Brilliant first person shooter.
Fast Paced, action packed, amazing character dialogues, everything is fairly balanced.
Characters are full of... character??
Although the game still has a few bugs and errors that show up now and again, the game itself is very fun and I will happily spend more time and money in this game.

One thing I reccomend for the devs to look at is loadout card trading, as this could be a much appriciated feature.

Once upon a time, I got my FPS kicks primarily through Unreal Tournament and other arena FPS games. Then Unreal stopped being a thing, and I switched to the Call of Dutys and Battlefields; never could get into the Counterstrikes. And you know, I had fun and everything, but all those easy kills made me complacent. Then Dirty Bomb comes along kicks my teeth in. In the good way, of course. A proper return to form, with longer time to kills and purist FPS mechanics. You don’t know how much you miss something until it’s been taken away from you, and then one day, many years later, you get it back. I didn’t know it, but I actually needed Dirty Bomb.

So, what is Dirty Bomb? Dirty Bomb is Splash Damage’s latest team-based, run and gun shooter where small teams race to complete objectives. Dirty Bomb offers old school gameplay with an emphasis on mastering mechanics like movement, speed and mechanical skill, placing a rare premium on tracking and headshots, skillsets no longer really required in today’s glut of instant kill FPS games. These elements are then given a modern coat of paint, with real world analogs like M4 carbines in place of link rifles.

Matches occur on large, multi-tiered maps with multiple, sequential objectives. Brink-esque, light parkour elements offer additional mobility options for clever players to get into tricky spots or eek out moment to moment advantages over their foes. So far, so Splash Damage. Dirty Bomb also borrows from Team Fortress 2, with distinct classes catering to various playstyles and roles, all complementing one another. While execution mode takes many cues from Counterstrike, Dirty Bomb’s Brink-style game modes, objective and stopwatch, is where Dirty Bomb shines.

Players step into the shoes of mercenaries, pre-selected before a match, “customized” via a loadout card with up to three augments. Mercenaries are divided into light, medium and heavy mercs with light mercs being faster but less durable than their heavier counterparts. Additionally, each merc is assigned a speciality or role. Medics heal and revive. Support rifleman provide ammo and call in various forms of artillery. Engineers complete objectives faster and often rely on sneaky alternatives to direct combat. The usual suspects.

A quick note for those of you who have seen Angry Joe's criminally bad "review." While loadouts with three augments are more powerful than loadouts with fewer augments, these augments will rarely determine the outcome of individual firefights. Additionally, players can purchase any three augment loadout they want in bronze quality relatively cheaply, and higher quality loadouts ( silver, gold, cobalt ) only offer different colour palettes. Dirty Bomb is in no way pay to win.

While good ability usage can determine matches, all abilities are linked to sometimes long cooldown timers, and players will end up relying on their firearms, a lot. As earlier mentioned, due to longer time to kills, single burst kills are rare and firearm prowess becomes very important. Hipfire reigns, and with a very healthy 2.0x damage multiplier on headshots, Dirty Bomb emphasizes an almost duelist approach to combat with both combatants attempting to connect as many rounds as possible while juking and strafing out of incoming fire. Without vehicles and killstreaks getting in the way on top of excellent netcode, combat is returned to glorious infantry, el mano, el mano basics.

This represents Dirty Bomb’s greatest strength and also, it’s predominant weakness. Due to Splash Damage shirking modern design principles designed to minimize skill gap, Dirty Bomb is not a game most players will be able to simply drop into and expect reasonable results. However, with some player investment, Dirty Bomb opens up and offers dedicated players huge room to grow through challenging matches, with thrilling engagements, in ways its streamlined competition cannot.

Dirty Bomb, however, has many faults, but for players seeking Dirty Bomb’s frenetic gameplay, there aren’t many modern options. But let’s go through Dirty Bomb’s numerous issues:

The competitive scene is not healthy, and overall, Dirty Bomb likely doesn’t have what it takes to enter the mainstream. Part of the reason is that Dirty Bomb is difficult. Without proper matchmaking ensuring players get evenly matched against similarly skilled players, new and lesser skilled players are often subject to routine stomps.

