Game Reviews

World of Tanks Review

by admin posted Jul 22,2010

World of Tanks is a free MMORPG that was released just a few days ago. This is a review from MMO Game Site.

What can I really say about tanks? First – I don’t like them. In fact I don’t like anything related to World War II very much. Games about WWII and machinery from that period come together as two of the most unappealing things in the world. Second – they are big slow things that are hard to control and tend to require five people operating one machine. Third – they are a technical nightmare with so many characteristics and modifications that will make your head hurt. With that being said you can imagine how big of a train wreck a game that features real life tanks with their correct characteristics on historically correct WWII battlefields would be for me. Fortunately World of Tanks is not like that.

I do not mean it is not historically correct. On the contrary – everything you will see in the game was somewhere there around the World War II period. But the game is not what you would expect from a tank simulator. In fact – it is not really a simulator but rather a fun arcade version of one.

Customization and Progression

It is kind of hard to separate these two here so that is why I’m putting them together. As you might have guessed there are no races or classes to choose from in World of Tanks. Well, they are nations but the game is not nation locked so you can use tanks from more than one nations at the same time.

Once you start the game you will find yourself owning two tanks – one from each nation. Currently there are only two nations in the game – USSR and Germany but the developers promise more to come such as America, France, Britain and even Japan. So all the nations have one starting tank each. For Russia this is MS-1 which is also known as T-18 and for Germany we have the Leichttraktor. Both tanks are prototype pre-WWII machines and will serve as a base for your future improved battle equipment.

At the beginning you are not allowed to make much choosing – you pick one of the two proto-tanks and go into battle. I will cover the battle gameplay later so for now we just assume that you have completed your first battle and it is time to get back to the garage. After each battle no matter won or lost you receive two things – experience and credits. These will vary depending on if you won or lost the battle as well as your personal achievements on the battlefield but no matter what you have done – you progress. This is where the things get interesting. With the experience you will be able to upgrade your tank through a progression tree that will allow you to research new parts for your tank such as engines, barrels, suspensions, radios and turrets. Still these parts do not come freely – you will have to buy them with the credits that you earn. At the end of each tree a research for new model of tank or different war machine. When you research new models you will have to buy them the same way you do with the parts for your current tank. After you buy a new tank you do the same stuff all over again.

Apart from your first tank each new model will be researched this way. It sounds a little bit confusing progressing this way in the game but fear not – there is a tech tree that shows all the development routes you can take to your ultimate war machine. The new vehicles researchable from your first tank are four – two light tanks, a SPG(Self Propelling Guns/Howitzers/Artillery) and a tank destroyer. The tanks are pretty clear – eventually they will lead you to either heavy or medium tank at the end of the progression path. The difference between light, medium and heavy tank are the role they play in battle. Light tanks are usually fast scouting machines, the medium tanks are also fast but have better armor and heavier firepower and heavy tanks are slower but have the thickest armor and deal the most damage. The tank destroyers are kind of like tanks but they have larger attack range. The downside is that their side and rear armor is weaker compared to the heavy tanks and their barrels have limited moving capacity which means you will have to face the target to shoot at it. The SPGs have very weak armor but very large range and firepower. They can practically shoot anything down from half a map distance if they have the required intelligence on where to shoot. The different paths you can take form a pretty solid tank tree with 31 models for each nation. Each tank features a lot of upgrades and is either a pre-WWII, WWII, post-WWII or prototype model that really exists so there is a lot of stuff to give the tank geeks at least a few pleasurable moments.

There are a couple more things I have to say about the progression from purely game-system perspective. The first one is that the experience you receive after battle is two types – free experience and normal experience. The normal experience can be used to upgrade only the current tank while the free experience can be used to upgrade any machine you like. Of course the free experience received is very low in comparison to the normal experience. A question rises – what to do with normal experience when the tank is fully upgraded? Well – you can either convert it to free experience for some cash shop currency or you can use it to hasten the training of your tank’s crew. Here comes the second thing – the tank’s crew. Each tank has a separate crew that consists from two to five people. Each person has a position that he takes care of. While you battle your crew also gets more experienced at their jobs and do stuff around the tank better. You can also train them fast for cash shop currency or in-game money. Still it is kind of annoying that you must retrain your crew for a new vehicle and they lose their experience in the process. In my opinion it is better to stick with the new crew you are provided automatically with.

