Say what you will about the Illuminate, but their war on Super Earth has made Helldivers 2 more intense than ever

Helldivers 2 is having a moment. The recent Heart of Democracy update has brought the battle to Super Earth, pitting the Helldivers in a desperate battle against the Illuminate to determine humanity's fate. The update is Helldivers 2 writ large, with the chaos and intensity turned up to 11.

It's also perhaps the most fun I've ever had in Helldivers 2, even if the teammates, civilians and AI-controlled friendly soldiers that I've been teamkilling don't quite feel the same way.

The losing side

Helldivers 2 has always been intense and chaotic. Sending four players down to a planet with a collection of impossibly destructive and hard to aim weaponry and friendly fire enabled is always going to lead to tense situations, rather that's intentional or unintentional teamkilling as you fight your way through hordes of enemies. Still, it's easier to control the situation as you land on these abandoned planets and give the bugs/bots/disco squids a hiding in the name of space fascism liberty.

But you don’t really know chaos until you've dropped into a Super Earth mission in Helldivers 2, with Illuminate dropships blinking into orbit like shielded-up little gods. One moment, you're holding the line with a SEAF squad that barely knows left from right, the next you're knee-deep in plasma fire and praying your 500kg bomb doesn't land on your own head. The Illuminate don’t swarm like bugs – they float, they vanish, they batter you with big blue balls that knock you on your arse. They wipe your entire squad with clinical precision, and then they do it again for fun. Illuminate fighters strafe the ground and kill you instantly, floating Leviathans will dish out an impossible amount of punishment before you can take it down, and the voteless will swarm you as soon as you're no longer paying attention.

There are two paths to survival. Keeping the tempo high and making sure you don't get swarmed by the Illuminate or holding one spot and putting out a withering amount of firepower in the hope of clearing an area for a little while. Both are flawed, but fighting in city maps doesn't just feel like like business as usual, it feels like a total rework: the skyscrapers mean your destroyer has to reposition before it drops an orbital strike, and it means you're forced to fight instead in choking alleyways and car parks filled with explosive hazards.

The missions you're doing here are totally unique too: unlock a special planetary defense cannon from its prison beneath a kids playground and pelt the massive death-jellyfish floating over the city, rescue civilians, or try to repel a fleet of floating saucers that are landing and disgorging enemies all over the place. The maps are small but dense, and fighting is near constant.

Then there's the NPCs, also new with this update. Panicked civilians run through the dust, wandering into the splash zone for your explosives and, while SEAF troops are also running around out there, trading shots with the Illuminate and acting like Helldivers instead of the harmless adorable puppies they are.

It's not just the AI additions that make Super Earth feel lived in. Because you're often in choked up alleyways and close quarters across the board it feels —to this Helldiver at least— that you're constantly on the defensive, like you're really trying to defend the last bastion of humanity, instead of the usually jovial tone. It’s harder to use your strategems here too: your destroyer has to move into position before unleashing hell, with those seconds ratcheting the tension up even more as you wait for things to fire. Lethality is way up too, because there's nowhere to hide from the explosives you and your teammates are chucking all over.

That extends to the city's civilians. Hit them – regardless of whether you accidentally belted them with ship-launched ordnance or shot them in panic because they ran at you from nowhere – and you'll be docked some requisitions, meaning you have to identify your targets and can't just turn the whole city to rubble.

That will probably happen anyway, though. As the push and pull of battle rages on, the great skyscrapers of Super Earth's last few cities shake and collapse in combat. Some of this is probably because of the plasma-fire of the Illuminate but most of it, if we're being honest, is my fault.

While Helldivers 2 has previously sold the Starship Troopers fantasy, here it's selling Aliens instead. Super Earth is a claustrophobic horrorshow that will often have you low on supplies and desperately pushing forwards in the name of survival. It's a perfect – if slightly late – first birthday celebration for the game and shows that Arrowhead isn't scared to shake things up in bold new ways. This isn't the addition of a mechsuit or even the rad as hell Jetpacks, but a change to the status quo. It's still Helldivers 2, but it feels like a whole new beast. Most of all, Heart of Democracy feels like a meaningful escalation of stakes, and I'm excited to see where it could possibly go from here to keep things fresh.

Helldivers 2 grunts suspect Illuminate interference as Automaton distractions and a last-minute update contribute to a Major Order failure: "Illuminate is controlling High Command"