Player Preview - Dirty Bomb

Hey what’s up, Serpentine here taking a look at the multiplayer first person shooter, Dirty bomb, developed by Splash Damage games, the same studio behind games like Brink, Arkham Origins and most notably the Enemy Territory franchise. Dirty Bomb will be their first attempt at a free to play game but they are well versed in the multiplayer shooter genre which becomes apparent as soon as you start playing.

The game uses a semi class based character system with healers, tanks and assaults being very noticeable between the current line-up of 15 characters. Each character has their own unique set of abilities from airstrikes to turrets and heartbeat sensors and have their personalities tied to them as well. Characters abilities also work on a really nice cool down system rather than an ammunition system which allows for easier balancing of each characters abilities and reduces the amount of item spam.

 Even with these unique character abilities there are some characters that feel the same as another with one just being flat out better and is confined to characters that only have 1 available ability. Each character in the game needs at least 2 special abilities so as to define their role and make them different from others. Character weapon load outs aren’t locked to characters but are restricted to what load outs you have unlocked via crates which is part of the free to play model. These unlockable load outs aren’t necessarily stronger than the defaults rather they are just different however unlockable load outs are currently the only way to receive guns with scopes apart from the default sniper rifle. So far though these scopes have been fairly basic holographic dot sights, so no 8x zoom or anything crazy like that.

The game plays extremely fast were if not for the character abilities the game would fall into just zerging the objective with your team but with the abilities add a strategic element that was definitely needed and prevents such things like that from happening as long as your team has the right squad selection. While you’re in the pre-game lobby you will be able to select 3 different characters that once locked-in won’t be able to change for the duration of the game. This is where you will also be able to choose which load out you want to use and you will also be able to see what your team-mates squad is made up of so as to pick your own squad to fit in with the team composition. The gun play leans further towards arcade style then realistic but not too far. The actual guns are based of real-world guns and there is quite a range in the game especially with all the different load-out unlocks, I do feel though at the time of this preview that the machine guns in the game just don’t perform as well as they should and have me picking characters or load outs that don’t have machine guns in them, but that’s the great thing about the load out system is that you can find and use a gun you like with any of the characters.

Dirty Bomb is currently focusing on a highly competitive objective based game mode called StopWatch were 2 teams take turns defending and attacking a 3 tier objective were the objectives change depending on the map you’re currently playing. These map specific objectives while not entirely unique from each other does make each map feel different to play with capture the flag, plant the bomb and escorting a tank being the main types of differences you will see. The maps themselves are well designed with multiple routes to take to get around the map without being a confusing mess and they also contain certain map changing elements like forklift ramps and protective gates that all take time to activate or build but can be extremely beneficial to your team. The game is still heavily experimenting with new game mechanics however so there may be some changes from now to the final release and even the open beta. One of the most apparent experimentations at the moment is the addition of wall jumping to the game and this could be a game mechanic that changes the current map designs quite significantly if they decide to move forward with it. The current implementation though is a little shoe horned in and is probably the sort of mechanic you want to design your game around rather than fit it into your game. But again this is an experimental feature and may not even make into the final release.

At the current stage of the games development it looks like all characters will be unlocked for free for everybody with the games business model relying on unlockable load outs and character skins. The unlockable load outs work similar to the Counter Strike crate system were crates drop from playing games and are unlocked with keys. The pricing on these keys and skins is currently unknown mainly due to the fact that there is currently no in-game store and for testing purposes players are currently being given large stacks of keys so as to try out as many load outs as possible. Admittedly I wouldn’t be surprised if they decided to only have a couple of unlocked characters to begin with and introduce an in-game currency that would be used to unlock the others but at the moment Splash Damage is being fairly relaxed with it all.

Dirty Bomb is looking to be a fun and fast multiplayer shooter that has set its sights on highly competitive gameplay. Some more work needs to be put into certain characters to make them more unique from others with a suggested standard of 2 abilities per character. Some additional lobby UI ease of use features would be nice to see and I imagine that they will be coming sooner rather than later. The map specific objectives is fantastic and hope that they continue implementing this with their future maps. If you like team fortress 2 but wanted the character to be able to do more and in a slightly more realistic setting then Dirty Bomb is definitely a game to keep your eye on.

That’s been my player preview for Dirty Bomb, the game is currently in closed beta with no word on any future testing phases or release dates. If you want to find out more about the game check out the links below and if you want to see more of the game check out the post preview show over on twitch.tc/serpentine this weekend. Thanks for watching, I’ll see you guys next time.

Official Website: http://bit.ly/17OlIPE
Steam Page: http://bit.ly/1IQ0Y5v