If I must give an honest mark for this section of the game I would give it about 9 out of 10. There are really a lot of stuff in the content but the progression is a little bit slow for my taste and there never seem to be enough money to get your next research tank right away.

Gameplay

The battles in World of Tanks are very well done. The control scheme is simple and easy to master – you drive your tank with WASD and control your turret with the mouse. You can also access sniper mode and artillery mode with shift and autolock a target with the right mouse button. The left mouse button stands for fire, of course. The steering is very smooth, I have not experienced any problems with it as well as the manual targeting. The auto-target mode takes a little bit more time for the turret to adjust to the right angle as it’s turning speed is fixed according to your tank and it’s gear. Don’t worry, the autotarget does not ruin the game as it is not always accurate and you can miss quite a lot using it. I believe it is only meant to be done while driving. With the sniper mode you can target precise parts of the enemy tank to take out. If you hit the gears the target will stop moving for example making it an easier target. You can also destroy other parts of the enemy tank but you must know that they will be repaired after some time so it is a good idea to aim for a killing blow at some point. The feel of the normal combat is pretty much like the one in Battlefield Heroes when you get into the tank but not so arcade and with more strategy and targeting involved.

The artillery also works good as you can target any part of the map with the special bird-eye targeting system that is exclusive for the SPGs. I like how the developers balanced these seemingly overpowered machines. There are two factors that you will have to have in mind while being an artillerist – the terrain and the visibility. The terrain is pretty much clear – your shells will hit objects that are between you and the target. They will fly over most of the stuff but a mountain in the middle of the map as well as building near the enemy tank can block even a flawlessly executed shot. You also have to have in mind that the tanks are not static objects on the map and that they move around or even – that they stop suddenly and change direction. They can even suddenly disappear while you are still targeting them. This is because you cannot see every tank on the whole map. You can see only tanks that have been spotted by your allies. To balance things even further the game uses the radio range from your tank upgrades as a value to determine which enemies spotted by your allies you can see according to the distance between you and them.

The battles are quite fast and fun. There is a lot of tactics involved in them as you are a deadman if you just rush into the enemy. You can either go in groups of several tanks and take other groups like that or you can hide in the bushes and ambush the enemy. Still if they get too close to you you will be spotted very fast. The same goes if you fire a shot so be wise when to uncover your self. The light tanks will usually work together with the SPGs and the tank destroyers – the first ones exploring and finding enemies, trying to stay alive as long as It takes for the heavy gun guys to target and shoot. It does not mean that you will not be able to take out enemy tanks on your own when playing light or medium tank but it just helps to have some support in the back.

I am a little disappointed in the game modes. The Normal Battles will take place with hitting the huge red button “Battle”. You will be transferred to a lobby when you will wait for other people to enter until the game starts automatically on a random battlefield. The game rooms fill quite fast – I have never waited for more than ten seconds for a game to begin even when I was the first one in the lobby. The battle is 15 versus 15 people and it is autobalanced which means that the power of the tanks in the different teams will be quite the same. The battle takes up to 15 minutes but it is usually over before the time is up. The annoying thing is that when you get killed – this is it. You get no respawns, no lives – you just die and your tank is stuck in the battle until either one team is completely wiped out or one of the teams capture the enemy base. Or if you are extremely unlucky – until the time goes out and the team with the most players alive is victorious. If the same number of players is alive in both teams then a draw is declared. The Recruit’s Battles are the same thing but there is a limit to what tank you can bring to them. The Training Battles are the same but you can choose a map and a time limit to your liking. The annoying part of in this is that the room master must put each and every tank individually into a team of his choosing.

