Eh, thinking of Battlefield and COD, of all things, as a squad simulator is a case of Shallow Reference Pools more than anything else. There were plenty of actual games, good games, in that genre not so long ago: Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, SWAT (though that's obviously police), Silent Storm, underplayed 2D Commandos from 90's and more. For academic interest one could also add weaker works like Delta Force games or Full Metal Spectrum, but I think you get the point.
Arma was a pretty good military sim as well.
Knew I forgot something! Thanks. Suppose one could also mention Red Orchestra for the online game.
And to the OP and to anyone else interested in 2D games akin to Helldivers, there's the police-themed Doorkickers with many perks and such, and Runing with Rifles, which has hundreds of people fighting and where a single bullet will kill more often than not. A pity there are no pages for them on here... yet.
- Running with Rifles, sorry.
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MUCH more realistic than you'd think...
Lemme first get the stuff you wanna hear about out of the way: Helldivers is an awesome game. It's fun, even better in multiplayer and offers a diversity of objectives and mission variety with its procedurally generated maps.
And here's my more personal review: Helldivers is one of the best tactical squad simulators there is.
I'm an Army guy, and I'm often annoyed by how fake games like the Call Of Duty and Battlefield series get military tactics wrong. Characters(and players) in those games do maneuvers that would get you killed in a real combat zone.
In Helldivers, those same tactics WILL get you killed. Pretty much ANYTHING will get you killed in Helldivers. 9 times out of 10, you will fail a mission because YOU or your buds did something supremely stupid. And you will laugh out loud when it happens, regroup with your buddies to analyze what went wrong and jump back into the fray with the newly acquired knowledge. It's spectacularly fun.
The main mechanics that make Helldivers such an accurate infantry squad game are friendly fire and reloading. Friendly fire kills and kills fast in this game, so actual real life safety practices work great to avoid unnecessary grief, and reloading makes you very vulnerable, especially with the heavier weapons. You will learn to not flag your buddies, to move in formations to maximize your field of fire, to use cover(and not in the cover-based game snap-cover mechanic way either), to assist your buds with assisted-reloading-capable weaponry, to give covering fire to a bud who's caught reloading, to cover a wounded bud while he gets revived... The game is surprisingly capable of complexity for a game whose tutorial can get you to speed in five minutes.
The game has loads of weapons with different roles to learn(rifles as standard weaponry, sniper rifles for distance shooting, machine guns and shotguns for crowd control), vehicles like the AWESOME mech, radar drones to maximize map coverage, perks to unlock that give you more tools on the battlefield, etc.
This game is amazing, I am SO glad I picked it up. Play online for maximum enjoyment and remember that bad friends shoot you in the back while good friends shoot you in the face. FOR LIBERTY!