World of Tanks - Review

World of Tanks is a free-to-play online game about... well, tanks and tanking. It's a fair combination between simulation and arcade gameplay. What I mean by this is that is that the developers (wargaming.net) have done a great research in historical tanks regarding USA, Soviet Union and German Axis. They have added very detailed descriptions of the tanks to the info menus and also most of the tanks actually feel a bit different to play with. But enough with the general blabber, let's get to the main points:

Gameplay:

- Gameplay in WoT is purely online, so if you don't have a decent enough broadband connection, don't bother downloading the game.

- Game itself has also come a long way since it's release when everything was about grinding to get some cash for a decent tank. Also gone are the extreme unbalancing issues where the USSR tanks were way more superior than any other faction's tanks - now it seems that there is a thin balance between factions. Axis having the most armor and pretty decent firepower, USSR having fast moving tanks with thin armor coating and good firepower, and finally US tanks which have a good balance in every aspect.

- Research points and money is also a very big part of the game itself. You have a limited amount of room in your garage for storaging tanks and to get additional tanks you need to earn in-game credits. You earn a small amount every battle you participate in but should your tank get damaged during battle, be prepared to cough out some of that hard-earned credits to get it fixed up. Also all the tanks have upgradable parts like turrets, engines, comm-systems, tracks etc. To get the upgrades however, you need to research them first and then purchase them. To get the research points necessary, you need to take part in battles with your existing tanks and the better you perform during combats the more credits and research points you get. In a way it's still an endless grind but with the late patches it has become far better experience in general.

- At the moment you are able to battle upon 22 different maps which's sizes reach up to 1km*1km. That's pretty big, and for most of the maps, they do feel as big as well and nicely detailed for the setting itself.

- At this point WoT includes more than 150 tanks in total and also included are some nasty prototypes which never made it to the real battlefields.

- Different tank categories include: Light tanks, Medium tanks, Heavy tanks, Tank destroyers and Self Propelled Guns (SPG's)

Graphics:

Graphics in general are good enough. I mean, after all this is an online only free to play game and it should run on any decent enough PC out there. Therefore it doesn't have the fancy DX11 or DX10 and it runs on the standard DX9 and still manages to look very good for this type of game. Since the tanks are the stars of the show for this game, they have been very well modeled, all the tracks sense the bumps on the road and anything you upgrade actually shows up on the machines themselves as well.

Story:

What story? It's a tank battle, it doesn't need a story.

Additional notes:

Overall, WoT is a nice F2P online RPG (yes, I know... but it has some cool RPG features) and is certainly worth at least checking out, even if you're not really into that kind of F2P games. Many flaws still remain like the tiny feel of grinding however it is balanced very nicely with the variety that is offered by different tanks and maps. Also I'd like to mention one downside, which is the lack of game modes. This could be an issue for some however I say: it's World of Tanks... teams of tanks killing each other... what else do you need?

Overall personal score: 8.0/10.0

WoT:

Official Webpage

Early review when the flaws were way greater:

GT Video Review