World of Tanks is surprising. In the doldrums of summer, it arrives on Xbox One, a free game at a time where there is little else new going on. And yet, as I dove into the game for the first time, I found World of Tanks to be an immensely satisfying, occasionally frustrating, and challenging experience. And best of all, many hours into the game, I have yet to spend a dime.
World of Tanks consists of one game mode. There is a single player training mode, with a few brief challenges, but I gained little experience or silver,and quickly moved on to the multiplayer and never looked back. The game principle is pretty simple: I’d pick a tank, play a match, battle, and gain silver and experience from my battles. That silver and experience would be used to unlock better weapons and better tanks, which I used to battle more, and get even more experience and even better tanks. Ad infinitum.
Each match is a 15-on-15 team battle. You can platoon up with friends and bring them into the fight, but it will still be that massive experience. There are two types of matches, and you’ll randomly play either a meeting engagement (where the two sides will fight for control of a center point on the map) or a standard battle (where each side will defend their control point and try to capture the opponent’s point). Really, the battle type is ancillary to the experience- nearly every match comes down to who wipes out the other team first.
The map selection is completely random. There are a number of different maps, each with a unique character. Cities tend to result in close quarter melee, while more open maps like the Kursk battlefield of Prokhorovka result in long range duels. There are islands, and river crossings, and maps centered around plateaus. Since every match basically has the same objective, contests get their feel less from the game type and almost entirely from the unique terrain. There is a mild amount of destruction- artillery shells create craters,while tanks can roll over trees and through buildings. You can also conceal yourself in bushes, created opportunities for deadly ambushes, and cross map sniping from vehicles that can barely be seen.
There are five different types of tanks, and each has a character all its own. Light tanks are fast, good at spotting enemy vehicles, and hard to hit. Artillery can fire shots across the map at any vehicles that have been spotted (provided they aren’t blocked by the terrain). Tank destroyers have a low profile, are deadly accurate, and yet are fragile. The main tank versus tank combatants are the medium and heavy tanks, well armored and well gunned. The game feels very different depending on which vehicle you choose. And even within each category, the individual vehicles feel different, and are crafted with a great deal of historical accuracy. There are a number of very obscure tanks here: Pzkw III with turrets of Pzkw IVs, experimental heavy tanks that never saw the front, giant Pershings, and even Chinese and Japanese tanks.
The vehicles are divided into one of ten tiers based on quality.Matches generally match up the tiers of the tanks involved, so you won’t normally find your tier IV heavy matched up against a tier X tanks destroyer. Sometimes you will, however, and in cases you find yourself squaring off against a higher tier tank, prepare to lose. Occasionally, I would find my lower tier tank would end up in the sites of a higher tier TD or artillery. At those times, I would find my tank explode in one shot. Occasionally, it would be a shot from across the map within 15 seconds of a match start. At those times, I may have uttered profanity. Possibly a lot of profanity.
In matches you earn silver, which you can use to buy upgrades and new tanks. Matches also get you experience, but only for the tank you happened to be using at the time. Experience is used to do research, which then opens up tanks and upgrades for purchase. The lower tiers are pretty easy to blow through, but as you move up the chain, it takes quite a bit of play to get into Tiers V and higher. You can, of course, use real world money to buy more silver. Additionally, you can use your own cold hard cash to buy special tanks that give experience for any tank you wish. But you’ll still have to put in the time to get that experience. This results in a free-to-play model that gives some benefit to spending money in the game, but doesn’t slant it totally in the favor of players spending tons of cash. It’s a nice balance. You can also use gold (the real money element) to buy more experience for your crews. Special abilities can only be unlocked once the experience of the crew in a particular vehicle is 100%. This is the one big advantage for the money-paying gamers.
As soon as your tank is destroyed in a match, you can pop out of the game immediately, and load another one. You’ll have to wait for that battle to end for you to use whatever vehicle you were using at the time to be available again, so you’ll find yourself cycling through a number of different tanks. Upon the end of a match, you’ll earn your silver and experience. You’ll also pay some silver- to either repair or replace your vehicle and to replenish the ammo. This provides incentive for surviving, and for conserving your shells. Still, it’s not a huge amount, and you won’t feel unfairly penalized for being massacred.
The game seems lacks a large number of game modes, but what’s there is really fun to play. Tanks can take critical hits depending on where they are struck. I found myself aiming many of my shots at vehicles’ treads (especially the light tanks). It’s really satisfying to watch an enemy light tank driving through all your teammates, stop them in one place with one shot to the treads, and then watch their vehicle explode as everyone zeros in on the now stopped tank. Some of the one-on-one confrontations, where you and an opponent are face to face, both waiting for your guns to reload so that you can fire off the decisive shot, are tense and either amazingly satisfying or very depressing (but in a good way). This isn’t a game about rushing across the map, however. Patient, thinking players will find a lot of joy here, but if you’re looking for a light, fast moving experience, prepare to die a lot.
World of Tanks is free-to-play done well. I actually feel guilty, playing such a satisfying game for free. Still, it isn’t perfect. The loading screens are horrendous, and you’ll be seeing a lot of them, as when you die in a match, you don’t respawn. And really, there’s only one game mode, which, despite the intensely addictive experience system, will eventually get old. But that one mode is fantastic, and there is no reason to think that there won’t be additional modes is the future. The World of Tanks is a good one, and I plan on spending a lot of time there.
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