War Thunder Review (James Boag)
Pros: tanks look cool
Cons: Numerous and varied.
- The current server architecture is absolutely unstable at an inherently painful level. Movement issues, input lag, random server spikes across the board (that the entire server talks about in chat for 5 laggy, painful minutes), the ancient GHOST SHELL BUG, feature of multiple 'ITS FIXED!' reports (no it fucking isn't) and now a litany of stupid microjitters AND/OR invisible solid objects on maps which are just oh, so fun to drive into. Oh, and the lack of an Australian server (South Asia Ping? 180 if you're lucky. Packet loss? 10% minimum at peak times), but that's a personal peeve.
- Gaijin cannot possibly fathom the concept of gameplay innovation. If they'd instead consider the homeless man outside their offices, bashing away with a dustbin lid, this might change, because there are very, very few gamemodes actually populated beyond the basic 4; because those gamemodes outside the basic 4, fucking suck, because they're 'unpopulated' and 'nobody plays those, so why would we innovate on them and introduce fun new mechanics? Nah, add dozer blades to like a dozen tanks instead.' Those basic 4 are also extremely boring. Air Realistic is completely unplayable for bombers above 9.0, nullifying massive swathes of playable aircraft and relegating them to the bin, Ground Realistic is an exercise in not being hit by an exorbitantly bullshit projectile that violated several laws of the games' physics engine in order to save server performance and Arcade is effectively the only playable, enjoyable game mode - that doesn't give you enough progression to warrant playing it, because the length of time to grind above 5.0 is, funnily enough, reminiscent of a snail's pace.
- Predatory marketing taken to notable extremes. Do you want to progress in this game? Your time-to-grind will be more than halved with a Premium account. Premium account promotions are shovelled absolutely anywhere they can be. And it's fucking expensive, even OFF the Steam branch of this game (which incurs additional fees) the purchasable currency, advancements, premium account, etc etc, are all batshit insane expensive. Oh, AND, $120 AUD for a fucking F/A-18? Seriously? Or a Leopard 2A-whogivesafuck? Or a boat? $120? I shamefully admit I've thrown a disgusting amount of money at this game but I must admit, I regret those purchases and the support for this company resultant. No more.
I strongly advise against picking this up. Go elsewhere, like MTC4 on Roblox, or GHPC once it shows promise.