Squad-based tank combat and simulation has taken a turn for the better with the recently released game: World of Tanks. Kyt Dotson over at GameOgre has for us a pretty in depth review of World of Tanks and everything that it entails for players, from an examination of the game engine to how the free-to-play freemium mechanic works.
It’s a blue sky over Malinovka as your tank platoon rolls tread over the dying grass, playing a lethal game of cat-and-mouse against the enemy forces hiding amidst the heavy brush. Engines blurt out on all sides as your comrades roll out and you follow in their muddy tracks when the coughing turret-report of an enemy tank signals they’ve sighted us before we them. Shells whistle overhead, radios chatter with severe language—a nearby friendly catches fire and explodes—your gunner bears the cannon sights down on a light track rambling over a hill…
By now you’ve probably guessed that World of Tanks is a tank warfare simulation and that it’s fairly immersive. This MMO launched in Russia in October 2010 and came to the EU and North America April of 2011. Amid the accolades that this beautiful simulation MMO has achieved, they’ve earned a World Guinness Record in the category of Most Players Online Simultaneously on One MMO Server, registered in January 2011 when the Russian server totaled 91,311 concurrent users. (I wonder if they have a statistic on how many shells were fired during that day.) Developed and published by Wargaming.net, it runs on the Bigworld gaming engine.
[ad#Helvetica Left-align]We’ve now had the pleasure of playing quite a bit of this game and experiencing the fine tuned experience of commanding a tank on a battlefield full of other tanks. This game is now becoming well-known for it’s amusing YouTUBE commercials portraying tanks are being superior to orcs.
The game sports almost 90 different tanks, each of which have been painstakingly designed to look like their WWI and WWII counterparts. The models are so distinctive that you recognize them on the field when you encounter them, and it also makes watching WWII footage on the History channel even more interesting when you can identify the make/model of a tank that rolls into view.
While the game seems to lack a lot of variety—it is just tanks shooting at each other—it does have a powerful tech tree and a ladder to rise through in order to gain access to new and more interesting tank designs. Early game may involve getting blown up a lot, but eventually players find their play style and a niche to play in.
Link, via GameOgre.
you sure do have a lot of posts
Well, it used to be more of my job to make a lot of content for Vox. Nowadays, I wander back to add stuff as Nelson is working more heavily on other projects.