The upcoming online shooter from Splash Damage has launched a Founder’s Club and unleashed a brand-new gameplay video.
Dirty Bomb, which you may recall bubbled to the surface with a teaser trailer a few weeks ago, is finally out in the open. There’s still not much to go on as far as background or plot but given the nature of the game, that’s okay and probably doesn’t matter anyway. It’s an online multiplayer FPS in which players choose a class like Medic, Engineer, Soldier, Field Ops or Sniper, and then “pursue military objectives fighting alongside your team on the streets of near-future London.”
I’m catching what I’m pretty sure is a powerful Team Fortress 2 vibe from this thing, in no small part because the central character in the team lineup shot is a burly bald dude with a big gun, not as burly as the Heavy nor as big as Sasha perhaps, and the whole thing is far less cartoonish than Valve’s online world-beater, but the parallels are hard to miss. The gameplay as well looks less “military” and more “barely-restrained chaos in pursuit of a goal that players may or may not care about.”
Dirty Bomb’s core character classes, maps, clan support and tournament play will all be free-to-play, but players who kick in some cash now can become part of the “Founder’s Club,” which provides access to unique forum tags, “Founder’s Merc” characters, soundtrack, gun tags and more. It’s not cheap – prices range from $30 to $120 – and if you have an excess of money lying around, you can also opt for the $240 “Contributor Pack” or the $320 “VIP Founder Pack.”
Splash Damage knows a thing or two about making multiplayer games, having created Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Quake Wars and Brink, as well as the multiplayer components of Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Doom 3, so Dirty Bomb should be a fairly decent, if not exactly revolutionary, experience. The closed beta is currently expected to begin sometime in early 2013 and in the meantime you can find out more at dirtybombgame.com.
