War Thunder

Lets clear some things out.

The game suppose to be Multiplayer but is not in the 32 players in each game probably 3-4 are real on each side.

How this game works.

When you shoot a function decides randomly if you make a kill, or a damage etc.

Doesnt matter where you aim doesnt matter hwo good you are THEY decide.

All they want is to buy lions the game is a BS.

Try the follow get a bomber and try to fly at 8.000 feet you will see 1-2 planes come on you ( bots) but when you dont have a bomber many bombers from your team are fligh high without any enemies.

Try the follow Take a tank and hide somewhere without to kill noone.

A Plane will come and kill you ( lol)

try the follow when you spawn do not press any keyboard or mouse most of the times noone will shotto you because you have not trigger any actions to bots.

NEVER pay on this game just play for fun nothing else.

Also never install it on a hard disk with critical files.

Before I dig deeper into all the goods and the bads of this game, let me first warn the newcomers that this game is falsely advertised: the modern jets, choppers, tanks and ships that you see in the trailers - you don't get to play them right away. No, no. There are no entry points for the modern vehicles in the "tech tree". You need to start with the Spanish Civil War era biplanes and armored vehicles that only barely resemble tanks, and then work your way up from there. It will take you 2 to 3 months of dedicated gaming, if you're any good, to get to your first jet. The only way to get an advanced vehicle before time is to pay 30 to 60 dollars for one of the "premium vehicles", but then it ceases to be a free-to-play thing, which was also a part of the advertisement. So, one way or another, they're lying to you .

If you're a history or a warfare enthusiast, this game will be a lackluster experience or even annoy the hell out of you. I should know. The vehicles and the locations are utilized in an ahistorical fashion. Let's just call it alternative history or even steampunk. Tightly intertwined with what you'd normally expect, there are all kinds of bizarre scenarios: jets against props; boats against destroyers; Brits and Germans against Yanks and Japs; Russian planes against Italian planes over Midway; Swedish tanks against Israeli tanks in Vietnam... stuff like that. The military tactics is rudimentary: it's basically just point and shoot. There are sometimes points to be captured on the map, but they serve no meaningful purpose in a strategical way. They're just randomly placed there and are not even critical for winning the round. The teams are not assembled uniformly, because the matchmaker allows any faction and any vehicle, as long as it meets the required "battle rating" level.

Now a bit about the "good" in the game. The game is not "pay to win". I've held a paid subscription for a time and noticed no advantage over other players because of that. All you get is slightly larger rewards after the match and a slightly faster advancement through the "tech tree". The physics model is really, really good. Whether you're operating aircraft, ground vehicles or vessels, the feeling will be organic and natural. You won't even need specialised equipment to get a good experience: a simple mouse and keyboard will do just nicely. The vehicles are plentiful and are modeled in great detail. Really nice to look at. The overall shading is also very lovely - the lighting, the sky, the sea, the clouds and the special effects are very cinematic and exciting. The maps are huge and detailed. However, they are generally not pretty at all. And here's where the bad starts.

The vast majority of maps are well behind what's nowadays considered the standard quality for texturing and populating the scenery. There is an overwhelmingly pedestrian feel about most of them and some are just an eyesore, with jarring contrasts or unnatural shades of brown, gray and orange, and with dull multiplications of the same tree and the same house across the range. What becomes especially apparent in the ground mode are the numerous glitches in the scenery, such as flickering walls, disappearing and reappearing foliage and vehicles, buildings submerged below the water level (and I'm not even talking about the "Drowned City" map which is a special case of ugly) and so on. I've never played another game that's unpolished like that. For this game to still be unpolished, after 8 years of existence and constant updates, is a crime. The World of Tanks and The World of Warships are running circles around War Thunder in that regard.

The gameplay is also unpolished and unbalanced, to the point where one wonders whether the developers understand their own game anymore. New vehicles keep getting churned out all the time, without being tested and tweaked properly, which makes the matches increasingly uneven and leaves many players frustrated. To make matters worse, there are many cheaters and exploiters that ruin the game for everyone. They're most obvious in the tank mode, shooting you through acres of bushes across the whole map with ungodly precision. The developers don't like to admit the cheating issue, they sometimes even supress the talks of it in the official forums. But they're also banning hundreds of accounts over cheating on a monthly basis. So there is clearly a lot of that going on. If you try to lash out at a cheater during the game via the game chat and tell him what you think of his "skill", you're the one risking a ban. Because, despite violence being the theme of the game, crude language is not well tolerated, not even in the interface itself, as a matter of fact. As an example, the game doesn't inform you that your pilot is killed, he's "knocked unconscious". You know, by a projectile. So, there's that, but the sanitization goes beyond the language. There's no blood and gore, either, and all the Swastikas from all the WWII German vehicles are replaced with the Iron Crosses. You can purchase a decal that says "For Stalin", though. Make of that what you will, to me it's yet another proof of how political correctness is always drenched in hypocrisy.

