![]() ![]() The player’s action-figure character, whose individual characteristics are obscured by masks and armor, is just another piece of potential collateral damage to pave the way for a warped concept of democratic exceptionalism. The propaganda splayed across the screen insists on the player’s individual significance to the cause while constantly sending her on suicide missions of dubious import. ![]() Of course, to the controlling powers behind Super Earth, “military superiority” means overwhelming numbers of disposable troops and high-tech weaponry. As a nameless Helldiver, Super Earth’s elite troops, players carry out missions to bring order to aliens that for whatever reason don’t want to be liberated through a show of military superiority. The game imagines a similar globalized earth in which technological advancement and general human progress has led to globalized post-democratic Super Earth, a monolithic entity that uses the rhetoric of colonial liberation to justify its rapid expansion across the galaxy. The game’s triumphant score, propaganda newsreel, military hyper-violence, and rampant xenophobia all seem cut from the same satirical cloth as Verhoeven’s film, and Helldivers delivers a humorous punch as sharp and strong as Johnny Rico’s chin. Like everyone else playing Helldivers, I immediately thought of Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 film Starship Troopers at the game’s launch screen. Super Earth has ample reserves to throw at the enemy, and I’m soon back into the fray, spreading democracy one round at a time. A fourth member descends from the sky right on top my character with a sickening splat. We form an unstoppable wall of fire, each character shouting gleefully at the carnage. Soon, I’m knee-deep in insectoid guts when two more pods fall to the earth (one on top of a rather large enemy), and two more divers emerge ready to give them hell. I call in a machine gun just in case things get hot when a bug scout signals that someone with enough firepower to level a forest is making his way toward their hive. My Helldiver’s pod penetrates alien soil with a heavy thud. ![]()
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