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Jackaroo

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War Thunder

5,601 Hours played

UPDATE 6-22-23

THEY HAVE FIXED THE GAME!

The grind is now not torture, you won't go bankrupt with silver, and now the game is much more enjoyable. The grind still takes a long time, but its nowhere near as miserable now. I would write a more detailed explanation, but I'm short on time.

UPDATE 5-21-23

DO. NOT. TOUCH. THIS. "GAME". PERIOD.

Gaijin has made this game not free to play. It does say "free" here on steam, but that is a blatant lie. Want to progress? Buy insanely overpriced items from their shop. Want to have fun? Buy in game currency. Want to not be bankrupt? Buy premium. I could go on and on, but that would be way too long. Point is, if you want to do anything in this "game", you have to spend real money. May 26th, 2023 will be remembered as the day the players revolted against Gaijin and should be a warning to literally any other game developer. Gaijin has never listened to their community at all, and the only time they have is when it gets them more money, but lets be real here; that doesn't count.

As a player since 2014, I used to love this "game". As I saw it decline in the past few years, I was still optimistic. Not anymore. I came from Wold of Tanks, and I might end up going back to World of Tanks.

This "game" is a bottomless pit of greed and scams.

Do not make the same mistake I did getting into this "game".

I used to love this "game".

There is 4,205 hours of my life that I will never get back from "playing" this "game".

DO. NOT. PLAY. THIS. "GAME".

General Overview

War Thunder is a Free-to-Play MMO vehicle combat game made by Gaijin Entertainment, who made Star Conflict, Crossout, and CRSED: F.O.A.D. It has thousands of units to play with Tanks, Planes, Helicopters, and Ships being the categories. Released in the late 2nd quarter of 2013, it only had aircraft and didn't have a very large amount of vehicles. Fast forward 9 years, and now the game has evolved so much it has essentally little to no resemblance of it's original release state.

What I like:
Massive Vehicle Selection
Graphics
Historical Accuracy*
Damage Model
Playstyle

What I don't like:
Grind
Balance Issues
Insane Incentive to purchase in-game content

(*: There are some fictional stuff, but you can do your own research since that's wayyyy to long for here.)

Gameplay

Depending on what you start with, tanks or planes, you go through a basic tutorial and then into a match with bots thats designed to make you win that match, and other tutorials later on for more complex stuff and other types of units. The playstyle of some stuff may be confusing for the first bit, but will become normal after a while.

NOTE: I'm going to be using Tanks as examples because that's what I know and probably easiest to describe.

Damage model:
You know of a Hitpoint system? War Thunder is a very heavily glorified HP system. You don't just shoot at something and see whatever number is subtracted from the enemy's health, you have to aim for critical components. In tanks, you can aim for individual crew members in the opposing tank, with the round that you fire changing how it works. There's youtube videos on all shell types in the game, I highly recommend you go watch some of those. It's the same for planes/helis/ships too. Those play differently, so I won't go into too much detail for that. I mainly play tanks so that's what I know to describe and to do it the easiest.

There are 3 main game mode types: Arcade, Realistic, and Simulator.

Arcade:
In arcade, there is a little + where your shell is going to land. There is bullet drop, and your shell penetration goes down over distance (unless you are using chemical rounds, that's something you should watch one of those videos I mentioned earlier to understand). Up to a certain distance, There are 4 colors the + can be; Green, Yellow, Red, or Grey. Green means you can penetrate that part of the vehicle with the current round you have loaded, Yellow means you have a modest chance to go through, and Red means you won't be able to go through. Grey means your round will Ricochet, or bounce off the armor. You get to respawn 3 times in tanks/ships and unlimited in air (once in each vehicle unless you have a backup).

Realistic:
In realistic, you do not have a little + as to where your shell will land, and it will not tell you if you can penetrate. Your enemies will not be marked too. Instead of being able to respawn only 3 times, you can spawn in any vehcile (tank, plane, or heli) once (unless you have an aformentioned backup), but you need Spawn Points. Those are earned by getting kills/assits, capturing points, or doing anything useful for the team. However, in air realistic, you can only spawn in once, and you have to take off from the airfield first. Realistic battles give you more rewards of Silver and RP.

Simulator:
In simulator, your allies do not have markers and nor do your enemies. You can spawn only 3 times, and theres a spawn point system. You have to make sure you aren't going to shoot an ally and there arent the comforts like there are in Arcade and Realistic. You are stuck in first person views. Air sim is a whole other ballpark, so I recommend you go watch youtube videos on that.

Audio

The audio is good, sometimes its bad, sometimes its amazing. Every update or so Gaijin messes with the sounds so be weary of that.

Graphics/Performance

The graphics are really good for a free to play MMO, the biggest improvement being when the update "New Power" came out bringing a new Dagor engine version to the game along with other really cool additions, my favorite being the nuke. War Thunder is actually really well optimized and can run on some really low-spec machines.

Drama/Controversey

Oh boy, here we go.

War Thunder has made headlines repeatedly over the past few years with players leaking Classified Documents on weapons/vehicles on the War Thunder Forums. It has happened about 6 times now, and Gaijin has officially stated that they will not use those documents and only use official declassified docs or similar substitutes and will delete any classified documents posted as soon as they physically can. The list of things that have been leaked include the specs/stats/etc. of vehicles of the following: German Eurocopter, British Challenger 2 (twice), French Leclerc, and Chinese ZTZ-99 (twice).

There is also drama about how WT is "Pay 2 Win", "Cancer", and "Too Grindy". In no bias whatsoever, WT is a free to play game, by a company that makes other free to play games, whose income is from in-game purchases of premium currency, premium time, vehicles, etc. I do agree with the fact that sometimes the premium vehicles are unbalanced at the start, and that the game is too grindy (for example I have ~2mil research to get to the F-14 from where I am now with my average per match being ~1,000. Simple math.) but its how they keep people in the game.

Conclusion

War Thunder is a really fun game, and better than World of Tanks, the game I switched from and never regretted it (especially now that WoT in a really bad state). I do admit, I do have too many hours in it (~3,000 at the time of posting), but I've been playing since 2014, and currently on a login streak of around day 810. I did let it take too much of my life away, but my life has essentally reformed around it now which I'm not proud of but it is what it is. If you don't let it take over too much of your life and ignore the bad parts about it, it is really fun.

Overall: 8.5/10