The balance isn’t perfect; explosives are too effective, and while the various mercs are fairly well balanced, a handful do stand tall over their competition. The same goes for loadout augments; some augments are clearly better, making certain loadouts clearly better.

Outside of the game itself, the loadout system is terrible and in serious need of an overhaul. Furthermore, with skins randomly assigned to loadouts, even if a player is lucky enough to receive a great loadout card, they may not get the skin they want. Worse yet, with skins tied to loadouts, Splash Damage can’t even sell skins. This also leads to the odd situation where while unlocking a merc isn't particularly difficult ( about 19 - 26 hours ), getting the loadout you want as a gold or cobalt may as well be impossible.

The events are horribly organized with event loot offered at a pithy 0.3% drop rate. That’s right, a third of one percent. The idea is probably to force players to the cash shop, but due to the terrible loadout system and inability to trade inventory items, the cash shop feels horribly overpriced. Oh, and the new trinkets, being mostly invisible to other players, are overpriced ♥♥♥♥.

While some of this may seem like nitpicking, I believe this does indicate a longstanding, fundamental disconnect between either Splash Damage or Nexon and the real world. What I'm trying to say is that a lot of this is very stupid and nobody wins.

Lastly, we finally talk about Dirty Bomb’s aesthetic. Don’t know how this ended up last, but if you hadn’t noticed Dirty Bomb’s many similarities with it’s predecessor, Brink, the aesthetics are a definite giveaway. While Dirty Bomb’s version of near-future London is a bit less dark and gloomy, the mercs have a similar, distinctive style and swagger. Best of all, the mercs are hilariously chatty ( mount an emplaced machine gun, and your merc will yell, “pew pew pew!” ) with interesting backstories. Certain individuals may be discouraged by the slightly cartoony aesthetic, but personally, I celebrate almost any move away from generic, military realism.

So there you go; an exquisitely well crafted blend of old school mechanics and modern sensibilities. You can’t win all your fights, but Dirty Bomb does alright. In many ways, a Brink 2.0; if only everything else about Dirty Bomb was as well honed as it’s gameplay. If you're not entirely convinced yet, but want to sharpen your FPS skills or try something new, well, let the price tag speak for itself: Free.

Currently one of my (and my friend's) favorite team based FPS shooter!
It's fast paced, fun, visually appealing and has great map design and mechanics.

The idea is to build up your own mercenary squad from (currently) 16 different mercs. You battle from 5vs5 to 8vs8 games on various maps and gamemodes. You can always bring three of your favorite mercs in game - and change the active merc during respawn.


You can customize these mercs with different type of loadout cards that determine your weapon loadouts and character bonuses.

For example, one loadout card might change your primary weapon from SMG into shotgun and add/remove some augments (No fall damage, reload weapon while sprinting etc.) or new skills (quickly toss enemy's grenade back) to your character.

There's 6 levels of loadout cards from Lead to Cobalt and they all have different skins and augments that have an impact to your character behavior and skills. Starter loadout cards have only different weapons, while the best loadout cards can include 3 augments too. There's roughly 10(?) different type of loadout cards per level for a character. This might sound complex at first, but it's a really nice, simple system.

You get new loadout cards as rewards from matches and once you have enough unlocked, you can get rid off the 'poor' ones by crafting them into better, higher level cards.

The great thing here is that a skilled player with a stock loadout card can still easily kill a group of flashy mercs with "the best" loadouts and nothing makes you superior compared to other players. Only skills and group tactics matter.

The mercs have different roles. They are categorized in healing, support and assault units. As I'm writing this there's currently 16 different mercs to choose from. There's few free mercs to try out every month and you can easily use these to get comfortable with the game and see what kind of play style fits you perfectly.

Everyone's personal squad is built from snipers, artillery callers, big guys with miniguns, fast&agile chicks with mines, cloaky ninjas, combat medics, engineers with turrets etc. and it adds a lot of variety in games, when you can call in another merc according to the battlefield situation.

You can buy new mercs by collecting reward money from missions that change hourly. If you don't feel like grinding the required money for your new favorite merc, you can take a shortcut and use real money too. The in game store also let's you buy new random loadout cards with in-game currency or real money, whatever is more convenient for you.


