I think it’s still closed beta?
it’s more early access now, you can buy the starter pack to get a key if you don’t get one free.
I like the game well enough, but the player acceleration is still a bit too fast for me, especially changing direction while strafing. So much of the game screams tactical shooter to me, but movement is shouting arena shooter. Not sure it’s got what it takes to grab me.
I really enjoyed it early last year so I can only imagine it’s even better now. I’m still disappointed that Brink’s SMART system was tossed out the window with only wall-jumping left on the table. I miss the simple mantling, vaulting and sliding, especially when there’s an obstacle to get over/under or a ledge or window just out of reach.
One thing I noticed about Dirty Bomb in the closed beta recently is the intro ‘Don’t be a Dick’ video which does a good job of explaining the game’s core disciplines in an entertaining way. There’s also a proper tutorial which Brink didn’t really have (it did, but they were stupidly called ‘Challenges’).
I still feel that a lot of people will get confused with the game’s particular brand of gunplay though. It’s snappy and quick but with a higher TTK than most other real world/modern shooters; it’s not necessarily about who gets the jump on who, it’s about who can out shoot the other in a pinch. I think it strikes a great balance myself but Brink did the same and there was widespread backlash over the sponginess of opponents.
I also like that when you’re killed you see a ghost of yourself, your enemy and the killing blow suspended in time to illustrate just how you died. I think you also see just how close you were to killing/not killing the other dude. A nice feature.
Anyway, yeah, I’m looking forward to the full release. Be good to get my Splash Damage fix.
TTK isn’t high when I get sniped in the face. :(
I’ve put a few hours in as well until Pillars of Eternity consumed me. So far I like the game. It does feel like Brink 2 to me with less parkour as you said…but the parkour in Brink was never that interesting or worthwhile anyway.
Also like Brink the weapons all feel like wet cardboard tubes and lack the meaty feel that other games master. That actually doesn’t bother me too much here since they are trying to emphasize run and gun techniques and firing from the hip while darting to objectives.
The level design is a notch above Brink. Brink had smaller maps with tight corridors and choke points (making parkour obsolete) but the levels feel larger here with wider more dynamic chokepoints that encourage different tactics/approaches than the meatgrinder that every Brink match turned into.
Some classes like the medic class can move really fast which gives it a touch of the Quake Unreal factor.
I need to play some more to get a better feel however. At least this has been a more stable game than Brink.
-Todd
This went to open beta.
Any new thoughts or impressions on it?
I played it a few weeks back so I’m sure there are some changes since then but my impression was it seemed like a good game completely ruined by F2P. Either pay way too much to buy classes (supposed to be 20 total) or grind until the end of time. I’m just not interested in that type of business model anymore. I also strongly suspect as time goes on they’ll add more classes since they are directly selling them. There was also some type of gambling element opening cases/cards/etc which again seemed very typical of F2P (not a good thing).
I did the tutorials a while back when I got into the beta but never actually got into a match.
I played a good 4-5 hours? Maybe? I forget, anyway I played enough to realize that I actually liked BRINK more.
I played it for a few hours. I enjoyed it a lot, but I also played in the closed beta where you had some free unlocks and didn’t have to grind a ton. I’d rather just go back and play Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory again.
Splash Damage peaked with QW:ET. That game is still fun to go back and play, because the design is so solid (and the bots so good).
Agreed.
In Dirty Bomb case, I find the classes boring. Which is a pretty bad mistake, given that people should want to buy more classes.
They have few tools each, usually a main weapon (nothing original, assault rifles, sniper rifles, machine guns, shotguns, etc) and one or two doodads (ammo dispenser, a grenade, a mine, a medic kit), some even less than that. Few have something really unique to them. And most of the “doodads” are common, so for example there aren’t unique medics, but there are a few medic items (health kit, health dispenser, defibrillator) and they just gave 2 of 3 possible items to each medic class. So there is a slight variation between each but ehhh.
