World of Tanks is a free to play team deathmatch shooter based around, you guessed it, multiplayer tank warfare developed by Wargaming.net.

While it’s just barely ‘arcadey’ enough to make it less a realism simulator and more a shoot-em-up it still manages a fairly solid amount of realistic feel to it for what it is. You’ll definitely find more realism in a game like Red Orchestra 2 but even if realism is what you’re after, this game provides enough of it to sate your appetite. Things like shell drop, engine power and the damage to your tank affecting it’s performance are all employed in the gameplay.

The variety of tanks to choose from is vast; separated by three different countries in which you can level up through and each tank has parts you upgrade with exp earned from matches. While there are plenty of different tanks and different classes of tanks to fit different roles it can take some time to actually unlock them so it requires a lot of dedication to advance. I would have settled for a simple jump-in deathmatch tank game but the experience here is more akin to noob slaughter in tank form. Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with that, but don’t expect to trounce everyone in your first match just because you have plenty of natural skill with games like these. While there is definitely room for skill to be applied, you still have a basic tank to start out with and you will be crushed by the mighty hand of elite players in much more powerful machines. Most rounds you fire at superior, more heavily armored tanks hardly affect them if you aren’t in an adequate enough rig yourself.

It’s a teamwork game at it’s core and you’ll enjoy it much more with organized voip communication so you can properly discuss tactics and movement. Public matches don’t typically allow for this kind of communication. The maps contain destructible environments and allow for extremely tactical and various camouflage and hiding maneuvers. The gameplay is centered around both TDM and objective based combat. If you can hold the enemy base for a certain amount of time then you win. Optionally you can also eliminate the entire other team to win which is most often how rounds end. This is not as easy to do as holding the objective though as one skilled player can easily wipe out quite a few newer players.

As far as tank warfare goes you won’t find anything else at this quality that is still free.

World of Tanks

Jesse Leigh (199 Posts)

If you want a GOTY award, it's as simple as parkour + augments + Turok style dinosaur hunting.

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