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Despite having a painfully cheesy name, D.I.P.R.I.P. (Die in Pain, Rest in Peace) is actually quite good. It is a total HL2-conversion multiplayer vehicle shooter offered free on steam. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, go do it now.

This game is very fun. It looks great and runs very well if you can find a populated server with low ping (not a lot of servers, and very few players). It has the classic gameplay modes - deathmatch, team deathmatch, ctf, etc, so you can jump right in and get the gist of what you’re supposed to be doing. If not, just shoot everything. The controls are kind of slow, which is to be expected when driving heavy vehicles. Make heavy use of the turbo button (L shift) and the handbrake (space) to stay alive / dominate the opposition. My advice is to pick one vehicle and stick with it until you can drive around reliably.

Playing DIPRIP is about choosing the right weapon at the right time. At the moment, there are 4 weapons in game - the machine gun, the minigun, rockets, and the mortars. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses.

First is the machine gun in weapon slot 1. This is the weak default weapon you get, but it still plays a very important role, particularly when you just get started. While it doesn’t do much damage, it has infinite ammo and, more importantly, you can aim it anywhere around your car since it is mounted on a roof turret. I’m not a very strong driver, so when I totally miss someone and slam into the wall next to them, I can still hit them with the machine gun while I try to reposition.

Next up is the minigun. This is a hardcore chaingun that dumps a lot of ammo and damage out on an opponent, but you can’t aim it. It goes straight out the front of your vehicle, with a little bit of auto-aim. Use this when you are in close with an enemy to finish them off.

That brings us to rockets. Rockets are my bread and butter weapon - they have decently long range and can pack quite a punch. You can toggle the rocket level with the right mouse button, which adds a huge amount of versatility to the rockets. The highest level rocket, level 3, does massive damage but has almost no tracking at all. Use it whenever you have an easy shot either following someone or after a nub like me rams the wall and gets stuck right in front of you. On the flip side, level 1 rockets go much faster and track very well, but don’t do nearly the damage. Still, spamming these at a fleeing enemy or a distant fight is a good way to pick up kills.

If rockets are my bread and butter, mortars are my candy. Mortars hit HARD - two direct hits will kill an enemy. When you switch to the mortar you get a nice target and trajectory overlay so you can plan your shot over/under bridges/signs/buildings/etc. They also go FAR, providing the best way to ’snipe’ until they implement the High Caliber Gun (I’m excited!). My favorite DIPRIP moment so far was a triple kill I picked up by shelling a firefight happening on a distant bridge.

There are more weapon slots, and this page has a list of weapons they plan to implement, but it seems a little outdated. Still, I’m hoping hard for the HCG and the mines. Freeze bombs look fun too, but coupled with mortars or lvl 3 rockets might be overpowered.