After each battle you will have to repair your tank if it was destroyed. The money that come from a battle even if you are destroyed in the first second and have done nothing at all are more than the ones required for the repairs so you will not find yourself in a ditch there. You will also have to restock the ammunitions for your tank. There are usually two or three types of those that will cost differently according to the type. One of them is always cash shop ammo and it is slightly better than the ordinary stuff but they are not overpowered so it is not a dealbreaker.

There are all in all 7 maps where you can wage war and they are quite unique in size and environment. They are all real locations from World War II but I guess they have been downsized to keep the battles fast. Even now some of the maps are pretty big and when few players are left they would not find one another for quite some time.

The developers promised the involvement of infantry in the future(I really hope as playable too) and I suppose they will add more game modes and maps. Still for now I will give the game 7 out of 10 for gameplay because of the lack of diversity in the game modes as well as the waiting times.

Graphics and Sound

I must admit – the graphics of the game are quite good even on low settings. The models of the tanks are really close to the real stuff and the destructible environment gives you the feeling that you are driving something very powerful. I even did a little experiment – I ran the game and asked a friend of mine who is really into World War II warfare to identify the tanks he sees. He was very accurate and guessed right in 90% of the cases. He even pointed out when a machine was modified with a different barrel or turret. Also we both agreed that one of the Russian SPGs looked like an outdoor toilet on wheels. Anyway, the models and the rendering of the in-game objects is very good as well. The sky and the water looks beautiful. The trees look very good as well but when you are up-close you can see that some of the textures are not very good.

On the other hand the sound is perfect for me. I would like to see diffrent in-game music according your nation but the tracks right now do a very good work as well. They perfectly represent the tense spirit of the fight or the uneasy wait for the upcoming battle. My favorite tune in the game is when you have lost the battle which is kind of ironic. The voiceacting is quite good. They do not say much but what they do say they say it with the right feeling in the voice.

I will give 9 out of 10 for graphics and sound because of some awkward destruction animations and bad textures.

Cash Shop

Like it or not – this is a free to play game so the cash shop is the best way of making money in it. I had the privilege of experiencing the cash shop in this game for free. Of course it will all be wiped out after the beta so don’t worry – I will not be overpowered bastard when the game comes out for everyone. And even now I am not really overpowered and this is what I like in this game – the cash shop is really balanced. It is true that there are some tanks that can only be bought by cash shop currency but I like way they made sense out of it. The tanks you buy from the cash shop are only Trophy tanks that have either been given as a gift from one nation to another or have been captured in battle and converted. Currently there are 7 tanks purchasable by cash in the cash shop – 3 captured by Germany French tanks and 4 gifted to USSR by Great Britain. These tanks are also not the best tanks in the game but rather a mid-late game tanks. They are strong but they will not make you stronger than anyone else – you will just get them faster. Also there are no upgrades for these tanks so they are not part of any progression trees – you will still have to work hard to earn those. The other uses for the cash shop are converting cash shop money into in-game credits at a decent rate and the rest of the things I have already mentioned – training your tanks’ crew, converting tank experience into free experience and buying special ammo. These are perks but not big enough to unbalance the game.

I will give the cash shop 8 out of 10 because I think that there should be another way of converting tank XP into free XP as well or at least to transfer one crewmember from one tank to another without loss of experience.

Conclusion

I was really pleasantly surprised by World of Tanks. It is a game that I have not expected to be able to catch me within it’s grasp but somehow it managed it with lots of content, fun battles and progression, nice graphics and lovely sound. I think that this game is going to be improved even further and if you are a tank enthusiast you definitely have to check it out. Still there are a few things that should be cleared with time so I will give it 8 out of 10 as a final score.

Customization and Progression – 9/10
Gameplay – 7/10
Graphics and Sound – 9/10
Cash Shop – 8/10
Overall – 8/10

Related Articles & Games