[Review]War Thunder

[Marv3Lシ]

The problem with War Thunder is it's a game that constantly swings from "amazing" to "outrageously frustrating,” often within the same session. It's a game I love, except for all those times I'm ready to nuke it from my hard drive.

Every few sessions, something technical goes annoyingly wrong. A lot of times, I get an authentication error and can't log into my account. A few minutes later, it works again. Sometimes, my controls mysteriously go haywire. All my settings are lost, and I have to remap everything, which is the most boring and painstaking task in flight sims. Don't even bother wasting time on the Controller Wizard. It's the least effective wizard this side of Oz.

Or there's that weird texture bug I only get in the cockpit view, when the world turns into a blurry, jagged mess, but looks perfect if I simply switch to a different camera.

 

War Thunder often seems like a ramshackle construction. There are too many places where it seems unfinished or buggy. It'd be unbearable, except for all those times it's actually sublime.

                                       

At its best, War Thunder is a game of rare beauty and grace. The game is breathtaking when you're in the air, soaring over mountain valleys or Pacific atolls. Just taking a plane up through the clouds, where the world beyond your wingtips vanishes into fog while condensation whips over the canopy, gives way to the most extraordinary joy and elation when you burst into the clear blue sky. It feels like I'm really up there at the controls of a plane, playing among the peaks and valleys of a cloud formation. That's doubly true when I'm using special flight-sim gear like a TrackIR head-head tracker and a flight stick.

More important, War Thunder's air combat is simply some of the best and most intense I've ever experienced. World of Warplanes doesn't come close; its planes are too confined by the game's simple physics. It's a shooter where your avatar is a plane. In War Thunder, I always feel like I'm actually in the cockpit, and every kill is a story to tell.

Even on the arcade settings, where the planes are extremely forgiving and every battle is basically an aerial melee, War Thunder forces players to learn and use basic flight maneuvers and aerial tactics. Bringing all the pieces together is very difficult but also very satisfying. It's not a stretch to say that War Thunder is the Red Orchestra of air combat.

You can also crank up the realism, which does away with respawns and puts you into more varied tactical situations. Instead of just racing to shoot up all the other team's tanks or airbases, you might be waging a carrier battle in the Pacific, or trying to escort bombers to a target. The aircraft are a lot harder to handle and the stakes are a lot higher, but that only serves to heighten the authenticity.

                                           

*-Gear-Grinding.

If only War Thunder stayed at high-altitude. But unfortunately, it comes crashing to earth with the introduction of tank combat.

Where air combat is fast and graceful, the tanks are plodding and fussy. The gestures toward realism only serve to drag things out. Early tanks grind to a halt over the gentlest grades, and War Thunder consistently overestimates my interest in managing a tank's manual transmission. It's like coaxing a slug.

The slow pace is exacerbated by a combat system where the person who spots the target first is probably going to get the kill. So battlefields too often devolve into careful camping grounds, and by the time you maneuver to a good position, your glacial pace has eaten up a quarter of the battle time.

                                           

Then there's the progression system. This is where War Thunder badly lags behind World of Warplanes and World of Tanks. Its upgrade tree is a byzantine mess.

Rather than having everything laid-out in a simple step-by-step progression, the War Thunder tech tree is jammed full of weird side-branches and a few too many marginal upgrades. Plus, the currency and research required to progress in the second and third tier of the game lead to some real doldrums. Premium currency helps alleviate this somewhat, but unless you're willing to drop some real cash on buying aircraft, you should brace yourself for some slogging.

Still, as frustrated as I get with War Thunder's limitations, there nothing else out there that so readily puts you at the center of a dogfight. When I swoop in behind an enemy fighter, drop the crosshairs just above the cockpit, and watch the bullets slope into the fuselage until it comes apart like a broken kite, I feel transported. I'm an ace, a master of the skies.

War Thunder drives me crazy. I'm not sure how I can ever leave.

 

*-Arcade and realism.

The main objective of the game is to shoot down enemy planes and all its game modes are about this. What instead sets it apart is how realistic it is and how easy it is to get shot down. In arcade mode you play in two teams, and everyone can chose what planes they like, but the planes are very simplified in terms of damage models and physics. This also makes it possible for teams to mix planes from different nations. When in arcade mode you can either play “Ground Strike” mode which involves killing ground troops, shooting down airplanes and bombing airfields. Or you play “Domination” mode, which is just like any other domination mode where you hold objectives, or airfields in this case.

To make the game even more interesting, there are realistic and simulator battles. The simulator battles are far more fun to play for the airplane enthusiast, while the realistic mode is more for the average player interested in playing the game’s full potential. In realistic mode the gameplay is much less forgiving and the planes are much more in line with how they were historically. And unlike arcade mode, the planes you chose will be from a specific nation and not mixed. You will also be playing historical encounters and have objectives similar to the real battles. While arcade mode can ease new players into the game, which has a steep learning curve, it is in realistic mode where the game truly spreads its wings.

                          

*-Simulation and events.

Simulator battles are very similar to realistic battles, but the flight physics here are set as close to the real deal as possible, so if you want to master the simulation battles you need to know all the details about your plane’s real-word attributes. You also only have a first-person view here, and there is no mouse-aim available, making it a must to play with a joystick or gamepad. If you are hit or run out of ammo, which happens way too fast if you are not smart about it then you must return to the airfield to repair and load up.

Then there is the events mode, which is available in the realistic and simulator settings. Here you can partake in recreating battles as accurately as possible, where the regular matchmaking system with battle rating is off. But there are also a few other events in which you can partake. In squadron events, 8 players per match fight for the air supremacy and only players from the same clan can be in it. In racing you will fly through a marked course and capture zones in the water. But while there are a multitude of ways to playing and there is a possibility for customization, most of the events didn’t feel like a good fit for the game, and only something plastered on afterwards. The best way to play it is via the realistic or simulator battles.

*-GAMEPLAY.

 

[myCro]

A pretty harsh review, i play this for more than 7 years, i disagree with a lot of the things from the beggining. Never encouter tehnical problems or bugs.