As there is no advantage gained with real money purchases compared to in-game grinding, I can happily point out this is a F2P game with no pay-to-win button included.

When I first started to play Dirty Bomb I knew a very little about this game and tried it out just because I was bored with my other games at that time. I thought Dirty Bomb was just some other low budget, poorly developed FPS, but when I started my first match I got a positive surprise. I instantly liked the way the game played out (which is probably because I am a huge fan of TF2 with over +1000 hours on it and therefore like class-based shooters) and also the way the game looked pleased my eyes. The fast paced action with all the free-running abilities and gun fights that require precise aiming got me hooked up right away.

The map design was also interesting, with all the different routes you could use to get to the objective and trick jump spots that you can use to create a shortcut. There really is not a single point on any map where there happens to be only one route to get through and that is something amazing; for example in TF2 there are some horrific clutch points on some of the maps. And those keep me away from playing those exact maps unless I really have to. Dirty Bomb has done map design right with giving many different routes to approach the objective. That makes it harder for defense and also makes sure that the pace of the game stays fast all the time.

Other great thing about the level design is how it's not built around just one type of an objective (note that each map is also attack/defense). For example, in a map called Bridge the attackers must first repair their EV (an armored vehicle with a mounted mg), then they need to escort it to the other side of the map through the streets of London. The escorting works the same way as payload in TF2, the team must stay close to the EV in order to make it move. If no one's around it, the EV will stop. Defenders can also stop the EV by disabling it with airstrikes, grenades etc. and that way force the attackers to repair it again. After the EV is escorted to the target location, attackers must then steal drug samples from a nearby lab and carry them to a container. If the attackers do this in time, victory is theirs. If not, vice versa. The objectives that must be completed vary in different maps. All maps also have side-objectives that are not compulsory to do, but when completed they will help the team greatly. Usually these side objectives activate shortcuts and such for the team.

The game also contains a game mode called execution, which works the same way as Counter Strike's classic game mode: other team defends two bomb sites while the other one tries to blow either one of them. Round ends when one of the sites is destroyed or the timer runs out. Also if all the members of the other team die, the round will end. The team that wins more rounds wins the game. To be honest, I feel this type of a gamemode doesn't suit a game like Dirty Bomb too well, since it seems to slow the pace of the game very much. Sure it has it's moments but I'd recommend you to stick with the normal game mode.

Competitive is also present in Dirty Bomb, in the same way as it is in CS:GO. Your rank depends on your performance and you will play with other people who have the same rank as you do.

Dirty Bomb is class-based much like TF2, but in DB you will get to pick 3 mercenaries (mercs) for each game that you can switch between before respawning. The mercs vary from engineers to assault classes to medics etc. Each merc has their own abilities that range from healing stations to airstrikes. Abilities play a big part in the game and need to be used if you want to succeed.

Engineers: They deal with the objectives faster than other mercs. Not the most powerful in terms of fire power, but still super deadly in right hands.

Medics: They heal and revive teammates (duhh). Also lack some fire power, but killing is not their main job.

Support: They have more fire power than engineers and medics and their abilities can deal loads of damage. Support mercs provide ammo for their teammates. Everyone starts of with fairly low ammo, so it's important to have at least one support merc per team.

Fire support/crowd control: These mercs are focused on purely killing the enemy team. They have destructive abilities and play an important role on each team, clearing the way for their teammates.

Recon: There are currently two sniper-type mercs in the game. Their main focus is taking out high value targets from a range and their abilities allow them to spot enemies for their whole team to see.

Gunplay in Dirty Bomb is interesting, as the weapons deal quite low damage and the game require's you to hit many shots precisely in order to kill someone. This makes aiming important and going for headshots is always a good idea. This also prevents lucky "spray 'n' pray" kills for the most part which are really common in many of the newer shooter games that require very little amount of skill to take down someone (*cough* Battlefield *cough* CoD). You can either shoot from the hip like in counter strike or then aim down the sights. Sticking with hipfire is important as it is just as accurate as ADS and you really should ADS only when you're shooting at really long range.

