Helldivers 2’s first licensed crossover is also Killzone’s official debut on PC, sort of

After much teasing, the vicious tyrants of Arrowhead Games and their noxious puppets, the “democratic government” of Super Earth, have announced the very first Helldivers 2 licensed crossover. In yet another hollow display of solidarity in the name of “Liber-tea”, they’ve teamed up with the loathsome fascists of Killzone, the elderly shooter series from Sony and Guerrilla Games.

From today, you’ll be able to buy weapons, armour and cosmetics belonging to Killzone’s despicable stormtroopers from the Helldivers Superstore, and there’s the suggestion of an additional Killzone-themed reward depending on the fortunes of the so-called Galactic War, a xenocidal bloodbath couched as an exercise in bringing “freedom” to the huddled masses of the upstanding socialist Automatons, the blameless wildlife of the Tyranids, and the Wellsian cosplayers of the recently added Illuminate faction.

We here at Rock Paper Shotgun stand against Super Earth and Arrowhead’s wanton aggression, which absolutely isn’t a big satirical joke based on some Verhoeven film or other. Anyway, those capes. Find an image and further details below.

If you’ve not played Killzone, it used to be Sony’s silver bullet in the battle against Halo, Gears and Call of Duty for control of shooterdom. It’s a natural choice of licensing partner for Helldivers, being a series about a pseudo-World-War clash between intergalactic space empires, one of which was briefly ruled by Logan Roy.

I was nuts about Killzone 2, which released in 2009 and was one of the first “big” games I ever reviewed. It was notorious for an E3 2005 trailer featuring pre-rendered footage made to look like real-time gameplay. In practice, it proved to be perfectly OK FPS with thunderous grimdark set-dressing and a mildly confuzzling first-person cover system. The mainline sequels Killzone 3 and Shadowfall are straightforward examples of the law of diminishing returns, with spin-offs Mercenary and Liberation being respectable handheld shooters. They’re all exclusive to Sony consoles, so this Helldivers 2 crossover is, I guess, Killzone’s formal debut on PC. Hmm, I should put that in the headline.

The Helldivers X Killzone goodies form “a new tier of special Premium content” on the Superstore. There’s been some blowback from the diver community about both the pricing and the fact of selling primary weapons as DLC. The second part of the crossover deal arrives on 23rd December, and then there are those hints in the Steam announcement blog about “an additional Killzone 2 reward for all Helldivers depending on your success in the Galactic War”.

Arrowhead have any number of crossover collaborations in mind for Helldivers 2. For a time, they envisaged a system that would effectively let individual Helldivers hallucinate licensed worlds, with map cosmetics that are invisible to their non-buyer comrades. I’m not wildly excited to see Killzone’s militaristic trappings in action once again, but one Killgadget I’d love Helldivers 2 to implement is Killzone 2’s open-roofed infantry dropships. Check them out in the aforesaid E3 2005 trailer, below. Now, imagine riding one of those to the surface of Vindemaitarix Prime.