Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Splash Damage’s Dirty Bomb has entered the mystic realms of “closed alpha”. Is that a thing? Surely that’s just “development”? Oh, players are getting in. Then that’s beta, isn’t it? Anyway, whatever it might be, it means those who spent $120 on the game before they knew anything about the game are being sent keys to get in (other price tiers will get in this alpha as time goes on). You could too, if you wanted to pay for a game that will be free to play before you’ve read a review when the game’s nowhere near finished. Everything is weird now. Or you could buy it for $320! Wait, is this a Kickstarter thing then? I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW TO BUY GAMES ANY MORE.

This all means that the day is heralded with a new trailer, and I bloody dare you to watch it.

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Splash Damage announced that they were working on Dirty Bomb by releasing a video that didn’t show any in-game action but led me to predict, confidently, that the game would involve people shooting one another on the streets of London. The pre-alpha video below sidled up to me this afternoon and said, ‘hey, you were right. Just look at how much those people are shooting on another on the streets of London.’ I nodded because they really were shooting each other a lot. Occasionally something exploded. Probably a bomb, although I think it was of the ‘clean’ variety. The sort that only disintegrates people within the immediate blast radius.

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Splash Damage have been quiet for a while, at least on the PC front, but there have been rumblings of a free to play PC shooter for a while now, and it looks like that Dirty Bomb, announced moments ago, may be that game. A teaser trailer shows a London street, semi-meticulously recreated and strewn with fallen combatants. By semi-meticulously I refer to the fact that there is a signpost that says Bromley on it but the Underground sign is a work of fiction. The copyright for the real one is probably owned by Boris Johnson. So, panic and bomb disposal on the streets of London? Watch.

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