Helldivers 2 goes full "robot Vietnam" with new mission types against the horrible Automatons

Helldivers 2's horrible Automatons are officially expanding, and they've quietly introduced a brand new game mode to the hit shooter.

Helldivers 2 has been dubbed 'robot Vietnam,' if you didn't already know, and that's chiefly because of its terrifying robot armies, which descend on players like vicious killing machines. Now, the official Helldivers 2 Twitter account has revealed that the Automaton threat is expanding throughout the galaxy, as new worlds are coming under threat.

At first glance, this seems to just be a fun little community thing from developer Arrowhead Game Studios, hyping up the battle against the big awful robots. It's actually an announcement of an in-game change, where the Automaton armies have spread to new worlds on the Helldivers 2 big intergalactic war table. 

This means there are now new worlds to fight against the Automatons in Helldivers 2. It also means that the defence-based missions are now live in the shooter - missions where you have to evacuate a certain amount of citizens as quickly as possible while the Automatons try and slaughter them all.

When Helldivers 2 first launched, PlayStation players in particular noted that there was a Trophy for completing a Defence Mission, but found there were none in the game. With the new update today, those mission types have finally gone live, so the Trophy can finally be obtained.

From the sounds of things, the new missions are proving tough for even veteran Helldivers. "I played one of these new escort defense missions on medium, and it was genuinely harder than any other mission I've done on extreme," wrote one Twitter user in response. 

"The planet defense mission is really bad... it's almost impossible to finish even at T4 with 4 level 30 Helldivers. The spawn rate of enemies is ridiculous please consider lowering it," another user wrote. Better brace yourself if you're planning on holding down the fort against the Automatons for the glory of Super Earth this week.

Read up on our Helldivers 2 errors guide for what you can do if you're faced with any error codes in the game.