Helldivers 2 definitely involves strategy, but the way I play it would not be described as strategic. My first few hours in Arrowhead's hit shooter were chaos, not helped by the fact that I dived straight into Automaton turf and started blasting away at thick-armored robots with a pea-shooter. I got filleted by melee bots, ran into my fellow patriots' air-strikes, thrown through the air at a rate of knots, respawned more times than I could count, and probably set back the cause of liberty by several weeks. But hey: it was a good time.
Now I'm a little more familiar with how the liberty-em-up works (and have discovered the wholesome joy of bug-squishing) and have begun to unlock the various loadout options, I do think a little more before blasting down to a planet's surface. These thoughts largely involve whether I bring an SMG or a shotgun. But some Helldivers are much more thorough, and you don't have to go far on the internet to find the usual tier lists, recommendations, spreadsheets, and warnings about so-called trash builds. Gamers like to min-max and, as the popular game in town, Helldiver kit is being given the full treatment.
