As co-op horde shooters both released in 2024, it’s inevitable for Helldivers 2 and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 to be considered natural rivals, or at the very least to have some kind of friendly competition. Ultimately, each game has its strengths for players looking for a particular experience, making both of them equally enjoyable.
With its boss battles, gory combat, and superhuman playable characters, Space Marine 2 generally offers much more of a power fantasy than Helldivers 2. Not to mention, Space Marine 2 has several progression systems and customization options that give players short and long-term incentives despite having a somewhat repetitive gameplay loop. Meanwhile, Helldivers 2 is a more chaotic co-op experience that can take a while between major events in the Galactic War to develop, but when these happen they tend to break the internet, rallying swarms of players to defeat a common enemy, unlock a ridiculous new weapon, or both.
How Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2’s Gameplay Compares to Helldivers 2
Between the campaign missions that follow Titus’ story from the original Space Marine game, PvP Eternal War, and PvE Operations, Space Marine 2’s Operations game mode is the closest to Helldivers 2’s one and only game mode, the Galactic War. Helldivers 2’s Galactic War may be moving along rather slowly so far, but there have already been some memorable developments with plenty more significant events on the way in due time.
Helldivers 2’s variety of planets, enemies, and objectives all blend together to provide practically infinite replayability, with no two missions being identical. Space Marine 2’s main gameplay loop of Operations, on the other hand, is typically more repetitive than Helldivers 2’s Galactic War due to a limited variety of missions and the linear nature of each Operation.
Space Marine 2’s 2024-2025 roadmap will add new Operations, a new enemy type, and a new weapon, among other things, free for all players who own the game, which should all help to address the game’s repetitiveness. At the same time though, Helldivers 2 will also continue to grow over time with new content.
Also worth noting is that Space Marine 2 has a PvP game mode, Eternal War, which shares progression with the PvE Operations, giving players multiple ways to unlock new rewards to make their characters stronger. Despite the mission structure being more repetitive, Space Marine 2 also offers a much deeper character class and weapon progression system, as well as a massive amount of purely cosmetic customization options.
Space Marine 2’s class-based buildcrafting may present more initial limitations than Helldivers 2’s open-ended approach, but overall, Space Marine 2’s character and weapon progression systems incentivize players to use a wider variety of weapons. In contrast, Helldivers 2 often revolves around a small handful of meta loadouts with many weapons and Stratagems remaining underutilized, at least for the time being until Helldivers 2’s weapon-balancing problem is resolved.
Another thing to consider between the two games is that
Space Marine 2
is more accessible to solo players by nature of offering an offline mode, as well as filling in bots for open team slots whether players are online or offline. However, character and weapon progressions in the Operations game mode currently can’t be earned while offline.
Space Marine 2 generally offers much more of a one-man-army power fantasy, as players control one of the strongest units from the Imperium of Man in the Warhammer 40K universe, a space marine. These genetically engineered super soldiers are towering beings that can reduce small enemy units to puddles of blood just by running into them, while also being able to handle massive Xenos and Chaos boss battles in Space Marine 2 with a variety of weaponry, notably including melee weapons. Helldivers 2 takes itself far less seriously, in the best way possible, offering a chaotic co-op experience where players may have a few over-the-top explosive tricks up their sleeves, but by design, Helldivers are far more expendable in the grand scheme of the Galactic War.
