World of Tanks Blitz

Genre: Action

Players: 14 Team Competitive (Online)

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Review:

WARNING: THIS GAME HEAVILY PUSHES MICROTRANSACTIONS, AND USES WAIT MECHANICS

World of Tanks Blitz is a Free-To-Play Action game that has players collecting and upgrading various tanks and bringing them into battle in 7v7 team matches. Not to be confused with World of Tanks (which can have teams of 15 players each), Blitz is a spinoff game originally created for mobile devices in 2014 and ported to the Nintendo Switch in 2020.

This game’s visuals make its mobile origins very apparent – while not an ugly game, World of Tanks is not visually impressive in any way, with graphics that would have looked passable but mediocre in the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 era. The sound, at least, is pretty good, with the tanks making a good loud racket every time you fire a shell, and sounding appropriately tanky as you move around. There’s also appropriately orchestral music punctuating victory screens and the like, but for the most past the game opts to let the sounds of the battlefield happen without music.

In terms of the gameplay, I have to commend the folks at Wargaming making a solid effort to try to translate the controls of a mobile game to the Nintendo Switch here, as they really do seem to have put some good effort into it. However, it’s clear in many respects that this is a game that wasn’t originally intended to be played with a controller.

It starts with the game’s menus, which players navigate using an on-screen cursor. While this is frustrating, it is at least tolerable. The real problem comes when trying to control the tank itself. Players control forward and backward movement and turning using the left stick, a setup that’s extremely awkward, particularly when you need to make a tight turn or a subtle maneuver to get behind cover. The game doesn’t use the right stick for any of this so that players can aim the turret independently, which I suppose is understandable, but I’d think that forward and reverse could at least be assigned to buttons instead of all being stuck on the control stick.

As I said, there has been an effort here to try to make good use of the Nintendo Switch’s features. The game supports gyroscopic motion control, which is nice in theory, but in practice this fights with the game’s extremely pronounced auto-aim, and you’ll want to shut off one or the other. The game also naturally supports touchscreen controls in menus and in gameplay, but as far as I could tell, all I could use this for in-game was aiming, and I found I much preferred sticking with more traditional controls for that.

Speaking of play in handheld mode, I don’t recommend it. The game’s map is highly important to strategic play here, and it becomes a bit too difficult to read at a glance on the small screen, as do some of the other details you’ll be looking for. This actually feels kinda’ strange to say, given that this is a game that was originally made for mobile devices, but I suppose the takeaway there is that this game benefits a lot from being ported to the larger screen.

Despite my frustrations with this game’s controls, I actually had a lot of fun with this game, at least at first. The slow and clunky nature of these tanks is a huge factor in the strategy of the game, and knowing how to move is just about as important as being skilled at aiming, if not more so. This unique approach to strategic play in a competitive online action game really gives this game a unique feel, and I found myself really enjoying it… until I started “upgrading” to better equipment.

I’ve heard a few people complaining about this game’s microtransactions and how they make this game feel like “pay-to-win” at higher levels, but I can’t really speak to that one way or another. In my time with the game, I managed to get to a tier 5 tank (out of ten), but with each tier after tier 3 I found myself enjoying the game less and less. Not because I was playing against players with deep pockets who bought better promotional tanks, but because of how the tiers in this game are organized.

See, all of the tanks you can start out with are lighter tanks, which means they’re relatively zippy, but less powerful than heavier models. The more you upgrade, the more you’ll find yourself trading in those zippy, mobile tanks for hulking behemoths that move with all the speed and grace of an iceberg. And even if you accept the tradeoff of speed and maneuverability in exchange for power and better defense, everything’s relative, and the matchmaking will be pitting you against enemies using a tier level of tank as close to you as possible, meaning that extra power and defense will be going up against other tanks with high power and defense… essentially nullifying the benefit of the upgrade and pushing everyone into a corner where they’re forced to play as slower and (in my opinion) far less fun tanks in the name of progression.

I actually found myself wondering why I wasn’t having as much fun playing the game some hours in as I did when I first started, and why I seemed to be losing so much, and I reasoned that perhaps my playstyle was better-suited for hit-and-run maneuvers. Testing things out, I jumped back into my tier 3 tank and started winning match after match again, being pitted against other tier 3s and tier 4s. I looked through dozens of tanks I could potentially upgrade to, but none of them came close to the sort of speeds I was getting with my little zippy tank. Dozens of tanks to unlock, and within a matter of a few hours I had already unlocked and fully-upgraded the best tank in the game (for me, anyway). Realizing this kinda’ killed my enthusiasm for this game – I had already topped out, as far as I was concerned.

I know World of Tanks Blitz has its fans, and perhaps you’ll differ from me in enjoying the slower tanks the game forces you into as you progress, but many players likely won’t. Add to that the frustrating controls and unimpressive graphics, and this is a game that you may enjoy for a little while, but I feel that for many players that enjoyment will gradually decline, and at that point you may opt to look for something that’ll stay fun over a longer period of time.

tl;dr – World of Tanks Blitz is a Free-to-Play online team competitive Action game where teams of seven compete in tanks they can collect and upgrade. Unfortunately, the visuals aren’t very impressive, the controls are awkward, and the further you progress the more the game tries to force you into playing more sluggish, lumbering tanks. At least at first, I did have a lot of fun with this game, but that fun declined pretty quickly once I realized progressing further into the game was making it less fun.

Grade: C+

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