First Look: War Thunder

When it comes to gaming, the World War II era offers a rare mix of nostalgia and excitement. Pilots had no beyond-visual-range combat, no missiles, no radar, so they depended on skill, their aircraft, their teammates, and sometimes prayer or luck. Combat was an assembly of aircraft, ships and anti-aircraft artillery throwing up a wall of bullets to keep one another at bay. Recreating that realistically is a real challenge: it’s easy to end up with planes that handle like modern jets or ammo that behaves like Hollywood missiles.

Gaijin Entertainment has built a world that’s realistic and entertaining, adventurous and informative. The various modes, aircraft battle, historical battles, world war, and solo missions, offer either a quick immersion or a lengthier experience. World War mode is unavailable in the beta, but you can still take part in historical battles and become part of notable engagements, some with cut-scenes that hand you a small piece of war history.

War Thunder might be mistaken for a pure simulation rather than an MMO. One of your first steps is a test flight, take off, hit a ground target, line up and land, and pressing F1 reveals in-depth sim controls, with outside, cockpit, virtual-cockpit and bomber-port views, full keyboard remapping, and joystick support. So how does it fold in MMO qualities? Simple: an extensive armoury of aircraft across five nations, with progression that unlocks more advanced planes per role. Crews level up too, a U.S. heavy bomber’s eight turrets can grow more accurate and tougher with experience, and you decide which crews (air or ground) earn it and where it goes; even fast re-arming has value.

The models are exquisite, you can pick out individual portholes on the ships, and the varied landscapes create a genuinely cinematic feel for dogfights, hazards and all (mind the trees on a strafing run). On a Dell XPS 17 with an NVIDIA 555m a session ran around 34 FPS, peaking into the 50s and dipping to 29 in the busiest moments, an efficient engine. The soundtrack is forgettable and vanishes once a mission starts, but the in-mission effects more than make up for it: bullets zipping past, metal shredding, bombs whistling, subwoofer-rattling explosions, all giving complete awareness of where, and from what altitude, you’re being shot at.

The big question is whether people will not just play it but keep playing it. The simple answer is yes. It draws you in, suits a variety of play styles, and stays challenging whether you grind solo missions or jump into fast quick-battles with real players. Post global-invite, the community is positive, one player griped only that they “had to wait 4 minutes… that is too long for this awesomeness.” Gaijin has brought a strong candidate to the free-to-play market; War Thunder is well worth picking up for anyone into MMOs, sims, or WWII military tech.