There are a number of free-to-play games that are incredibly fun despite microtransactions just meant for character skins to other cosmetics and other bits of customization that you don't have to waste money on but can enjoy yourself with it. There are however games that go the free-to-play route but offer pay-to-win microtransactions and case in point is with War Thunder by Gaijin Entertainment. It is one of those games where it is grievously against the player in every way thanks to cheap unbalanced and broken gameplay mechanics and controls capped off with microtransactions that really make the game a frustrating pay-to-win mess and a massive warzone in on itself.
At best War Thunder is an online multiplayer game with the focus on vehicular combat using a range of different aircraft, ground vehicles and warships from World War I & II as well as other Civil war type vehicles where you engage in battles in Land, Sea and Air. Players pick from either Ground Battles which focuses on tank combat, Air Combat where they take to the skies in aerial combat and also Navel Combat where everyone engages in their warships. There are also game types which I guess resemble some kind of difficulty setting like Arcade Battles which supposedly keeps things simple enough and fast paced alongside Realistic Battles and Simulation Battles which makes the combat slower paced, but however for the most part each game mode and game type is kind of the same with very little alterations. Every map you play either has three control points on the map for one of two teams to take over or just one single control point and the goal of the game is for you and your team to take control points which then deplete the enemy team's bar and defending them from the enemy team. For the majority of the matches, you are pressing onwards to the control points to take control of the map and honestly the maps aren't really all that great to be on. Sure, the maps are huge in size and offers up advantage points that you can use to take out an enemy from afar before they notice you but they are just large empty warzones with no real flow or structure to them at all.
At the garage there are various vehicles that you can select, customize before finally setting them up for combat. Each of them handles very differently from each other and also are categorized into different tiers with the later tiers being more powerful than others. All of the tanks have different loadouts from Armour piercing rounds, machine guns and, anti-tank rounds which you can set up. You also have Air-strikes that you can call in occasionally to help clear out the enemy tanks from control points, replacement crews if your tank takes a beating and also call in an aircraft during Ground Battles that you can take control of.
No matter what vehicle you pick though the gameplay of War Thunder suffers from a ton of control issues and gameplay mechanics that just don't feel as balanced as it could have been. The majority of tanks have such slow turning speed making basic navigation an absolute chore, even trying to get a tank to go up a hill to setup a flanking position is a pain. Shooting controls are really bad as well, you have both a circle crosshair which is where you point the camera to and also a + shaped crosshair as well which is where your shots are going to be. Each tank has a different weak point to shoot at indicated by a green crosshair if you move it to a certain spot on the enemy tank which allows you to take one of them down easier, whenever it is the ammunition load which can explode upon impact, the back, the cockpit where the crew reside and also the wheels and engines where it stops the tank in its place and lastly the gun turrets which prevents the tank from firing for a short while. This is what's called Tank Penetration and if used effectively it does make tank battles easier but it's supposed to work is often inconsistent and just unfair at times. If your tank is shot at one of its weak points you are either stuck in place and unable to move or cannot shoot back for a time while you order your crew to make repairs to get it moving again as well as extinguishing fires that you have to take care off as well. This might seem neat on paper but it is not something you should be having to worry about constantly when you have other enemies around all ready to shoot at you. Quite often or not you are about to try and line up to get a shot on an unsuspecting tank only to get shot and your tank disabled without any means of getting out of danger. Another thing about the Armour Penetration mechanic that is so bad is that there is no consistency on the damage output, you end up destroying a tank with one shoot fired at its weak point while other times it takes 3 or if not 5 or more direct shots at a weak point to put on enemy tank down while other players have no issues blasting your tank down instantly with one shot. Also, at times I aim at a tank and fire and my shots deal no damage at all. It makes matches unfair and stupid because you try to take a tank down, about to finish it off before then someone else comes in and one shot you instantly from out of nowhere. While the game does show you how you got killed by showing how the player shot your tank down at its weak point but it becomes so annoying that you get one shot killed when you are about to deliver the finishing blow off on a weakened enemy tank. This mechanic is also made further redundant by the fact that you just can't control your tank properly, it takes too long for the tank's turret to turn around and by the time you place both crosshairs on an enemy and your tank's barrel finally aims at it and ready to fire it's too late as somebody else shoots you and it is just infuriating that it happens constantly.
Other things that irritate me with the tanks is that when you fail over the game never flips you back up again and you have to order your other allies to help your tank back on its wheels again. Why can't I just flip my tank over automatically? In most game modes you are limited to a number of respawns and if you run out you are out of the game and with how bad the tank controls and mechanics are, you are going to be wasting nearly every respawn you have. The lock-on is broken beyond belief, you go into first-person mode to be able to get a close and accurate shot and can zoom in which locks onto an enemy to make targeting them easier. The issue however is that if you try to zoom to lock-on to another enemy you end up targeting the wrong enemy like say if I zoom targeted an aircraft enemy but needed to target an enemy that's about to shoot me it instead zooms at the aircraft enemy which left me open as a huge target and found that constantly annoying when the targeting system is so messed up and doesn't target and lock-on properly.
If you thought that the controls and mechanics of the tank were bad the aircraft vehicles are arguably the worst, the aiming controls that hamper the tank vehicles also hamper the aircraft vehicles as well. While there is a targeting spot where you should put your crosshairs on to be able to hit them but despite my best efforts, I can never seem to hit anything unless you are very close and move the crosshairs further so that you can hit them or when they are just flying straight. Locking onto targets in the aircrafts are also just as bad as the tanks. Handing the aircraft is also aggravating, when you try to make a turn, you end up either downwards or upwards or you end up doing a slow-moving barrel roll. These aircraft are so terrible to control that you are going to end up constantly crashing to the ground rather than fighting. I also hate that the aircraft has limited ammo and you have to wait a ridiculously long time to reload before you fire again and this issue also goes to tanks as well where sometimes tanks take 3 or so seconds to reload while other times,, they might take 10 seconds to reload which is another way of getting yourself screwed over. Controlling warships are just as bad as controlling the other vehicles in this game with really bad aiming and handling but you can utilize machine guns to target enemies for you automatically.
