. We're a long way from the shooting galleries of Terminid space, of the Automatons player-dubbed 'Robot Vietnam'. Instead, these new enemies -- dubbed the 'voteless' due to their removal from Super Earth's democratic  process -- combined with all-new urban environments, lead to what game director Michael Eriksson tells me is "more of a horde zombie-kind of gameplay".

 We built this city 

It's also "a more difficult experience, at least initially," than anything you've fought before. The vast majority of the time I spent fighting the Illuminates was in the streets and alleyways of Super Earth colonies, distinctly urban spaces far more tightly packed than the wide open plains of your battles with the Terminids and Automatons. Fights are changed entirely by the ability to duck round a corner to elude an enemy, or hide behind a building to dodge a Harvester laser. There's a lot more verticality to play with, stairways and town squares offering natural chokepoints – if you can manipulate enemy drops effectively.

You'll need to learn to use those tools to your advantage, because there are downsides too. Fighting in the streets means there's nowhere to run if you're surrounded – you're hemmed in by houses and city walls that offer very few ways out of a fight. The Illuminates take advantage of those densely-packed cities by dropping mind-altering obelisks in, scrambling your strategem codes – muscle memory is no longer your friend, as you'll need a different set of inputs each time you want to call in a new strike. And even if you do get out of dodge, recon drones will happily give away your location if they spot you out in the open, bringing a new squad of enemies down on your head.

Thankfully, if you do find yourself closed in, there's a pair of new tools at your disposal. Two melee weapons – a baton and a lance that slot in instead of your secondary weapons – are very effective in close quarters. Against the right kind of enemies, it's possible to fight tooth and claw through the streets, holding back large groups without spending a single, precious round of ammo. And if you really do have to drop everything and run, you'll get to do so with Helldivers 2's first proper vehicle.

Put it in H

A perfect fit for the tarmac roads and neat grid structure of the colonies, equipped with five seats, manual transmission, and a roof-mounted turret, this open-top jeep is perfect for getting from place to place quickly – until you need to take it off-road. At that point, Helldivers 2's first vehicle quickly becomes a death-trap. Speeds that I took as high as 60kph even on rough terrain mean that it's easy to overshoot an objective. The ability to lean out the windows to blast nearby enemies means that should your driver crash – as I did – you'll be sent flying from the car. And manual transmission means that you'll need to get to grips with driving stick if you want to effectively maneuver across the pockmarked planets beyond the colony walls. 

Just like Helldiver's mechs, support weapons, or Eagle-1 500kg bombs, the vehicle is a strategem. It won't fit every situation, and you'll be sacrificing something else if you decide to bring it planetside with you. But for any large-scale mission, it's likely to be a must-pick. Obviously, it's useful for getting around quickly, but it can also get you out of a tricky situation nice and fast, and it's got plenty of offensive punch to combine with that utility - alongside that rear turret, all three passengers can lean out the windows to pull a drive-by on any and all enemies of freedom. 

Most importantly, however, the car is fun – fast enough to let you pick up some speed, but fragile enough to throw an entire mission if you crash badly enough. It's a perfect addition for this point in Helldivers 2's life-span – just like the Illuminates themselves, it adapts around the winning formula without changing it too much. There's nothing in Omens of Tyranny that feels too distant from anything Arrowhead has thrown at us before – for months, the studio has been prepared to invent and reinvent around its winning formula, offering just enough to keep the galactic war machine moving forward without changing its course too drastically. At the end of a year that's seen Helldivers 2 go from unexpected hit to community pariah and pretty much all the way back again, the changes brought in with this update are a reminder that reinventing the wheel isn't always all it's cracked up to be. 

Here's everything we know so far about the Helldivers 2 Illuminate faction.