RATING:
Pros: Amazing graphics, unique within the MMO genre.
Cons: slow gameplay, confusing interface.
Score: TBD
We yesterday were granted the opportunity to check out Wargaming’s tactical/ strategic WWII shooter MMO game World of Warships that puts players onto the bridge of various battleships to engage in a battle for supremacy on the oceans. Since we’d already had a brief experience with the game at last year’s Gamescom during which a guy from Wargaming had told us how to control our ship and what to do, we now were interested in finding out if our ship would sail or sink when left to our own resources. Today, World of Warship weighs anchor for CBT, but as far as we were able to see from the time we spent in game, we can assure that it actually feels already as though the Wargaming product is pretty complete.
Upon entering the game, we were faced with a somewhat unfamiliar view. Due to the fact that we’ve never really played neither World of Warplanes nor World of Tanks, the variety of icons, menus, figures and values we were showed with all out of a sudden were all but something we were well accustomed to. Anybody unfamiliar with the title will probably be quite baffled when having a glimpse at the modules and tech trees, at least we were at their sight. However, as usually things aren’t as difficult as they appear at first. An element that actually did catch our eye was the huge Battle button at the upper part of the screen, which appeared to us as good a place as any to start out.
And this is where we have to bring forward our first criticism, which may not always seem fair when it’s still an alpha version (or even beta version), and in the case of World of Warships it concerned the queue times. Regarding the co-op games, where players face off against AI opponents in team-based matches revolving around destroying enemy ships and capturing bases, things weren’t that bad and queuing usually took 1 or 2 minutes, which is pretty ok for us. However, things drastically changed when we tried to queue for a random match, where 2 player teams go up against each other (which, by the way, is the sole opportunity to accomplish missions in order to gain rewards), and we were waiting for about 5 minutes before finally giving up. We found the queuing mechanic kind of peculiar, as we had difficulties to determine if we were actually in a queue or just waiting for others to join in before the match begins. This was the reason for us to mainly focus on co-op and considering our skilfulness (or rather shortage of it), the result would pretty much be the same for us, no matter if we were battling against AI or real opponents, we would die fairly swiftly either way.
The aspect that grabbed us straightaway were the visuals, starting with the water animations and the general environment, which is only topped by the highly detailed ship models that developers assure are accurate reproductions of their real-world counterparts. And players are able to really savour the moments of admiring the wonderful visuals and inspecting their ship, since the game provides them with enough time to do so. The pace is just tremendously slow (although already significantly increased in comparison to the initial release), with every aspect, from the general duration of matches to movement, progression across the map and slow fire rates, emphasising that this game is a slow and strategic shooter for thinking users that in general relinquishes the frenzied fire fights players are accustomed to from other war-focused shooters.
Nevertheless, the player’s adrenaline will start pumping for sure as soon as they are able to successfully target a few shots, which requires keeping aiming manually at the enemy’s projected course (known as “leading”), firing ahead and hoping that the ship will sail into their shot. When landing hit after hit, you will inevitably have to decide if it’s better to back and lose the kill or actually start in pursuit of the opponent as they try to escape toward their allies. We unfortunately never decided to hang back, but always pursued instead, always ending up too deep in enemy territory, being flanked on all sides and eventually finding our eternal grave beneath the waves. You live by the sword; you die by the sword… or rather by the torpedo in this particular case.
This truly emphasises the major combat style in WoWS, which simply requires players to plan ahead, choose their course and layout a strategy, always being prepared to adjust it if necessary. Due to the extremely slow movement, it’s just impossible to turn around and to get away to where you came from. Your ship’s slow pace, its wide turning arcs and the methodical plodding often mean for players that it’s pretty difficult to get out of the situation in case they’ve gone too far and ended up in trouble. As new players, we were initially a bit confused and overwhelmed by all the whistles and bells that go off to tell players they’ve hit an opponent, where they hit him, what damage they caused, if they set him on fire, what hits they’ve personally taken, if they’re on fire, and so on, meaning that we seldom knew we were in trouble until it was too late, not noticing we were sailing full steam ahead into an enemy fleet while attempting to destroy a ship in the distance.
Being the press in the game this far away from any major games conventions raised a few eyebrows as our press “Preview” name appeared in the team rosters, enough to strike up conversation in a few games and get a little bit of a guiding hand from some players. Since there are currently no tutorials available, we were forced to learn swimming while playing, which usually resulted in risking too much early on and then having to sit around in spectator mode (due to being destroyed) and chatting to other players in order to find out about more useful controls and tactics. One of the gamers who ended up on our team even invited us into their Division (guild) and another guy was helpful enough to provide us with some tips via TeamSpeak, making a few recommendations on our choice of ships, explaining what our different types of ammo did, how the AI turrets work (while the player controls the main guns). Thank you so much, "BestTomatoEver", that was truly very helpful!
World of Warships offers a multitude of option regarding ship models and their customisation, allowing players to research new upgrades and buy items in order to enhance their different ship classes, equipping them the way that best suits their style of play. This was a major issue for us as we pretty much sucked.
As with the game itself improving your skills is a slow process, with queue times and the time it takes to complete a match it doesn’t feel like you’re necessarily getting that much better, but with a little persistence and patience it comes with time and finally making your first is pretty fulfilling. World of Warships won’t be for everyone, this is pretty evident; however, it’s never been marketed as a replacement for its other sister titles and instead offers something different. It’s plain to see that it will appeal to a different type of combat strategy player, thus being at least a little more niche than other war games on the market. We can only hope that it won’t suffer the same issues that World of Warplanes has suffered with players not really buying into the game when there are equally good (or in some opinions better) alternatives such as War Thunder on the market; so for the time being Warships stands alone in a huge ocean, with no real competitor to make it sink.
Deja tu comentario
You must be logged in to post a comment.