London Calling: Dirty Bomb Enters Open Beta Next Week

Dirty Bomb [official site] is Splash Damage's third game building on the wonderful Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, following the so-so Quake Wars: Enemy Territory and Brink. This time, the class-based, objective-driven multiplayer team FPS action is headed to my fair city of London, where the detonation of several dirty bombs means you can walk through Borough Market without having to literally punch the teeth out of slow-walking, backpack-wearing, loud-talking tourists' faces and keep on punching and punching until the rozzers pull you off and slip you twenty bob in thanks.

What I'm trying to say is, Dirty Bomb will enter open beta next week.

It hasn't been the most closed of betas, with plenty of give-aways and whatnot (heck, we had one) but all and sundry will be able to play come June 2nd - that's next Tuesday.

Dirty Bomb will be free-to-play when it launches, with a rotating selection of free classes open to everyone (as MOBAs do) then letting folks unlock new ones by paying with cash or virtual money earned while playing. I heard a few grumbles during closed beta that it'd take ages to save up for character unlocks, but that's coming second-hand and may have been tweaked over the months. Or maybe it hasn't. Publishers Nexon are often awful with monetising F2P games. We'll see real soon, I suppose.

Also, here's a new trailer explaining what the game's about:

[Disclosure: I'm pally with a chap from Splash Damage. We once, by chance, found ourselves at the same club night dancing to Spice Girls. I want to say it was Say You'll Be There.]