After you've finished a match, you're rewarded with credits based on your performance and possible missions you completed for extra credits. With these credits you can unlock new mercs or loadouts to use. The game will give you equipment cases from time to time in a same manner as TF2 and CS:GO, but what's different is that these cases are free to open. Each one contains a random loadout card for one of the mercs. Different loadout cards give you different weapons and perks to use. Stock loadout card has 0 perks, lead has 1, iron has 2 and bronze has 3. Silver, gold and cobalt cards also have 3 perks, but they have more "bling", AKA different skins.

This game never feels like it is pay to win, as everything can be unlocked via in game credits. You can't buy the best possible combination for you, since that doesn't exist and everything has it's counter.

The game is in beta at the moment, and is frequently updated. With new mercs being added among new maps, it stays interesting all the time.

Dirty Bomb has it's downsides too, of course. There is no such a thing as a perfect game. Biggest downside of the game is definately the anticheat they use. Hacking is easy. It's so easy anyone can do it if they want and the anticheat program has no clue about it. Instead the game sometimes kicks you out for "using programs" that are not allowed even though you are not using anything. Hopefully they decide to upgrade to a better anticheat (*cough* VAC *cough*) in the future. Even though the anticheat is bad, hacking is not a huge problem. Sure you'll counter a hacker every now and then, but they won't completely ruin your experience. So far during my 200 hours of playing I've countered about 5-10 hackers. Not too many in my opinion.

There are not any overpowered mercs, but some of them still need some balancing. I'm not going to mention which since I don't want an angry mob after me.

Overall, Dirty Bomb is one of the most fun games I have played in a long time and I'm looking forward to the full release. I'd recommend you to try this game out, it's free so why not.

Play dirty.

Here are just a few reasons to give Dirty Bomb a go (other than it being free, of course):

Gameplay - Dirty Bomb holds a very interesting strategic aspect unlike many first person shooters: five varying ability styles consisting of Fire Support, Medic, Engineer, Assault, and Recon actions. This title holds similar characteristics to MOBAs in the sense that each featured character has their own unique statistics block and special abilities, with improved features depending on the rarity of the selected loadout. For instance, Proxy is generally a close-ranged shotgunner with proximity mines, a quickened interaction speed with given objectives, and an enhanced walking and sprinting speed; Skyhammer, on the other hand, throws ammunition packs which can be used by both the dispensing player and their teammates, and an air strike attack that can be used after each cooldown period. The controls in this title are similar to those of other first person shooters, with the addition of the Q key acting as the Ability button.

Game Modes - In the debut game mode, Execution, one side must plant and retain a bomb at one of several points of interest while the second team either prevents this occurrence or disarms the bomb; picture, if you will, the Counter-Strike game series while deliberating on this concept. This game mode consists of ten rounds, each lasting a maximum of three minutes. The attackers and defenders swap sides after the midpoint of six rounds in each game, and the winners are decided when one team accumulates the majority of wins within ten rounds or by earning seven victories before the opponents.
/// Objective Mode is relatable to Execution Mode in that the teams are split between attackers and defenders, but holds its own uniqueness, entailing completing multiple tasks within the given time of fifteen minutes. This mode requires a great amount of coordination with teammates, as every moment could alter the course of each game. This mode can be quite hectic yet enjoyable with the sequenced events.
/// Stopwatch Mode is unlocked after a given player level, and is comparative to Objective Mode in that the two teams are separated into attackers and defenders, swapping roles after fifteen minutes or the completion of the primary objective; this signifies that each game concludes after thirty minutes. If both teams reach the same amount of objectives within the given time of thirty minutes, the game goes into overtime mode to decide the victorious team. I find this mode to be very amusing, even with my own dislike for time-based competition.

TL:DR - I must admit that I had not experienced the same hacker problem as many of the other individuals that reviewed this game, though I will not omit that the problem may, indeed, exist in the community. Dirty Bomb’s community-as I have experienced-and relatable content is enough to entice the player to return to the arena. I recommend this title to those interested in class-drive first person shooters and skirmish-oriented matches. Thanks for reading.

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