Dirty Bomb Review

London Eye & Waterloo Station for the Terminal Map

Dirty Bomb Review - Blaugust Day 13

Another game I've been playing a lot of is Dirty Bomb. It's a free to play first person shooter (FPS) set in a post apocalyptic London. I'm not very good at FPS games but I am really enjoying this one!

You get given your first character from a selection of three, I think, and go through a quick tutorial with it but each week, other characters are available in the free rotation.  They all have different weapons and skills and include healers as well as tank types.

There are 5 different maps, set in different areas of London and any Brits playing will recognise some of the war torn landmarks and areas. There are several different battle types too although I've only played the Objective mode with an occasional side foray into the Stopwatch mode.

You can auto-join a battle or select your map style from a server list. Each battle is instanced so when it's full, it still shows in the list but obviously you can't join in! The match up system needs a bit more work but it does it's best to level up the playing field. You are joined to either the attacking or the defending team but you can swap sides in the pre-match screen if there is an imbalance in number of players. You have to be quick though.

You also can't play with your friends easily. You can be in a group and join a map but the system doesn't automatically put you on the same team. That sounds like it might be a minus point but actually some of my favorite battles have been when I was on the opposite team to Cold. I always feel he is a much better player than I am so when I come around a corner and manage to kill his character, it really gives me the giggles and a nice buzz!

Another fun feature is your back up weapon - you get 2 gun-type weapons but for close up work, you get a knife or a cricket bat with pretty good sound effects too. You also run faster if you have your knife active rather than your gun.

You level up by gaining experience which you can get from playing the matches and completing various missions which refresh every 4 hours. You also get upgrade cards which allow you to change weapons and some skills for each character.

The best thing about Dirty Bomb is not only is it free to play but it doesn't feel like you have to spend any money on upgrades. You can if you want to of course but it really doesn't gimp you too much if you don't. Another great thing is that although you can play on US or EU servers, you are not restricted to only one region. You can even choose between east Coast and West Coast servers for the US region so your connection can run as it's best speed.

I've mentioned before that I struggle with confidence issues in small team games like League of Legends and raiding in WoW - I always feel like I'm letting the team down because I'm not very good. For some reason though, I don't have the same problem in FPS games so although I'm still not very good, I enjoy them thoroughly. That was a big surprise when I finally gave in and started playing Titanfall with Cold last year!

If you like first person shooters, I'd definitely say have a look at Dirty Bomb. It's not perfect but for a free to play, it's pretty damn good I think!

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Titanfall Reviewed - A New Player Perspective

First off, it was Nonmail then Rez of EGP who started talking about Titanfall and slowly but surely, Cold got sucked in too. I resisted as long as I could but when I saw that Origin were doing a special 48 hour free pass weekend, I thought I'd surprise Cold by joining him in game.

I've played Call of Duty with my nephew on a console many years ago and I sucked at it so I didn't think I'd enjoy Titanfall either, hence my resistance but much to my surprise, I'm actually enjoying it!

The tutorial is pretty comprehensive for the types of moves you can make and things like wall running and double jumping are all covered, as is control of your Titan. That doesn't make it any easier when you play your first match though! Running at a wall and sticking to it long enough to run along the side of a building onto the roof of the next building is great fun and so is leaping off and landing fairly gently with the aid of your rocket pack to land. As someone who used to fall off random edges in WoW, a rocket pack is a great bonus!

Initially you go through a series of scenarios in Campaign mode - these are proper matches but varied to give you a taste of the different types of matches. Attrition is kill as many opponents as possible faster than they kill your team whilst Hardpoint Domination involves three bases you need to secure and hold - much like Warsong Gulch in WoW.

Once you are through both versions of the campaign mode, the multiplayer options open up, allowing you to play which of the Campaign scenarios you chose or to focus on one style of match. In addition to Attrition and Hardpoint Domination, there is Last Titan Standing, Pilot Hunt and Capture The Flag types too. I haven't tried any of those yet, I'm still shooting at computer driven grunts and spectres whilst feeding the opposing team with Pilot kills (me!).

The landscapes are, to me anyway, typically futuristic space type scenes - from seemingly dusty alien worlds to space stations and futuristic cities in decay - lots of nooks and crannies to hide in as a sniper or derelict buildings to drop through and surprise opponents when you land on top of them!

Not having played any other First Person Shooter (FPS) games in recent years, I have nothing to compare Titanfall to but although it's taken a while to adjust my mindset to multiple deaths, it feels a little bit like very high graphics in a WoW battleground scenario - I hated dying all the time there too until I adjusted my thinking. Obviously you don't want to die too often but if you do, it doesn't really matter too much in the overall scheme of things.

I didn't want to play with Cold initially because I always feel so useless and like I'm letting the team down - Titanfall doesn't make me feel like that. I can't keep up with Cold even if I try so I'm in the same match and on the same team but my dying doesn't affect him - well, except for me swearing excessively on Skype of course!

I'm still not very good and I'm not sure I'll ever be more than an average player but for now, I like it enough to splash out and buy the game! I'm playing on PC as is Cold but Titanfall is available for XBox One and XBox 360 - the great thing about it for us, is that US & EU players can play together - none of this separate server nonsense we usually struggle with.

Come check out the latest free to play FPS I'm playing these days - Dirty Bomb!

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