Helldivers 2 Screenshot
Image: Arrowhead Game Studios & PlayStation Publishing

Helldivers 2 has launched back into Steam's top ten most-played games again, thanks to yet another major expansion. While not QUITE as dramatic as the day the Illuminate joined the fight, today's update adds a spooky new type of extradimensional battlefield, two new enemy types, and cranks the level cap up to 300. I've been looking for an excuse to jump back into this one, and the Devoid Of Liberty update (as it's so titled) feels like a great excuse.

There's a lot of meat on this update's bones, including a new pseudo-biome. The Void is an area of haunted space caused by the Illuminate's weird dimensional tech, and absolutely in no way caused by Super Earth troops shooting anything that looks too fancy and alien. The level of void corruption in an area is proportional to how close it is to the epicenter of the breach on the galactic map, so the deeper you push into a voided system, the more cursed it gets.

There's a bunch of new mission and side-mission types to be completed in the voided zones, including destroying Illuminate spires and gateways and actively hunting mutants spawned by the Weird Science going on here. On that note, there are two new enemy types exclusive to void regions - Wreches, a swarming melee enemy that looks a bit like the scythe-armed monsters from Dead Space - and the Crusher, a giant bipedal brawler with regenerating health. Living up to its name, it likes to pick up Helldivers and squish them.

Beyond that, one feature I'm quite excited for is the chance of SEAF grunt infantry NPCs spawning in any mission, with dropships landing squads of them to provide support and soak up some bullets that would otherwise be directed at you. This can happen either as a random spawn, or you can now equip a call-in beacon to requisition some meat-shields in the field. They've also got medics that are capable of healing you and your squad up, and you can use emotes on them (including shaking hands and hugging) if you want to let them know they're appreciated, moments before you accidentally call an orbital strike on them.

There's also been a big round of balance tweaks, bringing lesser-used weapons up to speed, and adding new attachments to a bunch of older guns. And most importantly, the Constitution rifle now loads using stripper clips if you completely empty the magazine. Purely cosmetic, but the animation does look cool.

On top of the new free stuff for everyone, the update is accompanied by a new Warbond, the game's (permanent and FOMO-free, thankfully) equivalent to battle-passes, this one adding a bunch of Warhammer 40k-themed cosmetics (letting you dress up your Helldivers like Cadian Imperial Guard, specifically), plus a trio of 40k weapons: A standard guardsman las-rifle, a chunky bolt-pistol, and a Melta Gun. While I'd always envisioned those as more shotgun-like weapons, Arrowhead envisions it as a mid-range plasma beam capable of boring neat, superheated holes straight through heavy armor. I guess that's pretty cool too. Or hot, I guess.

You can check out the full (and very extensive) patch notes here. Helldivers 2 is also discounted until August 17th, with 25% off its £35/$40 price tag.