What a let down. I played this for 6 hours and got bored. While I have played ET for hundreds of hours. Below is a review I wrote, that explains why this game is not the successor to ET and why it is inferior.
Dirty Bomb is often compared to Enemy Territory, even called it’s successor. While I do agree that there are some similarities between the games, this game is of a much lower standard. This game is essentially a dumbed down version of the original with fancy graphics. That’s why I would not call it it’s succesor.
Similarities:
- objectives
- respawn system
- movement speed / mechanics
- shooting mechanics
Differences:
The maps:
In Dirty Bomb the maps are much smaller, less sophisticated and shorter to complete. No side objectives. The ET maps were very big (probably 3x bigger than Dirty Bomb maps supporting 32+ players) and long (30 minutes to complete a map) with many main and side objectives.
Also in the original most of the action was centered around the objectives, creating a frontline, while in Dirty Bomb the action is chaotic and dispersed.
No campaign or map rotation. And a very annoying intermission between matches that can take up to 3 minutes or more. Considering that most matches take between 5 or 10 minutes, this makes those intermissions around 20% of your play time. Extremely annoying.
No real tactics to win a map. In the original the maps were made in such a way that ensured that maps had a frontline and flanks to attack / defend. Meaning that, if one side fell, another would become exposed, this forced players to think more strategically as to which positions to defend or attack. In Dirty Bomb everybody is mindlessly rushing the same place.
The class system:
Completely different, while there were 5 classes each with different weapons and abilities in ET, here we have a dozen or so different mercs, that essentailly do very similar things. This makes the classes watered down and reduntant. For example in ET the engineer class was crucial to winning a game, while in Dirty Bomb an engineer is almost useless as any class can plant explosives and repair objectives.
The class abilities are very limited, in ET you could steal the uniform of a dead soldier, spot landmines, construct a command post, plant multiple mines, repair mg positions, inject yourself with adrenaline, in this game every merc has a very limited set of abilities, making it not very useful to the team.
Some weapon types are completely missing from the game, such as the bazooka / panzerfaust, heavy machine gun and the flamethrower. Grenades not available to every class. No binoculars.
In ET there was a campaign leveling system, where you would level your soldier with new abilities as the campaign progressed, there is nothing like that in Dirty Bomb and even if there was it would be useless since there is no campaign.
Teamwork:
This game is advertised as a game that requires teamwork, but most of the time one or two good players can win a match on their own.
The different class types provide no real advantages to your team. If your entire team was the same class (merc) you could still win the game, this was impossible in ET. In ET every class had one or more unique abilitilties that made them indispensible to the team. The engineer was required to repair tanks and plant explosives. The medics were required to heal and revive the engineers while they were fighting on the front line. The field ops was required to provide artillery fire to damage the enemy tanks / bridges. The covert ops was required to spot landmines, destroy command posts and open locked doors, the soldier was required to provide suppresive machine gun / mortar fire.
Because the classes in ET were so crucial to the game you could play an entire campaign barely firing a bullet and still have a lot of fun. I remember so many players that used to just give out med-packs, heal teammates, provide ammo, repair objectives and plant land mines. I rarely see that in Dirty Bomb.
In Dirty Bomb it goes like this:
- Medics are severely limited because they can’t provide med-packs, or provide them at a very slow rate.
- Engineers not required as anyone can repair / plant explosives.
- No covert ops class or something similar.
- FIeld ops artillery and airstrike support very limited / weak.
- No heavy class to supress the enemy (panzerfaust, MG, mortar).
One very easy way to determine that there is barely any teamwork is to listen to the quick chat (accessed via ‘v’ key by default), in ET you would always hear your teammates requesting help (‘I need a medic’, ‘Need ammo’, ‘Need an engineer’, ‘Need backup’), in Dirty Bomb nobody is using the quick chat feature AT ALL.
So overall I would give this game a 5/10 if we consider it on it’s own. If we compare it to the original ET I would give it a 2.5.
We will probably never see another game on ET’s level again.
