By Steven Storm
Steven Strom is a freelance video game journalist. His interests include video games, their future as an art form and virtual felonies. You can follow Steven on Twitter @stevenstrom.
The line between providing value for your real money purchases and “pay-to-win” is a fine one. It’s one that World of Tanks doesn’t walk particularly steadily. It’s also one that probably didn’t need to have been drawn at all if Wargaming.net had used a different free-to-play model.
With that said, the most important consideration with any free-to-play game is that the “game” segment be entertaining first, and the monetization be added later. The way World of Tanks actually plays is somewhat baffling — perhaps because there are few others quite like it — but most of the time its absurdity falls on just this side of endearing.
It’s a multiplayer deathmatch game with tanks. There’s really not much more to it than that. It’s not even the sort of hyper-realistic military equipment simulator such a focused subgenre would normally suggest. Within seconds of the (rather brief) tutorial’s opening you’re encouraged to run down obstacles and hide behind bushes to snipe enemies with ten tons of military hardware.
Yes; tank stealth.
There is a bit of military equipment porn for those that seek it out. There are dozens of tank models to choose from with one-sentence descriptions detailing their history. But really, all you need to know is the little ones move fast, the big ones hit hard and those in the middle are just that.
Despite a charmingly self-unaware narrator that sounds like he deserves his own Military Channel show playing over the aforementioned tutorials, the game is actually quite punishing for new players. Just steering your metal monster has a bit of learning curve; momentum carries after you cut acceleration, turning is slow and lumbering and your turrets, naturally, operate independently which means puts the burden of navigation entirely on the left analog stick.
Combat is a major deal as well — more so than in other deathmatch games, anyway. There’s no mid-match respawn. If you’re blown away, you can either observe the match or leave early and leave your tank behind for the remainder of the match. Tanks also have various weak points, so keeping your vehicle facing the proper direction is important.
The game’s tactical nuances — when to move, when to stay; when to fire, when to hide — aren’t communicated well. A five-minute tutorial reads like a how-to on using a modern game controller while the many upgrade systems and currencies are detailed in hands-off videos.
In a way, I found this World of Tanks’ most attractive quality. It’s a game that expects you to make a leap rather than lay its coat out on the rainwater. Whether this is intentional, an oversight or just a means of frustrating you into buying real-money currency I can’t say. For me, however, the feeling of starting from nothing to become a (literal) ten-ton powerhouse is like oxygen.
The movement’s a bit loose and the menus are a bit buggy. But, there’s a reason Pokémon starts you with one creature and lets you do the rest. There are entire studies dedicated to the addictiveness of constant stimuli and rags-to-riches gameplay. No doubt this has something to do with how World of Tanks has garnered such a nuclear microtransaction community.
And, for the most part, the microtransactions err on the side of good rather than evil. Yes, you can buy tanks that are better than the ones you start with in the game. They are, however, permanent items. World of Tanks doesn’t beg you to buy extra lives or energy points so you can skip past timer contrivances. You pay the developer money and you get something to keep, for the most part. There are a few consumables that summon the requisite bile. Most of them — not all — are bought with in-game currency.
World of Tanks actually places too much value on purchasing tanks with real money. All such vehicles come with every upgrade already unlocked, skipping the experience and currency grinding needed to unlock and equip them on their free counterparts. “Pay-to-win” isn’t something you want to hear associated with a multiplayer-only game but I’m afraid World of Tanks brushes ever-so-lightly against it. By forcing players with real-money tanks to play for their supper like the rest of us they might sidestep it. Sadly, that’s not the choice they made.
I wish World of Tanks moved more like an arcade game. I wish it was faster. I wish I liked playing the actual game enough to invest in that twinge of zero-to-hero mentality the game pinches from time to time. I wish the microtransactions were a bit cleaner. World of Tanks is an odd little game. Doubtless its massive, dedicated community doesn’t care what I wish. They already chose which side of the line they stand on.
Score: 7/10
World of Tanks: Xbox 360 Edition was developed by Wargaming West and published on February 12th. The game is free-to-play, but in-game funds were provided by the studio for this review.