It’s as if they took out the content of their preivous games (mine and turret comes from engineer, airstrike comes in two variations, normal bombs and ray of death, the same), and proceeded to split them off in double the classes so each class has now literally half of what they had before. For example there is one class which power is putting a mine in the ground. That’s it, it has a normal smg and pistol as weapons, his “thing” is a land mine. That’s super sand. Compare it with any of the character from Overwatch or Battlefront, they are more fully featured AND had more classes to choose from, AND more visual distintion between them (an important point if you are going to have many classes and people are going to buy skins for them).
Agree that the classes aren’t very interesting but I’m still having some fun with the game. It has a nice pace and the weapons feel powerful enough. Also, it requires teamwork and some strategy, two things which always appeal to me. I expect it’ll get a few more hours before I give it up.
Also, was Quake Wars that good? I think I played a demo at the time but it left no impression on me at all.
I see what you’re saying but I kinda don’t agree. I played a lot of Brink, and while the movement was neat, I felt that it tended to bog you down rather than give you freedom. Animations took too long and the “parkour”-button would get you into trouble sometimes (á la Assassins Creed). I vastly prefer the simplified system in Dirty Bomb. It’s fast and efficient, and with the added long-jump (crouch+jump) I feel a lot more mobile than I did in Brink, there’s never anything that’ll knock you over or get you stuck in animations.
I still feel that a lot of people will get confused with the game’s particular brand of gunplay though. It’s snappy and quick but with a higher TTK than most other real world/modern shooters; it’s not necessarily about who gets the jump on who, it’s about who can out shoot the other in a pinch. I think it strikes a great balance myself but Brink did the same and there was widespread backlash over the sponginess of opponents.
Quake Wars also had the same. It’s very apparent now in the beta when you can take down ~2 new players no problem if you aim for their heads. It is necessary to make the gunplay intresting IMO, but that initial hump is pretty huge. Add to that the movement speed and crouch-spam that good players make use of and it’s off to a very harsh start for a lot of newcomers.
Personally I think it’s enough. My favorite SD game is Quake Wars, and that had doodads out the wazoo… for SOME classes (assaults only had C4 and extra nades + heavy weapons, Oppressor had Shield and Laser/Homing/Dark Matter; while the Strogg sniper had Radar, “man-hack”, disguise and railgun). I think the middle ground in DB feels alright. You have enough variation between each iteration of every class, with some being stronger than others.
There’s a huge difference in how you play Aura vs Sawbones. Aura is stationary, and can choose between long and short range; she’s one of the fastest classes with the lowest health. Sawbones is a middle-man with good mobility and more akin to medics of the past. Later on Sparks will enter the fray, with her Sniper medic gun.
Between Engineers, there’re also a lot of differences between how you play them. BUSHWACKA has his special SMG that’s on par with assault rifles, combined with high health that makes him solid in toe-to-toe fights, and turret placement is key. Proxy is great for ambushes and hit-n-runs due to mines and speed. Fletcher is somewhere in between once you get a card with Blishlock, he can set defensive traps or flush out enemy hard-points like the other engies can’t.
Between Snipers, Vassily and RedEye will play quite differently; with Vasilly being more defensive with heatbeat sensor and a slow ROF, while RedEye can move in with smokes and a strong, unscoped semi-auto rifle.
Fragger and Rhino are very different from eachother…
Support/artillery classes have it rough though. Skyhammer is without a doubt the strongest class among them atm, since he’s full auto and can use his ability indoors as a grenade. Arty and Kira (90HP!) are kinda samey and much weaker IMO.
Right now I have Sawbones and Vasilly unlocked among the “not free”-classes, and I could see myself buying at least ~4-5 more once they become availible. Right now, I’m eyeing Fragger, Proxy, and Bushwacker, which would offer a lot of variation.
So my opinion is that they are in a good place when it comes to variation between mercs! :)
I loved it, and still do! There’s nothing quite like it. And it had the most fun medics I’ve ever used (since they could feed themselves with both ammo and health!). It had a lot of vehicles, that players used, but I had enough fun just running around as infantry for ~300 hours. I think the maps are what made it great. They were few (9, I think? 12?) but they were HUGE and fun. You could have completely different experiences depending on where you decided to go on the map, with tons of small buildings, alternate routes, mountains, etc. You’d go from huge open outdoor areas to tight infantry combat within minutes on the same map. And the classes were really fun and diverse, plus the teams were asymmetric (and well balanced) which gave a ton of variation.
