It’s very difficult to write a review of a beta version of a game as big and relatively deep in terms of gameplay as World of Warplanes, especially when you’re not a fan of the genre. But we can already say for sure: Wow will surely repeat the success of World of Tanks.
The dome of the sky will sway
It is reasonable that the developers from the Kiev office of Wargaming.net decided to stick to the basic gameplay scheme that has already proven itself in World of Tanks. A relatively weak aircraft is at your disposal, which, through participation in numerous battles, should grow in levels by leaps and bounds. After accumulating a certain amount.
you can buy yourself a more powerful aircraft and develop it already. As you can see, everything is familiar from the World of Tanks course. Fortunately, while at the beta test stage, the game does not ask for cash injections for the speedy pumping of equipment, but do not hesitate – the opportunity to spend your hard-earned money will definitely fall into the final version.
And to spend, oddly enough, the game really has something to spend. Just think about it – 127 (!) aircraft from five countries (USSR, USA, Germany, Japan and Great Britain) and three main classes (attack aircraft, light and heavy fighters). Each class of aircraft already has its own control subtleties, and you can get used to the style of play for each of them in just a few battles. Such a quick adaptation process is partly the merit of the developers when balancing forces, although battles are quite common, for example, completely on heavy fighters.
The World of Warplanes player spends all his time in the air. The developers deliberately refused to take off and land aircraft, so as not to reduce the fairly fast pace of air battles. Control is relatively easy, both on joysticks and using the keyboard and mouse. Moreover, the mouse can be disabled in the flexible settings of the game and enjoy a more complex way of piloting an aircraft. By the way, it’s almost impossible to fall down during a battle – even when diving down from a small height, the game will helpfully offer to level the course and return to battle.
Of course, such simplifications do not benefit a serious aircraft flight simulator of the Second World War, but that’s the big secret. World of Warplanes magically combines the complexity of maneuvering and aiming in the air, like a real flight simulator, but at the same time deprives the hardcore player of the difficult multi-step control and falling from the slightest mistake, like in any aerial arcade game. World of Warplanes is a real middle ground between arcade and simulation. And the developers are perfectly balancing, not rolling the project into either of the two extremes.
The rules of the battle are extremely simple – the plane starts flying immediately in the air, like enemy equipment, and in a minute you meet the enemy face to face. By the way, Wow is not limited to air battles. In almost every mission, teams have tasks to destroy ground targets, among which there are quite large strategic objects from history. Thus, during the game, you will very often see a detailed landscape far below, and not just clouds hiding the absence of land as such.
Over time, Wargaming.net plans to begin integrating all of its games into a single military theater. And it will start, as you already understand, with the connection of World of Tanks with World of Warplanes. Some possibilities of a common global project are already being tested. So, clans from Woot will migrate to Wow.
and members of the same community will be able to act in the common interest both on the ground and in the air. For example, if a team wins an air battle, then ground tankers will have the opportunity to request an air strike on the corresponding map. But any one global map in the game is not expected. This is because the projects have too different speeds of combat. And, according to the developers, one air map can accommodate 10 ground tank locations in size, and it is really difficult to combine several ground ones on one large sky map.
The lack of a soundtrack as such does not affect the overall atmosphere of the game. On the contrary, the measured roar of the engines, the whistle of the wind in the ears and the roar of an enemy aircraft explosion are all that a real pilot needs for complete happiness and peace.
waking flights
Unfortunately, World of Warplanes isn’t perfect. Let’s start with the main thing – flying on an airplane is not felt at all. It feels like you’re flying a toy plane that takes turns with relative ease. Technique sometimes strangely maneuvers, and sometimes it completely loses maneuverability. Often, from the dizzying change of heaven and earth, it is not clear which way your air friend is heading and where the base is located, which must be shot. And sometimes trees appear right in the sky on the way, or suddenly the plane crashes on the ground, when the solid surface is still, to put it mildly, very far away.
The historical accuracy of air battles is also suffering so far. We highly doubt that WWII planes could have withstood a full burst of direct hits. Very often you can see a situation where critical hits do not at all prevent the enemy aircraft from moving as actively and quickly, and sometimes destroying your base with a few well-aimed shots.
The health bar for each aircraft is relatively large, which generally makes some models completely unbillable. Oddly enough, but so far the tanks in the game of the same name are dying much more realistically than their air brothers. We hope that by the end of the beta test, aircraft will learn to take hits into account and react, for example, to a broken wing more properly, and not just smoke.
As a result, it turns out that in practice, possible vertical sabotage or frontal horizontal attacks do not work as effectively or are completely useless. It is very often difficult to catch the enemy by surprise, and wall-to-wall fights become boring relatively quickly. Therefore, most players and teams win here not due to skill, tactics and thoughtful decisions, but due to maneuverability and great luck. Or, at worst, whose planes are “pumped” more.
