Dirty Bomb (formerly known as Extraction) is an exciting mix of games like TF2(Team Fortress 2) and CS:GO(Counter Strike: Global Offensive). You run around guns blazing in maps based on abandoned London streets, train yards and even underground waterwork facilities. At its simplest Dirty Bomb is a fast paced shooter that provides an arsenal of weapons and perks in the form of loadouts and drops you into the action escorting EV’s, securing objectives and just blowing things up in general. It adds a nice little twist to the formula by throwing some extra parkour into the mix too.

The developer, Splash Damage, has done an incredible job with their character work so far with this, each of characters has a name, an instantly recognisable accent and their own personality that you’ll find yourself warming to throughout your games.  Although that aspect is not unique to Dirty Bomb, it is done really well as are the little quotes you hear from your characters throughout the game. They do a really good job of just keeping you in the loop, almost as if their little witticisms or even criticisms at the time, are aimed at the player, it’s neat.

Although free-to-play, Dirty Bomb has an abundance of items in-game that you can acquire through the use of real currency, whether it be the mercenaries themselves or the loadouts for the mercenaries, which you collect primarily through the opening of cases. Everything that you can buy using real currency is also available to players not willing to part with their hard earned cash, albeit perhaps at a slower pace. You’re really just paying for convenience. Mercenaries are also available on a rotation system, periodically granting use of three different mercs to everyone for a decent amount of time.

Loadouts use a card system, that can be acquired through four means, buying cases with in-game/real currency or having them drop in-game, trading-in existing loadouts to make a different one, trading up existing loadouts to make a better one, or just straight up splashing out with in-game currency to buy a loadout card outright. The latter option is in no way cost effective and will cost you a third of some of the mercenaries. I would suggest not using this, the other methods are much more effective and you get quite a lot of case drops from just playing, which was a pleasant surprise to me after having played games like TF2 and CS:GO. Mercenaries on the other hand will prove to be quite a challenge to acquire as they cost a lot of in-game currency.

You’re provided with hourly missions and usually given between 2-4 hours to complete them to gain extra currency. That aside, you will usually only get a few hundred credits each game depending on how well you play. With the cheapest mercenary coming in at 30K a pop, it’s gonna take you quite a while to build up your armory of mercs. All that said and done, you will get credits through levelling up and the rate at which you gain xp. While dependent on how well you play, it’s much faster than acquiring credits, so don’t fret just yet. I would say expect to be playing for at least 5-10 hours dependent on skill before you see yourself picking up your first merc.

Before giving my final opinion on this, I would like to note again that Dirty Bomb as it stands currently is not a finished product and is advertised as such. For a game still deep in development, Splash Damage have done a brilliant job of making a game that could have easily just been the next TF2/CS:GO clone into it’s own unique style and feel. Dirty Bomb leaves you with a sense of accomplishment and is just all around fun to play. With an admirable business model and a dedicated development team, I can easily see Dirty Bomb becoming greater than it already is.