A player controls his elite soldier in Helldivers 2 in an unusual way across the battlefield. In addition to mouse and keyboard, he uses a gadget on his arm, which is actually designed for streamers, for some input actions.
In the cooperative shooter Helldivers 2, there are different weapons to instill some democracy into the nasty aliens. Besides the arsenal of firearms, players can also rely on various tactical equipment to build an effective loadout.
A player now had a particularly creative idea to activate this equipment in Helldivers. He uses a hardware tool that is meant to make streamers’ work easier.
Player activates equipment in Helldivers 2 via Stream Deck
What kind of control does the player use? In a short video shared on Reddit, you can see how a player controls his elite soldier during a mission across the battlefield. He performs movements in different directions normally with mouse and keyboard.
For some of the inputs that his character performs, he came up with something special. For that, he releases his grip from the classic input devices and inputs specific key combinations using the Stream Deck.
However, the gadget is not directly next to the mouse and keyboard on the table. The player has attached the Stream Deck to his left forearm. He presses the buttons on the hardware tool with his right hand.
Why is he using the gadget? In the video, you can see that 5 of the total 15 buttons on the Stream Deck were programmed to perform specific actions in Helldivers 2.
When the button at the bottom left of the Stream Deck is pressed, the inputs of the 4 other buttons with the various arrow directions are recognized by the game.
In this way, the so-called tactical equipment in the game is activated. If you look closely, you will see that in these moments, the character in the game also performs the same hand movements.
This creates an immersive gaming experience, allowing the player to dive even deeper into the world of Helldivers 2. With this realistically mimicked action input, you could almost feel like a real Helldiver.
How practical is this control method? At first glance, activating the tactical equipment with this method seems rather cumbersome. After all, the player takes his hands off the other input devices and his character stands motionless.
However, considering that in the standard setting for activating tactical equipment, the keys CTRL + W A S D are used, the player does not really have a disadvantage within the mission. When activated via the keyboard, the character also stands defenseless on the battlefield.
In the meantime, other creative players have picked up this idea and created a proper layout for the Stream Deck. This allows tactical equipment to be activated with a single button. The icons for the buttons were inspired by the symbols from Helldivers 2.
Using a Stream Deck is definitely an unusual way to perform certain actions in a game. Since Helldivers 2 was released simultaneously on the PlayStation 5, players on this platform unfortunately have no way to use the gadget. However, console players can look forward to the future PS9, which, according to a trailer, could be released in 2078 with a futuristic control method: Sony showed the PS9 in a futuristic trailer 25 years ago – Many of us may not experience the release
