World of Warships Review

I will start this review by freely admitting that I am no Admiral Nelson. For a start I don’t get seasick and poor old Horatio used to puke his ring every time he set sail. I also displayed a startling lack of naval tactical acumen while reviewing this game for which I apologise to anyone unfortunate enough to have fought alongside me.

Wargaming.net have taken to the sea in their latest title after their startling success with World of Tanks. The game enables the player to take part in naval skirmishes using vessels from the second world war era including notable behemoths such as the Yamato (steers like a pig, but can really bring the hurt thanks to those enormous guns) all the way down to fast and mobile little cruisers and destroyers.

The game puts you in a 12 versus 12 match of 3 differing game types, standard, encounter and domination. Although the most common victory I saw was the same in all modes (sink every opposing vessel), each has its own. In standard, each team has a base displayed on the map. If you aren’t out to send everyone on the opposing force on a dinner date with Davy Jones, you must capture their base by sailing into it and staying there for 180 seconds. If a teammate joins you that drops to 90 seconds, but taking damage drops your capture point total by half. The presence of a defending ship halts the capture progress until they either are forced out of the base or sunk. Encounter has a single base in the middle of the map that takes 360 seconds to capture. The presence of ships from both teams halts capture until one side is either sunk or made to leave at which point capture resumes. Everything else about it is the same as the standard battle. Domination has each team start with 250-300 domination points. The map has 2 to 5 key areas that are depicted as white diamonds with the letters A-E on them. Each takes 45 seconds to capture and progress is halted at its present level in the capture zone if ships from both teams are present. Once captured, each capture zone gives a variable number of points to the team that owns it every 5 seconds that they are owned by a team without an enemy in the capture area. When a destroyer, cruiser, or battleship is sunk, 40 points are gained for the team that sank her and the enemy loses 60 points. If a carrier is holed then 60 points are gained for that team, and the enemy loses 90. The winner is the first team to 1000.

Graphically this game has some serious chops, the ship models are detailed and the land and sea are equally well rendered. The maps vary from 24km by 24km up to 48km by 48km and are set in locations from open ocean to congested island chains either made from ice or in the balmy Pacific. Some ships fare better in open areas where massed gunfire can spoil someone's day, whereas some show their abilities better in close quarters where they can surprise their opponents.

To do well in this game you need to concentrate a lot on group tactics and positioning, a battleship doesn’t turn like a warplane and unlike in World of Tanks there’s not a lot to hide behind. The controls of the game are a lesson in accessibility with nothing hidden away or hard to conceive. The ships are controlled from slightly above and behind the centre of the ship with the throttle and rudder designed to be set and then forgotten just as if your helmsman set them to what you ordered with a shout of “aye!”. One thing that the game does extremely well is instill a sense of tension to the fighting. These metal behemoths do not react swiftly to commands, some of them are positively ponderous so planning ahead is essential. A lesson I learned after taking four torpedoes to the broad side of the Yamato and sinking.

Now having mentioned the Yamato a couple of times I must mention the downside to the game. As with the other titles in the Wargaming stable, there’s a lot of content locked behind a paywall as freemium content. Not as much as the likes of say Dragon's Prophet but enough to smart somewhat. With four types of ships that have multiple tiers of technology representing the progress of naval technology you would need some serious coin to make it to the likes of the Midway or Yamato, not much short of 200 quid unless my maths is way off. And that is where I have a problem with the game. While it’s not the three thousand pounds of DLC  a certain Steam game, it’s still a good chunk.

Oops, Mighty Mo is no longer quite as mighty...

Most of the really nice visuals of the game are behind the wall and as such not all of the player base will get a chance to see the light from a burning hull shimmering on the sea as Bismarck or Tirpitz sail past in search of further victims which is a shame.

I would still say give this a go though, as a free-to-play twist on the MMO squad based game it’s something really rather special.