Review

During Microsoft's E3 conference last year, World of Tanks was announced with much pomp and circumstance, yet it was greeted with shrugs of the shoulder and “What's that?” from many of the UKGN team. The PC version may well be phenomenally popular to its own community but it seems the game was not as well-known as Microsoft thought.

It was at least something that I had heard of before – mainly through adverts on other games websites (yes, other sites are available) – but it had never been something that I'd been interested in playing. Now that the Xbox version has finally been released it's time to see if this can be more than a niche title and finally break into the mainstream. After all, it is free, but just how “free” is it?

There are three units of currency you can spend between battles. Silver and XP are both earned based on your performance and can be spent on new tanks, upgrade research, extra ammunition, logos, camoflage and upgrade packages. You can build yourself a nice collection of powerful tanks by just grinding out matches but if you want to advance quickly you can buy Gold and this is where real money comes into play. Packages can cost as little as £5 or as much as £70 and there are a number of items that can give those who are prepared to pay, a small adventage over those who don't. The game never pressures you into making purchases and doing so is entirely optional.

Where the F2P system is flawed, however, is that additional slots in your garage are only available with Gold. The restricts you to owning a maximum of eight tanks at any given time, when better machines become available you'll be forced to sell before you can buy. As tanks earn individual XP you will lose this when you trade in.

As for the game itself it's very enjoyable and a little bit different to the usual Xbox Live experience. Apart from a brief training mission – teaching you the basics of movement and aiming – you are left to your own devices to learn how to play. The excellent controls are kept simple as the last thing you want is to be thinking about what button to press in the heat of battle. This is a much more tactical game than many people will be used to and each tank has unique attributes that will severely alter the way you play. You really need to think about the terrain and your tanks abilities as trying to go up the side of a mountain in a tank that's underpowered will leave you a sitting duck.

The standard battle pits two teams against each other to capture the opposition base. Victory can also be attained by being the first team to destroy all the other team's tanks and there are no respawns here, when your tank is destroyed you must sit out the rest of the match. You get the option to sit and spectate or return to the garage and start another battle, only the tank that was blown up will be unavailable until the round has actually finished. This is, frankly, a genius move on the part of the developers as otherwise this could have crippled by long waiting times between matches.

As enjoyable as the game is though, it will never be something that I will sit and play for hours on end like a Counter-Strike or Battlefield. It does, however, seem like I game I will return to for a few quick battles for months, maybe years, to come. My only real criticism so far is a lack of maps, but seeing as the ones here are well laid out and offer good variety that's something I can live with.

With a generally good implementation of F2P and some enjoyable gameplay, World Of Tanks: Xbox 360 Edition is easy to recommend.

About the Review

Platform

Microsoft Xbox 360

Developer

Wargaming.net

Publisher

Microsoft Game Studios

Released

12th February 2014