You can play this game on consoles with a compatible USB Mouse & Keyboard setup which would help with the aiming but it doesn't improve the controls for handling your vehicles. You'll either get stuck trying to navigate around simple environmental hills or trying to get around other players and buildings only then to get blasted instantly without warning. The game does support cross-gen which allows you to play with people who are either on PC or Xbox consoles, however the majority of players are PC players playing on Mouse & Keyboard which makes matches harder to get going if you want to restrict yourself to console players only. Playing against PC players also isn't fair either because the Mouse & Keyboard setup they easily have access to which allows them to aim easier on console players making gameplay and balancing as well as getting into lobbies more of a nuisance.
Performance also harms the game experience as well. Giving at the time the game was released the vehicles don't look too bad and I do like those parts of the environments are destructible but the quality of the environments isn't really that impressive even on console and you experience plenty of environment pop-in. It does suffer from atrocious frame rate and it drops down really bad even down to single-digit frame rates at times when the action gets intense and when destructible buildings are breaking down. I even had moments where it would screen freeze for a couple of seconds during a match which is something that is completely unacceptable even for an online multiplayer game. I was playing the PS4 version on my brand new PS4 Slim Model and the game chugs up in performance nearly all the time.
To top the whole thing that this game is full of microtransactions which will no doubt force you to pay up money to get anywhere. Now this game is free-to-play where you experience the game without having to pay up some cash but you can optionally spend real life money to get Golden Eagles (which can also be earned through special events) to either get premium vehicles which are more powerful than the ones you get for free or transfer them to get sliver lions which your main form of currency were you are either buying new vehicles, purchasing unlocked modifications that you researched, recruiting, training and upgrading your squads as well as restocking ammo and repairs to your vehicles after a match. So you are going to be spending a lot of sliver lions to get better vehicles and ensure that everything is repaired and ready to go and if you run out of sliver lions you are unable to do anything till you get more. You can earn silver lions and also research points to get modifications for your vehicles from completing matches as well as trying to do good and complete objectives without getting yourself killed which with how bad the game plays is easier said than done. Then of course there is the option of spending real money to get golden eagles which can be transferred to getting more sliver lions to keep yourself going. Most people might not want to spend an absurd amount of their hard-earned money on having to get their vehicles upgraded but with players online having upgraded vehicles that can take you out with ease this system gives you kind of an urge to spend money on the game when you just want to try and have fun with it. The fact is that you can't and the game has a massively grindy progression system that casual players are going to get mad over, you need to upgrade your vehicles as possible so that you can unlock the higher tiers so that you get better and better vehicles all while getting yourself blown up time and time again just so you can any kind of progress going. You are eventually going to have to spend real life money just so you can finally get anywhere in the game and honesty it's just not fun at all and I really hate it when games do this. No matter how well you try to do in matches you are going to get killed instantly a lot especially by PC players who might have spent dozens of gametime on it making it impossible for casual players to try and get into it resorting to losing dozens and dozens of your currency and resources.
War Thunder does have a custom battles mode where you can play with custom game type modes as well as playing with AI bots as well as some single-player modes where you take part in historical battles. These are just as terrible as the multiplayer and to unlock and actually play the single player battles especially the first early missions you need to have a certain required vehicles purchased which is utterly ridiculous and stupid. Yes, you need to unlock certain vehicles in the garage to be able to play the single player historical missions which makes no sense at all. Seeing as how super expensive getting new vehicles can be and knowing that might take weeks or even months to even get to some of the higher vehicles that you need not only so you might have a better chance against other players but also just so that you can play the historical missions making the grind extra tedious. Plus, there is also a battle pass that you have to purchase separately to get access to some of premium stuff as well which I honestly, I couldn't even care less about alongside tournaments and other kinds of events that the game throws in at times.
There are plenty of other free-to-play games that are better designed, don't force microtransactions in your face and are more fun to play whereas War Thunder is a tedious grindy game for all of the wrong reasons. It might seem cool to see X-Ray Armour penetration done on tanks the first time but this is an unbalanced game that also suffers greatly from broken controls, horrendous gameplay mechanics, really terrible frame-rate and performance, badly handled vehicles no matter which one you use and has microtransactions that will force you to pay real money for to get the vehicles you need making this a pay-to-win disaster at worst. What's sad that there are still people playing this atrocity and how people managed to find enjoyment in this pile of steaming garbage is beyond me. Even if you are into massive vehicle combat games and wouldn't mind one that's free-to-play it's impossible to recommend this game to anyone as everything is so poorly executed that you'd wish you wouldn't want to enlist in. If you do however wish to look for a vehicular combat game that's free-to-play and fun to actually play then it is recommended that you check out something like World of Tanks instead.
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Game Score: 3.0/10
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Game Title: War Thunder
Platform: PS4/PS5/Xbox One/Xbox Series X/S/PC
Developer: Gaijin Entertainment
Genre: Action
Age Rating: PEGI: 12+
Release Date: 21st December 2016
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The Good Points:
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X-Ray penetration of damage shown on tanks
The Bad Points:
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Broken controls on vehicles that don't handle and control properly
Unbalanced gameplay that has no consistency of damage output
Really terrible performance and frame rate issues
Very, very grindy progression system to get better vehicles and to be able to play the single player historical missions
Microtransactions that make the game pay-to-win
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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