The best thing about it was that you had a lot of choice regarding how you wanted to play, and there were a lot of different ways to be effective. Then there was stuff like the Strogg could trade ammo for health and vice versa, just a lot of small systems in place on top of the fast paced combat. It was great, I felt like I was constantly learning new stuff within the game.
It was also really fun to watch the competitive games… a real shame that it didn’t go big, but it had a lot of problems that didn’t get ironed out in time, and a fractured (small) community between ranked and unranked/promod players.
On that note, the Dirty Bomb scene is starting to get interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yimSKXs_2Zc
Still a few kinks here and there, and things will probably change around a lot in the near future. But it’s fun to see the teams and strats take form.
Quake Wars was soooo good. What a smart interplay among infantry and vehicles, with two distinct asymmetrical sides, a whole mess of memorable maps, and fantastic bot support. It easily rivals anything DICE has ever done.
-Tom
Tsk, Tom was faster. I was about to say something like that, ET: Quake Wars was great. It had a very interesting and deep relation between infantry, vehicles and deployables, and it was all well balanced while maintaining a certain asymmetry in the sides and having great maps with intense teamwork.
For example there was a turret good against infantry, but weak against vehicles, and another good against vehicles but vulnerable to infantry. Logic says that they should cover each other, and be super good as a combo. And it was like that, but then clusters of turrets were vulnerable to artillery strikes fired by artillery turrets which could be ordered to fire from far away. Thats where entered a fourth type of turret, the anti-artillery turret, but they were vulnerable to any other kind of damage, a second type of artillery strike that had to be called very close, or from spies disabling temporally the turret (who also could disguise as the enemy), or from emp grenades.
The maps were pretty epic in how they usually were in open scenarios but the final objective you had to usually assault a bunker or a fortress and blow up something, it was like playing a more goal oriented round of Battlefield and then finish with a round of Brink or Dirty Bomb.
The game wasn’t perfect, vehicles handling and feel was very mediocre, and the netcode wasn’t totally smooth.
Another thing in QW was having friendly fire on in pubs. :<
In theory, the game was more spammy than Brink and DB since every class had lots of nades etc. But with FF on, people were A BIT careful with spamming. And you could kill-rez teammates in pubs, it was great. In DB now, in pubs as well as matchmaking (since there isn’t a system to deal with greifers yet), you can cover teammates by having them stand in one of your artillery strikes (delivering, planting etc.). And you can shoot a proxy mine without it damaging their team and so on (it will effect the engie and YOUR teammates).
It’s a pretty big flaw atm. And from the sound of it they won’t add FF in pubs (without a lot of pressure!).
The community in Quake Wars was just so well behaved. Always saying “thanks” when revived, and apologizing for TK:s. You’d get a lot of team-play in just regular pubs, and it was great. Mostly without voice chat as well. The small community certainly helped a lot with that though.
Quake Wars was terrific. I’m always a little sad that QW seems to have died out and been forgotten by almost everyone.
Quake Wars was the first game I missed on Steam due to delisting. I’d played a little of it during either beta or a free weekend but waffled on buying because my group was still happy with WolfET and baserace. Did something happen to kill it early? Licensing, servers, or the like?
It was released right on top of TF2, and two months before CoD4. Quake players found that it wasn’t just “Quake with trees”, Battlefield players didn’t like that the shooting took skill and vehicles weren’t invincible, ET players didn’t like the larger scale and some of the mechanics (simplified movement, weapon spread, vehicles, radars, and so on). IMO it was probably a bit too complex for its own good at first, as it took a while before you learned how to not get murdered by tanks, planes, and artillery.
Then there was a lot of bad word of mouth from the Beta (as things were rather unstable). And it’d take until 1.3 before things got better, and crashes between maps weren’t a problem. After that the game got really solid, with 1.4 and then 1.5 (which I think SD financed out of their own pocket).
I’d say it was due to a rough start and poor timing. Remember that it had also been delayed time and time again before that. I had it arrive in my mailbox from an old pre-order that I had forgotten about. :P