The "tech tree" and the infamous "grind" are another huge problem in the game. There's a lot of vehicles, but it takes a lot of time to get them: hours for the early vehicles and even weeks for the more modern era jets and tanks. Within every vehicle there's yet another "tech tree". That's right. You have to "research", or "grind", the same parts all over again for every new vehicle to be able to upgrade it to a full battle order. Until you do, you will participate in the matches with the rump version of the vehicle and get killed a lot. That's probably the most ridiculous aspect of War Thunder. Of course, if you pay the money you can speed up the process, but it would cost you up to 40 dollars per single vehicle, and there's hundreds of them, so good luck with that. In addition, there are dozens of other things you can buy in the in-game "market", such as various camouflages, colour schemes, props and decals, or so-called "rare vehicles" that are subjected to artificial scarcity, which can drive the price easily up to 300 dollars, in some cases 1000 dollars, per unit. There's only one letter of difference between "micropayment" and "macropayment"... but a whole lot of money. I can't think of any reason why anyone would waste potentially thousands of dollars on a single game, but apparently some players do. Then again, there are people wasting millions on the NFTs these days. Here you at least get "something" for your buck, if that's any consolation. To me it's a scam, but that's ultimately for the Hungarian authorities to decide. The game developer is based there. They used to be located in Russia, but they chose to betray and abandon the Motherland for the Western funny-money.

To conclude, I'll explain the title of my review. War Thunder started its life as a WW2 era combat flight simulator. Over time it expanded into the modern aviation era. But it also expanded into nations, or factions, that were not a meaningful part of the WW2 conflict. It also expanded into other modes of warfare - ground and naval. It's made free to play to attract the broadest swath of players possible. All that ambition has taken the toll on the gameplay and overall experience. The game is buggy, the players are frustrated, and the grind and the shady in-game payment schemes make the developers look arrogant, greedy and stupid. Which they probably are. Needless to say the atmosphere in the War Thunder community is rather dour and pessimistic because all of that, and there's a feeling that the game could have been so much better if it wasn't stifled by all these issues. But it is still addictive even the way it is. You get addicted on the physics engine and on the false sense of achievement provided by a successful "grind". If you are prepared to lose countless hours, even years on this, go ahead. You'll certainly regret it. You'll, unfortunately, also love it.

It's really like a bad marriage. This review is my personal filing for divorce.

So just last week marked my 4th year on the game, starting out for the first year playing on 17fps on ULQ was a challenge, however suprisingly still fun, as time progressed my PC got small Upgrades and this year it reached the point where I could have an authentic playing experience without worrying about graphics settings. Graphics aside, the game itself for me, an aircraft enthusiast (the game made me one) it is a lot of fun and I am willing to put the time and effort into the game to unlock the higher ranked planes, however after about 450+ hours of playtime I'm still yet to achieve this. The game is not pay to win, which I very nice and still receives regular updates and bug patches, the community itself is very large, however slowly declining, with about 115,000 people playing the game at any one time. The gameplay should also be noted as aesthetically pleasing, however, normally in my reviews I mention it's a game for everyone, but I discourage this in this games case, I think if your new to either plane games, physics games, shooter games or even pc games then it'll take around 200 hours in the lowest rank to be the best of that rank, however as you move up every rank the players get increasingly overwhelming and skilful, for me this adds to the fun and competitiveness, but obviously if I'm still getting kaplonked with 450+ hours at Rank 4 then it'll be hard for anyone who is inexperienced. I mentioned the player base is slowly dying, this isn't because of the game or the developers, in fact this is because the games been out so long it's literally outliving it's playerbase, as many people in the last 8 years have had to either fully commit to work or university, which is why I'll most likely stop playing it in the very near future. Nevertheless, I would say 4 years well spent, but to be honest I wish I could have those 4 years back, magical, but not wisely spent. If you've made it this far in the review and are considering getting it in 2020, I wouldn't bother, your most likely not going to make it to jets before 2022 at the earliest, unless you devote your life into it it'll just become a nuisance to you, however if your looking at just playing with some historical spitfires and Bf-109's then sure, go for it.

Flying system is trash...can't even get good controls to fly also almost all the aircraft are just copies from other countries plastered with different country symbols on them....tank battles are good but vehicles are extremely limited with other countries...only good ones are us and germany....fleet is useless...just war with tanks with crap flying and some boats

The concept is amazing. The execution, sucks. Pure Money Grab scheme. All you have to do is play for 5 minutes without putting money towards it and you see, you are just entertainment for the people that will sink alot of money into their pockets. Far from a free game. Plus time is the most important thing to any living being, and they not only waste your time, but money. Strongly recommend to not even try the game. Again, its a great concept, and would be an amazing game, if It wasn't so obvious pay to win. Not many other options out. Maybe one day we can get a Dev that is pure and wants people to just truly enjoy their game without trying to milk them dry like ever other big corporation these days.