Maybe now things have turned around enough that the review bomb cape can finally be deployed, eh Arrowhead?
Helldivers 2 has had a pretty interesting year, having gone through periods when its players thought it was the best thing since sliced bread, some hardcore review bombing that momentarily turned into a mini-revolt, and everything in between. Now it's closing out 2024 with positive vibes, as shown by a recent bump that's seen its recent Steam reviews hit "Overwhelmingly Positive".
As spotted by an eagle-eyed user on the game's subreddit - where folks have also recently been paying close attention to SteamDB in case Arrowhead does any more updates with names worth getting excited about - Helldivers 2's recent reviews on Steam are "Overwhelmingly Positive". So, while the overall review verdict still currently sits at the slightly less glowing "Mostly Positive", things are firmly marching back in the right direction.
This recent review rating is made a bit more noteworthy since it looks to be coming as part of the biggest bump in the number of reviews players are submitting for the game in a good while. Starting around November 27, a game that was only getting about 100 to 250 reviews overall per day has been getting over 1,000 in the same timespan, with November 28 having seen 3,806 postive ones flood in over 24 hours.
Why the sudden increase? Well, if I had to guess, I'd say the fact Steam has been collecting votes for its end of year awards over the past week is likely the reason, since that tends to encourage players to leave fresh reviews for games they're nominating, or at least gets them thinking about which games they've enjoyed most this year.
It's nice to see players who're taking this opportunity to leave a review for Helldivers 2 being so postive about where the game's at, given the year it's had has been a right old rollercoaster in terms of community sentiment. Obvuiosly, when HD2 first took off after arriving in February, things were hugely positive, but as we rolled into late spring and then summer, the game faced some pretty huge stumbling blocks, with unpopular changes and that whole PSN account linking debacle.
The latter even led to some hardcore Steam review bombing that still colours the game's rating on the platforms, with just over 221,000 negative reviews having been left for it on May 2 alone.
Since then though, to the studio's credit, Arrowhead's put in a bunch of work to restore the faith and deliver something that's closer to what players want, even if there are still occasional missteps or things that draw criticism.
Do you think Helldivers 2 is in a good place as the final month of 2024 gets going? Let us know below!