Extraction (aka Dirty Bomb) free to play FPS PC game

kingpage on 01/10/2013 - 14:52
Last edited 01/10/2013 - 19:01

It's a free to play (F2P) first person shooter game. The closed beta comes out on Oct 15th (initially today but now delayed).

Check out trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loiQc7hz0kk

Sign up for closed beta here:
http://extraction.nexon.net/teaser/

As long as it will have dedicated servers in Australia, I'm all in. I hope it won't be like Warface only serving US and EU customers. Based on some sources, they say it will come to Australia, but saying that doesn't mean they will give us local servers (like some games love to call US servers US/Oceania server, thus false advertising).

If any alpha players can confirm whether there are Australian servers at the apha stage, that would be great. But I guess we will find out whether that's the case in beta very soon.

I play solely F2P (but not pay 2 win or P2W) games. Blacklight Retribution (BLR) had been the most fun competitive FPS for me among so many F2P games these days, until recently. It has been broken for about 3 months now (going from 40ms ping originally to 90ms since July, and as bad as 200ms for a few weeks). I won't play BLR until the ping's lower than 60ms. Similarly, over 200ms in Warface is not fun; I'm not gonna play it until they have AU servers. Planetside 2 is too open world or slow for me to have quick games. Hawken is good, but not a competitive shooter. Warframe is not FPS, and there's no dedicated servers. Then I tried the latest America's Army Proving Grounds beta, the control somehow was very weird (not talking about high recoil or spread), shooting felt off, walking felt off. It felt like some cheap F2P shooters. And, I hate the cartoony art style in Team Fortress 2 whereas this game has art style similar to TF2, but realistic enough for me.

I like what I have heard about Extraction, regarding the balancing via the Echo analytics tool, competitive aspects, teamwork, AAA graphics, and not pay to win, etc. The only downside is that it will be published by Nexon. I had experience with Nexon (NA) through Combat Arms before I got my current beefy PC last last year; oh boy, it's horrible - the hacking and QQing in the community. Hopefully, for Extraction the situation will be an almost hack-free and more mature player base (which I imagine could happen as long as there's AU servers). The huge difference in maturity between AU servers and EU servers in BLR comes to mind.

TL;DR
Extraction sounds like the perfect F2P shooter, if they have AU servers. What do you think?

Gaming

Comments

  • jikijiki on 01/10/2013 - 17:47

    I play PS2 since it caters to everyone's tastes. Its got Biolabs, Amp Stations and towers for that CQC gameplay from COD/BF3 but its also got large open areas for tanks and jets. Besides, who doesn't like 2000 players duking it out on one map? I havn't payed a single cent and have upgraded most of my vehicles and guns to an acceptable level

    The game is obviously best played with mates. I've got 5 and we hop on Skype to get some good dogfighting squads/tanks/jeeps with a minigun on top and we have a blast just tearing it up.

    I played Warface for roughly 12 hours in total and I have to say that I found gameplay to be bland - its essentially a COD4 thats free but made with the Crysis engine. It doesn't bring much new to the table so I'll probably only play it if I get my mates to go on and we can do 6v6, provided they offer Australian servers.

    I'm hesitant to play anything from Nexon since I played Combat Arms way back when it first came out and it soon became a cesspit of P2W and exploiters.

    BLR was fun but the grind to get new gear was too long for me so I left it soon.

    All in all, PS2 has been my favourite f2p game for roughly the past year, its boring as hell if you play by yourself so I'd suggest joining a squad if you've never done so before but leading a squad/platoon of 48 people has been one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever experienced in a f2p game. I guess for me, its not about the kills itself, its more about the method or way of getting the kill that keeps me coming back for more. Added to that, as I said earlier on it caters to every playstyle - ground pounding, vehicular combat you name it PS2 offers it all.

  • kingpage on 01/10/2013 - 18:58

    Well, I didn't like PS2 at first, but it grew on me a little. But the zerg would bring the frame rate to something like 30-40fps, which is horrible for competitive gaming. It doesn't really matter what CPU you've got, high end or not. It happens every time there's more than 100 players in one map, the more players the worse it gets. I'm now just too used to above 60fps gaming to deal with that kind of lag, by the way, my screen supports 75Hz.

    Another thing is in PS2, I usually have to go around finding good battles. At the end of the day, it might as well not be open world. It's either lots of wait or lots of lag. Yes, I'm still new to it given I'm only LV20. I guess it's different playing with friends, since you can just chat when waiting. I still don't know how you can become a squad leader (except someone gave it to you), I clicked through everywhere to try to have my own squad instead of joining one.

    Sometimes I just don't want to spend a few hours to wait for a good battle even if I had the time, I've only had one or two great ones. Most times I just quit (not rage quit) because I'm bored after 10 minutes.

    • jikijiki on 01/10/2013 - 19:36

      Right now, the devs are focusing on optimisation (I'm not a techie so I wouldn't know much of what they would do) but they have ceased the development of new content until the 29th of Oct where they will release a the first of many patches aimed at improving framerates.

      You become a squad leader by pressing P by default which brings you to the social menu and typing in the name of someone you would like to form a squad with. Alternatively, you can hold Q over someone for a commo rose.

      Joining a pub platoon is a good way to learn the ropes of the game, platoon leaders generally lead the platoon to fights where you'll experience most of the infantry gameplay. If that doesn't help, the lattice system is designed to help you with picking and finding fights (they are the lines linking each facility to another).

      If MLG is your thing, PS2 is currently in the works to enter the e-sport scene with the Nexus Battle Island which is essentially xx v xx amount of players (I think it was 32 v 32) with three lanes of battle with a conquest style of gameplay. I'm not too sure on the details but thats what I know of it so far.

      • kingpage on 01/10/2013 - 20:16

        Optimisation would definitely be awesome. I think read about that Nexus Battle thing, I hope it will be something for me.

  • Ventak on 02/10/2013 - 00:52

    I'm thinking they might, considering they seem to throw a number of "Australia" events for their other game MapleStory.

    • kingpage on 02/10/2013 - 10:21

      Does Nexon have real local Aussie servers for any of their games so far? A simple Google search suggests no. Allowing AU players is not the same thing as hosting a local server. I'm afraid that having only US servers and not geo-blocking is being regarded as "operating the game in Europe, Australia and New Zealand".

  • moza on 30/07/2016 - 10:52

    It's an old post, but just confirming that there are awesome aussie servers up and running for Dirty Bomb. It's completely free and you can absolutely obtain a heap of the unlocks just by playing. I'm enjoying it! Great Aussie community as well, and the game supports SLI GPUs (important to me :))

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