No surprise there with the community. I saw some libs on ResetEra smugly downplaying this, because of course they would. Don't you dare say anything negative involving my treats.
Damn who could have predicted this, it sure never happened with the movie Starship Troopers, the main inspiration of Helldivers!
People here downplay it. It looks awful and I want people here to play good games instead. Like (Mr.) Gimmick! on the NES/Famicom.
This is hilariously obtuse. It's not a bad game, even if the social satire doesn't hit because most of the time it is too on the nose. Game play-wise it's basically the Deep Rock Galactic (my goty for 2018 and 2019) formula but with even more big explosions. It is incredibly fun to play, definitely my game of the year so far. When it runs, everything feels great.
I'm not going to downplay the fascism of the whole thing. It absolutely glorifies it in gameplay, even if it's story attempt is to satirize it because you are supposed to feel like an unstoppable explosion based killing machine. (Even if none of the the world or military strategy actually makes any sense.) Even if the intro is ironic, because it tells you that YOU are the one who will save the galaxy as you ship off with a hundred other people who just got told the same thing, as per usual, unless gamers have things explicitly spelled out for them, they will not understand it, because most of them are context illiterate. And that is a problem, but it is a problem that makes the game have wide appeal.
Some people like the satire, some people just ignore it, both play the game.
"I can't play Mr. Gimmick with my friends" the next post will say to me.
To which I will respond with: "get better friends who partake in the finer side of gamedelia. And also, maybe take turns IRL or play the same game and then talk about your experiences instead. Also stop DMing me about my supposedly racist GameFAQs walkthrough for Bio F.R.E.A.K.S.."
A nice round of the arcade game Butasan (also known as Pigs and Bombers, or Psycho Pigs U.X.B. in North America) might calm them down.