War Thunder - Review

War Thunder is a network game kept in a free-to-play formula. It allows you to play historical campaigns known from the period of the Korean War and World War II. A characteristic feature of this game is the opportunity to participate in combined battles. Tanks, planes and ships can stand on the same battlefield against each other. Victory depends on the cooperation and interaction between all of these groups of warmachines.

The Russian studio Gaijin Entertainment is the one responsible for creating and publishing War Thunder. You can know the studio from such productions as Birds of Steel, Wings of Prey or Apache: Air Assault.

War Thunder surprises very positively. After the announcements, the players expected an interesting game, but the game exceeded our expectations. The player can dive in this game for very long hours. We have played it even at nights.

The game surprises with its possibilities and its mechanics - total war. The gameplay has an arcade character, and at the same time is a very advanced simulator. Which elements prevail, is closely related to the chosen settings and level of difficulty. It also matters whether you are going to play with the joystick or mouse keyboard. We can tell you, that it’s the mouse that works best in the arcade mode.

War Thunder segregates players. Those who choose the realistic mode are combined into groups, just like those focusing on the dexterity aspect, play on their own terms.

The modes are slightly different, even the number of aircrafts available at the gameplay. During the simulation, you can use only one warmachine and losing it means the end of the game, while in simpler modes you can simply switch to another machine, if you took the additional one to the battlefield. The game allows you to own up to nine machines, if you decide to pay for their purchase and training an additional crew. Therefore, this opportunity is used really rarely. Usually, players use up to four planes and that's enough for the whole fight.

Playing subsequent battles allows you to expand your vehicle collection and improve the ones you already have. Battles allow the participation of up to 30 players at once. The players are divided into two teams. The fact that real people are sitting at the controls of hostile machines boosts the game's atmosphere. Thanks to this, the gameplay becomes exciting and unpredictable, and the win is a real achievement.

What primarily affects the very high rating of the game, is an incredibly realistic graphic design. The creators have put a huge emphasis on a wonderful pictures that are a feast for our eyes. The graphic design is further turned up by the soundtrack. When you allow yourself to play on the highest details and additionally disable the interface, the game will look like a shot taken from a great war movie. All available models of war machines are mapped up in great detail. The focus was on rendering all the details, so the vehicle's metal plate may have various dents, the steel will rust, and the air that comes out of the engine will bend the image because it is very hot. War Thunder is also equipped with a very extensive, extremely realistic damage and physics system. All machines behave like their real counterparts, and the enemy is eliminated when the crew loses consciousness, or we destroy very important parts of vehicles, e.g. engines or ammunition storages.

The maps also deserve admiration. They were created on the basis of modern satellite images, which were modified with data collected in 1940. It is simply a brilliant stylistic procedure.

War Thunder is a great game which surpassed not only ours expectations. The game will appeal primarily to fans of World War II history, although this is not the rule. The delightful details and possibilities it offers will certainly appeal to many people. Even if the subject of war is foreign to you, we urge you to test this game. This is really a good title.