Brought to you by Wargaming.net, World of Tanks is a third-person shooter where players face off against each other in World War II-style tank battles. World of tanks brings great graphics, customization and simplicity to the game. While WoT boasts historical accuracy with its 150 tanks taken from the 1930-1950 era, they’ve managed to add that extra touch of “awesome” to make it that much better.

Once logged into the game, the player is given two or three battle-ready tanks, one from each nation, a Soviet MS-1 from Russia, a Leichttraktor from Nazi Germany, and a T1 Cunningham from the US at a later date. These tanks are pretty poor and have a hard time putting up a fight, but they allow the player to learn the ins and outs of the game and gain some experience. There’s also no tutorial to play before the hand, so players are thrown right into the action, via a big red button.

All matches involve up to 30 players with 15 players on each side, the most common game mode is deathmatch where players are automatically assigned a team before each round. Along with deathmatch, there is also Capture the Flag and clan deathmatch. Usually though newer players will find themselves joining the standard deathmatch. Novice players may find this extremely frustrating when starting out due to the effort the world of tanks puts into maintaining its realism, this means team play is essential and terrain use is vital to staying alive.

World of Tanks has made sure to have struck the happy medium between making a tank easy to control and adding deep customization. The tanks are controlled with the keyboard using the WASD keys while the turret is controlled with the mouse, there is also movement with the crosshairs where depending on the player’s action, they shrink or expand. So when you’re stationary, the scope shrinks, making it more convenient and accurate to shoot. There are a number of randomly chosen maps, these are large enough to allow the player to move around and set up ambushes etc, but small enough that getting from one end to the other is not feasible. The match ends once all tanks on one side are eliminated or one team manages to capture the other’s base. Once a player’s tank is destroyed, that player must watch from the other tanks’ point of view until the round ends due to no respawns.

Once a round ends, the player is rewarded with experience points and credits, the amount depending on the outcome of the match. Credits are the in-game currency and can be used to purchase new tanks, upgrades, or additional crew members. Each nation has its own tech tree where items must be researched before they can be purchased and installed on a tank, so it’s good practice to stick to one nation rather than spread out your points for quicker access to tanks larger and more powerful. The player has the option to choose which parts can be upgraded, including the turret, engine, and tracks, each affecting that tank’s performance.

Along with the tanks and parts that need to be purchased, the player must recruit crew members, who are divided into five categories, commander, loader, driver, gunner, and radio operator, each for a specific job. With each match, the crew gains experience and becomes more effective, each crew member has his own specific task with the loader responsible for the cooldown time between shots, driver speed, turning angles and acceleration, the operator radio to maintain contact with allied tanks. , the gunner responsible for aiming and firing, and the commander capable of spotting enemy vehicles. Along with the crew, there are also different types of ammo, each providing different damage and reload times, and as its realistic players must replenish ammo after each round.

While this game can be extremely fun, it also has its flaws, this can be seen in matches where artillery can destroy your tanks from afar and remain hidden from you. Also, due to the popularity of the game, it is difficult to join a game with friends because each lobby fills up quickly. New players are also the losers in this game because early tanks are so easy to destroy; kills can quickly become commonplace without getting many kills, though the game helps by putting people with tanks of the same tier in a match. Also, while it was nice to see three major nations, it would have been nice to see some of the British or Italians.

World of Tanks represents a huge leap in free-to-play games by incorporating many other aspects of the MMO genres; Although it is an action-based MMO, it has many features of RPGs, due to the need to update and research developments. Shooter, where the player can choose between having a third-person view or having a sniper view and seeing the cannon, and finally strategy, where teamwork and battle plans are needed to survive.

This game has surpassed my games to play this year with amazing graphics and intense gameplay all packed into one small client; this has to be added to yours as well.