Greetings friends, I achieved 100k kills today and gained the
Platinum trophy (now in the hallowed echelons of 0.1%). I’ve been playing since
the day the game came out, but instead of just mindlessly grinding out the last
55k or so kills I needed I stopped playing, anticipating an eventual PS+
release. I wasn’t aware that the PC platform was cross play so that never came
to mind, and thus the waiting continued. And continued… Until one begins to
question one’s sanity… Aha! At last almost a year later Sony finally caved and
gave us a good PS+ game again. And so the game was fun for a time in
multiplayer as more of the near release general insanity and less of the
methodical efficiency reigned. Of course in remarkably short order that faded
again and I was sort of wallowing in some odd boredom state, but then I
realized this simple thing: Solo is fun when you’re fucking incredible at the
game. Any solo or co-op game with an extremely high skill ceiling enables a
sort of out of body experience where your hands and brain continue doing the
motions but you consciously are simply observing yourself doing these nigh
impossible feats. I’ve had this feeling before in a few different games, most
recently Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag, in which I was so much better at the
Wolfpack mode than everyone else that I single handedly got the experience and
credit gain nerfed (and shortly stopped playing thereafter, sadly the
competitive multiplayer aspect was mostly ruined in Black Flag after being easily
the best multiplayer experience for the entire generation for 3 games running).
But enough about that, let’s talk about me. As you may have
surmised that is indeed my favorite topic. According to PSN Profiles I was the
14th Grand Lord ever to exist (used to be 2nd, I guess
they demoted me in my 7-8 month AWOL period, but hey 14th sounds
better), so yes in contrast to what some of you may believe I’ve been around
since the dawn of Helldivers time. I was the top Illuminate player for much of
the first major war and at that time being at the top of the leaderboards meant
more than just sitting around sniping Enemy Master kills all day every day, you
actually had to go out there and do some legwork yourself. I wrote up several
tier lists around launch and they hold up reasonably well, of course not including
then non-existent DLC. Back then everyone thought Justice was the greatest, of
course they weren’t too bright.
For all you new guys and PC players the Illuminates used to
be really fucking hard, like way harder than every other race by a factor of
three or four; most enemies had almost twice as much life and the MC guys had
much better tracking, did more damage, and the control switching lasted for
much longer. So being the top Illuminate player was no small feat. Of course
now I can just roll around with Double Freedom (which incidentally was also the
best weapon against Illuminates back then, but not a single handed murder
machine precluding all other stratagems like it is now) and just obliterate
everything.
However somehow not playing the game for months and months
made me much better against bugs while solo, that and I bought the Toxic
Avenger which is just totally insane against bugs, but also a fun and dynamic
weapon that’s interesting to use. Hence Bugs became almost as fun as the
Illuminates, and now we have a double threat of satisfaction. As to the Cyborgs…
well anyone who enjoys fighting them is obviously a communist (note I may or
may not be a Marxist in real life) post the introduction of dogs.
I am not going to stop playing Helldivers entirely as I
initially thought I would, the reason being there’s no other game to get that
sweet euphoria of playing extremely well with no actual mental effort on my
end; and games with super high skill ceilings are extremely rare. However with
the release of Salt and Sanctuary tonight I’ll be focusing on that for a while,
then Dark Souls 3 comes out and obviously same thing there, I spend about 5-6
hours a day screening, editing, and uploading Street Fighter V videos, and I
start work (thankfully online) in April which’ll eat at least another 4 hours
out of my day for 5-6 days a week. So I just don’t have much time, but I’ll try
to stick around; I may for instance participate in the coming Illuminate
Homeworld siege.
To the developers: Thanks for making such an incredible game
with such a high skill ceiling. Make more DLC like the Avenger and less DLC
like the Sickle. Hell if you had lead with the avenger I might have just bought
every piece of DLC you put out (note: I may or may not have made like 5 times
my investment back on Helldivers). Always backload the OP shit man, simple
business strats. This is what happened to the guy who designed dogs before he designed
them. Before you start work on the next game I’d recommend some
personality readjustment training and/or more lobotomies. Lots more lobotomies.
Signed:
Valgresas, 14th Grand Lord, Epitome of Super Earth
Valgresas, 14th Grand Lord, Epitome of Super Earth
