I think the worst thing about PirateSoftware is that he can have some surprisingly reasonable takes and nuggets of wisdom in his shorts that lure you in, but the moment you start getting into more of his content and actually try to figure out what he’s about as a person you discover he’s a smug asshole with an overdeveloped sense of self-righteousness. Some people never dig that deeply or simply don’t care if he doesn’t practice the mindfulness he preaches, these are his fans.
I swear, the best way to experience Helldivers 2’s community is to just be decent in games with randoms, maybe watch CommissarKai’s videos (do not go into the comments section) for tips on teamplay, and absolutely positively do not venture into the steam forums, the discord, or any other big discussion forum centered around the game because it w i l l be a cesspit, unfortunately. The Steam forums have the usual toxic trolls, but the Discord (and other hubs) is usually having furious arguments over buffs, nerfs, what is meta, what isn’t, what should be done what shouldn’t be and so on. For a silly little PvE co-op power fantasy game.
I’m not sure if Deep Rock Galactic has this problem, I’ve played it and it all seemed pretty positive but I never got into the game as much as I did HD2.
fun fact: this expression comes from the time before alarm clocks (or clocks in general), where towns had someone whose job it was to go round the town and knock on windows and doors in the morning, waking people up. Knocker-uppers.
in fact, if the online is as ridden with issues as 5’s online has been, I’ll probably just pirate it. Why would I want to pay $60+ just so I can get squeezed for even more money via microtransactions; and having to pay even more for a mod menu, just to exist in a server without being hassled? Fuck that with a rusty fork.
BioShock Infinite and Spec Ops: The Line are the only two games I’ve played that I would consider “art” in the truest sense of the word. Video games in general are creative works, and they all have debatable levels of “greatness”, but those who have played these two know what I mean.
If y’all wanna get good at it and learn some advanced tactics, watch videos by MB93 or Duckwit. Invasion is about a lot more than just being the better shot, there are some excellent mind-games, misdirection, and traps you can use on both sides.
Wait til SE5 goes on sale if you do decide to get it, I’m wagering they’ll discount it somewhere around the release of SE6 in January. Probably for Christmas.
If not for the fact you said one’s on an Xbox, for a co-op experience I’d recommend Helldivers 2. However, a similar game to HD2 is Deep Rock Galactic, and it’s on Xbox as well as PC. Fantastic co-op shooter with some very funny humor, much like HD2 you can tell a lot of love went into the game; and much like HD2 the developers actually give a shit about it and their community. Since you said you don’t have a load of screen time, you should know a full mission is usually about 20-30 minutes.
For a PVP experience, you said you have two brothers – three is actually the perfect number if you wanted to get Sniper Elite 5 and play through the campaign with Axis Invasion enabled, you can invite one to play co-op and for the other, you can invite a specific invader. Two players would be playing as allied snipers infiltrating various locations in France and taking out Nazis, and the third would be an elite German sniper hunting them. It’s supremely fun to hunt people (as well as be “hunted” – though with two players you can really flip that on its head). And a mission in SE5, depending on how you play, can either take as short as 15 minutes or as long as 45 minutes, though probably on the longer end if you’re doing invasion – you do not play it like COD if you actually want to survive against a hunter.
Both of those have crossplay and should work on a Steam Deck, as well; although I’ve noticed Sniper Elite 5’s anti-cheat, when run through Proton on Linux, doesn’t like the game being installed on an external drive and won’t let you play online if it’s not running on the same drive the OS is installed on, and I imagine that’d probably extend to SD cards. So, if you go for SE5, make sure that brother installs it to the Deck’s internal storage or they might run into trouble.