Helldivers 2 lets players fight all manner of giant alien bugs. There are scuttling bugs, flying bugs, armoured bugs, barfing bugs, and as of the controversial Escalation of Freedom update, colossal betentacled impaling bugs. But one Helldivers 2 player has encountered a rare species of Terminid no Helldiver has ever clapped eyes on before: bouncing bugs.
Said Helldiver is the (excellently named) FortyFourTomatoes, who posted a video to Reddit of themselves fighting off a large cluster of Terminids as they await extraction from a mission. The twist? All of the Terminids are bouncing up and down as if they are all standing on individual, tailor made trampolines.
Titled “This is the most ridiculous bug I’ve ever witnessed”, it’s certainly one of the more memorable glitches I’ve seen in Arrowhead’s cooperative shooter. Every Terminid on screen is rebounding a good thirty feet into the air, affecting them equally regardless of their size or simulated mass. Hunters, spewers, warriors, Chargers. There’s even a glimpse of an Impaler springing right out of the ground at the 23 second mark, its tentacles drooping like broken wings beneath it as it soars gracelessly into the sky.
This is the most ridiculous bug I’ve ever encountered in a video game. from r/Helldivers
It isn’t clear what causes this bizarre physics malfunction. A couple of replies to the post claim to have also experienced this bug, but they offer no further insight than the original post. Indeed, most of the responses are either jokes or references to the classic Badger Badger Mushroom Internet animation (which celebrated its twentieth birthday last year, if you fancy feeling old). There are also the usual demands that bouncing enemies be made into a feature. One user suggests it be added as a gravity modifier. But I personally prefer folding the concept into the fiction, by adding a planet made entirely of rubber. Given how Helldivers deploy into combat, however, it would probably result in very short missions, as their hellpods are ricocheted back to their spaceships, causing catastrophic ballistic damage.
This is hardly the only weird error the community has experienced while playing Helldivers 2. Another unfortunate player experienced a bug that gave them uncontrollable (and ultimately lethal) gas. Even when it isn’t glitching, Helldivers 2 can produce some decidedly silly events, such as the player who managed to kill a Bile Titan by accidentally catapulting a Charger directly through them. It’s unfortunate that so much of the conversation about it revolves around balance, when what I really want from the game is for it to be as silly as possible.
