World of Warships - Review

Over the years Wargaming have built up a reputation for creating some of the most authentic vehicle based war games, with World of Tanks and World of Warplanes, but with their latest game things, take a more decidedly slow approach.

World of Warships is a much slower game and not because the ships are slower in general, but thanks in part to the more calculated actions that you as the player need to take. Moving your ship is a challenge, but in a good way, in most games, simply pressing forward has the expected result of pushing you forward, but here it will only increase the speed a little. You will actually need to watch your speed as the ships don’t stop when you tell them to, they will continue to move forward until the momentum wears off, which can lead to some crashes if you don’t plan ahead. The same can be said for turning, making a turn is something that takes time, which again leads to the planning ahead thing, if you don’t keep an eye on where you are going and at what speed, the game will prove to be more of a challenge than needed.

This can also be impacted by the ship class that you choose, there are four types of ships available to players, each with strengths and weaknesses and finding which one suits your play style will take a few tries with each. Aircraft Carriers, Battleships, Cruisers and Destroyers are the options here and apart from being alphabetical, they all play quite a lot differently than the rest, Battleships as the name implies are capable of taking a lot of damage, which also dealing out a lot of damage, but their massive size means they move very slowly. The Destroyer class on the other hand is smaller and lighter, which allows it to move a lot faster around the maps, but due to its smaller size it does not pack a lot of punch compared to the other ships, it can also take a lot less hits before its sunk.

The Cruiser is your middle ground vessel, it offers up the ability to take and deal solid amounts of damage, but while also being nimble enough to move around, have a Cruiser take on a Destroyer and it will win, but against a Battleship, well let’s just say hit. The three of these ship classes will be where most people will spend their time, they are well balanced and easy enough to understand that with only a few matches with each, you will know how best to handle them, then of course there are the Aircraft Carriers, these giant ships made their debut in WW2 and proved to be effective ways of dealing lots of damage, without the need to engage in combat themselves. This is in thanks to their ability to launch planes, which can attack in its place, if you choose to play with this ship class, the game switches from a tactical shooter type game to more of a real time strategy game, as you have to manage your planes both on the deck and in the air.

Once you know what ship you want to control, it’s time to hit the water and see how you go, of course this is where the games modes come into play, they follow the standard game modes that other online games provide, so players should be able to pick up the rules pretty quickly. The standard battle people will likely play is your basic deathmatch with two teams attempting to sink the opposing teams’ ships, while also defending their base. Domination puts a series of control points on the map and has you capturing them, with the longer you hold each location the more points you earn. The final mode is Encounter, which puts a single control point in a central location and has teams fight for control, much like king of the hill, so while each of the modes is something most online players will be familiar with, there is a significant change in how they work, again due to the ships.

The game also offers up a series of missions to tackle throughout your playing, these can range from winning a set number of matches, to dealing a lot of damage in a single match. While you don’t need to complete these missions in order to progress, doing so will earn you currency you can use to upgrade your ships. Once you complete a mission, it will be swapped out with a new one as well, so completing them will give you new missions to undertake.  The ship upgrades can be small things that overtime will help change the course of your battles in your favour, things like improving the distance that your main guns can shoot, the overall top speed or turning radius of your ships and even turning your aircraft into spotters to help locate the enemy are all things to work towards.

Due to the game being free to play, it is a slow burn, grinding away to get your ship up to the standards you want is something that will take time, but it is an investment worthy of your time. Matches themselves are lengthy affairs, which is a nice thing, but there are times when playing a match will feel like it takes forever to finish, when you are the last remaining member of your team and are awaiting the opposing team to find you and finish you off, there is little sense of fun to be found. When you are on the flip side though, it can be quite fun to hunt down that one final ship in order to secure your victory.

The game looks as nice as it plays, the sense of scale is quite impressive, with you being able to zoom down to see the details on the ships or go all the way out and check out the wider battle. At almost every turn there was little to see that did not impress, perhaps the single best element I noticed was the ocean itself, when you think that the game is sending the same waves to every player at once and just how nice they look, it is impressive. The sounds of the guns as they are fired is also nice, they sound loud and imposing, which is good, overall the game looks and sounds great.

World of Warships is not a game that everyone will take up, it does require a bit of time in order to get going in and even longer to get through a match. Those that do take the time to learn how it plays will come to appreciate just how much fun can be had steering around these incredible machines.

Thanks to Wargaming for supplying an account to review the game with.