I can’t write a list of great inexpensive games without including Helldivers 2. It’s one of my favorites, especially to play with friends. When you’re seconds away from extracting off an alien planet, surrounded on all sides by thousands of bugs, with fire, lasers and missiles raining from the sky and your friends in your ear cheering you on or yelling at you for inadvertently blowing them to bits, it’s a rush, to say the least.
As a Helldiver, it’s your job to spread “managed democracy” across the universe, ending the threat posed by giant bugs, the voteless zombie Illuminate, and cold, terminator-like robots.
You’re just fodder in Super Earth’s endless wars, but until your inevitable demise, you’ll have all its weaponry — including massive, orbital lasers; automated turrets; and destructive napalm strikes — at your disposal to obliterate its enemies.
Genre: Third-person shooter
Number of players: 1-4 players
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S (starting 8/26/25), PC
