The F2Peer Review: War Thunder
For this week’s F2Peer Review we got our guys and gals to take a look at Gaijin Entertainments WW2 airplane/tank shooter War Thunder, letting them get to grips with the simulator like PVP focused game and get to grips with the various vehicles, maps and modes. Here’s what they had to say:
- JimSlam - War Thunder definitely won’t be to everyone tastes but I really enjoy it, when compared with other games out there that are similar, such World of Tanks/Warplanes and Armored Warfare then the games skill level is actually quite high, leaning away from the casual gameplay it requires a lot more understanding and mastery of not just the controls, but the various mechanics, hitpoints and strategy required to win. A combined ground vs air game that the “World of” crowd have wanted for a long time is one extremely well and really takes gameplay to another level.
- IAMJohn - Big big fan of War Thunder, though I don’t typically play shooters so it hadn’t ever really gotten on my radar (haha, get it?), which is a major oversight as I love flight simulators, which elements of the game definitely falls into. I will admit that I probably spent more time flying around, taking in the scenery, practicing aerial stunts and perfecting my landings than I did getting involved with the combat in multiplayer. Combat is extremely fun though, there’s a bit of a learning curve to being any good as the mechanics and handling are pretty real and the damage models took the game to a realism that I wasn’t expecting.
- Kittypride - The game isn’t really to my tastes but there’s certain elements that are undeniably impressive, the sheer number of vehicles, both planes and tanks, being up there and I believe the game holds a world record for the number of unique vehicles or something. That’s great if you’re into the WW2 era and want to collect your favourite planes and tanks, because they’re almost certainly in there, I managed to get a decent collection of Tier 1 vehicles and a handful of Tier 2, though getting any Tier 3 was a commitment I didn’t have the time or inclination to make. There’s a really cool customization feature where you can download templates to create your own skins for the planes, making cammo, or paintjobs, etc. whilst I’m a little arty I will admit my creations were complete eyesores.
- Ballgon - Gaijin does a great job at making the game as realistic as possible, from the completely one sided battles and huge skill discrepancies you’d find in war made possible by the horrendous Matchmaking system to the number of god awful vehicles that are purposely made bad to represent the pecking order in WW2 with these underperforming vehicles, which leads to everyone wanting to pick up the same vehicles. Except for the Russians, with the Russian Bias from the developers the Russian vehicles are overpowered and would have seemingly been able to win WW2 on their own.
- Tenebrae - The game isn’t my kind of thing, I prefer roleplaying games and even in MMORPGs I generally don’t get that involved in PVP, which is essentially what the game focuses on. Ground combat most definitely wasn’t for me and so I focused on the planes, which seemed at least more exciting and had the most potentially for something fun, albeit quite difficult to get used to. I did play with a guildy from another game to make the experience more tolerable as he did play it already, which was a lot more fun and working together to take down kills and communicating over TeamSpeak, combined with the graphics, made the game far more immersive.
- Elijah - War Thunder has a learning curve that a lot of players don’t give a chance, it starts off quite hard but if you stick with it for a little while then it suddenly starts becoming easier and with that more fun. From the realistic (though sometimes hard) controls to the more realistic damage mechanics where you can fire into the enemy cockpit, take out engines or shear off a planes’ wing, it can at times be merciless and we’ll admit that in the later game with the one hit kill potential of some games this is something even we suffer (and complain) over.
- Your_Nemesis - I’m a really big fan of the WW2 era, having played everything from Commandos, Call of Duty, to World of Warplanes/Tanks, my knowledge on the vehicles was pretty extensive; when War Thunder came out and seeing some of my favourite vehicles available to play that I’d read about when I was a kid and painted model tanks of, was fantastic to work towards unlocking them and getting in the driving seat. War Thunder has done a pretty impressive job of combining Air and Ground combat without it feeling like it’s a one sided ass kicking, though there are elements that I expect people might find to be unbalanced, however once you learn how the game works you generally realise that typically it’s not working towards your vehicles strengths and weaknesses that gets your butt handed to you.
Well there you have it, our players have pitched in with their thoughts about War Thunder, but what about you? Have you played the game, and if so what did you think, or if not why not? What do you think about what our players have had to say? Give us your feedback in the comments below!
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