During a presentation at a preview event for Dirty Bomb, Nexon’s free-to-play multiplayer shooter, developer Splash Damage hammered in the fact that “this game might not be for you.”
It’s too hardcore, the developers claimed, and too objective-based. You’ll have to work as a team, they said — no lone wolf gunmen. “But really, don’t be a dick,” said the narrator of a stylized training video played for us, calling it the game’s “golden rule.” There are wildly different characters and abilities with cooldowns that lend more depth and strategy than many players used to standard shooters will be able to deal with. “This game isn’t going to hold your hand,” the narrator warned. “It’s more likely to kick your teeth out.” Throughout the event, Dirty Bomb was touted as “difficult to learn and impossible to master,” and inside the press booklet given to us was the line “casual players need not apply.”
The presentation made it sound like we were going to be playing the Dark Souls of first-person shooters.
I flew out to San Francisco last year to play an early version of Dirty Bomb and interview a few of the developers. It was a great opportunity, and I’m proud of how the piece turned out.
