It’s one hell of a grind
Dirty Bomb uses another feature from MOBAs: the free-to-play grind. How fast you level up and earn credits (the in-game currency) will depend on your skill and performance during each match. The results screen tracks how well you supported your teammates, how many kills you had, and so on. Splash Damage also made daily missions like “complete six Objective matches” that reward you with bonus credits if you finish them. While it sounds like you have a lot of opportunities to earn money, the grind is just too slow.
Due to various credit bonuses, I had enough money to buy one of the cheaper characters (costing 30,000 credits) within the first three hours of playing. But it took 20 more hours before I could buy another. I’m not the greatest FPS player in the world, so your progression may be slower or faster than mine.
It was disheartening to see how little money I made after every match, even with the daily bonuses. I could’ve bought a temporary credit booster with real money or just paid (with prices ranging from $6 to $10 each) to unlock one of the Mercs. The developer has to make money somehow, right? But the process of earning credits through playing seems designed to make those options more alluring.
Open beta issues
After the open beta went live on June 2, Dirty Bomb started to have server issues due to overwhelming traffic, making it hard to connect to any matches. The problem persisted for a few days, but I haven’t had any significant trouble since June 6, so it looks like Splash Damage was able to resolve them. My bigger issue was with how many times the game crashed on me. I could rarely close the game without having to log out of Windows or restart my PC (it keeps freezing when I click on “Exit”). I’ve had a couple of crashes during the middle of a match as well: My screen would freeze for a moment before the game kicked me back to the main menu.
Conclusion
As much fun as I had with Dirty Bomb’s tense tug-of-war battles, it just doesn’t have enough content to keep me playing. I’m tired of looking at big yellow pipes and running past train tracks and military barriers. If it had more maps, I’d have less of a problem grinding for credits or even spending real money on boosters. As it is, I can’t afford the characters I like without putting in a ton of hours on the old maps (goodbye, Kira!). And it’s such a hassle to deal with the crashes that, if I weren’t reviewing this game, I’d wait a few weeks before trying to play it again.
Splash Damage has a solid shooter in here somewhere, but it’s not quite ready for prime time yet.
Score: 60/100
Dirty Bomb came out on June 2 for PC. The publisher provided GamesBeat with a download code prior to the open beta date for the purpose of this review.