Picked this one up for Steam not too long ago, and holy crap, is it awesome. It’s by the makers of Magicka, which might help you understand what you’re in for, and it combines Starship Troopers levels of satire with awesome co-op twinstick shooter fun. With full friendly fire. Of course.
It’s a three front war, with Super Earth going up against three different enemies - your generic spacebugs, the Illuminates a thinly veiled Protoss expy, and the Cyborgs. You pick a sector, which determines your opponent, and a planet (which determines your difficulty level). You drop from orbit in your Hellpod along with up to three friends (though it plays pretty well solo, it’s not REALLY awesome without a friend or three) and work to complete a variety of objectives. Enemies patrol the planet, and will sound the alarm and summon reinforcements if get spotted by the patrols. Completing the objectives and successfully evaccing on the drop shuttle (which has a 90 second call in time, so you’re more-or-less forced to have an awesome “last stand” at the end of the mission) earns you points that contribute to control of your sector in the war for Democracy.
Gameplay is basic twinstick stuff - move with one, aim with the other, fire with a trigger button (or move with the keyboard, aim with the mouse if you prefer, though be advised that you are still beholden to the turn speed of your weapon no matter how fast you can spin the mouse around) with the added twist of “Strategems” - codes that you can input to call in additional… stuff. The most basic one is “Resupply” - aka “We could use some more bullets about now” but also includes calling in varieties of air and artillery strikes, additional weapons, turrets, and vehicles. And I say “codes” because you are literally doing something like holding a button and inputting Right, Down, Up, Down, Left, Right. Which seems weird and gimmicky until you realize that what it’s doing is adding a level of execution under pressure to these things - can you get the code for that airstrike right before that wave of bugs overruns your position?
There’s a lot of DLC, but while all of it is fun to play with, it’s thoroughly possible to play and enjoy the game with “only” the huge pile of unlockable weapons and strategems - 10 unlockable primary weapons, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 strategems of various sorts. And, well, if you end up sinking 80+ hours into the game as is easily possible, it becomes pretty easy to justify a few bucks for some new toys.
Deeply enjoying this one, and we need more champions of Democracy!