Helldivers 2 is one of my favourite games of the last few months. It's exciting, it's well-designed, startlingly deep and has an engaging core game loop. It's also, to use the technical term, really fucking funny. You realise this before you even hit the title screen – the game's blunt but enthusiastic introductory cutscene has a superb combination of overacting, ridiculous dialogue, implied darkness and physical comedy. The sight-gag of watching a bunch of marines frustratedly trying to stick the flag in an alien's corpse like it was Iwo Jima, only to oafishly chest bump each other when it finally stands upright, makes me laugh every time I see it. We definitely need more games inspired by Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, instead of Heinlein's.
But it's deeper than the satirical propaganda and bellowed background dialogue from General Brasch. Helldivers 2 isn't just a game that acts funny – it plays funny too. And that's something you just don't see very often these days.
