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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