Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Status: Open Beta
Release Date: Unknown
Official Site: http://bit.ly/1GJmjD0
Hey what’s up, Serpentine here taking a
look at the Military vehicle sim, Armored Warfare, developed by Obsidian
Entertainment, the same guys behind Skyforge and Pillars of Eternity. Armored
Warfare takes the extremely popular game play of World of Tanks but trades up
from World War 2 era vehicles of war to the vehicles of today while also
offering a PvE mode.
If
you have ever played World of Tanks or even perhaps War Thunders Ground Forces
you will feel very at home playing Armored Warfare. From the menus, matchmaking
tiers, consumables, purchasable ammo to hiding in bushes and main domination
game mode almost everything about Armored Warfare has been copied over from
World of Tanks.
The general gameplay of Armored Warfare has
2 teams of 11 tanks either converging on an objective in the middle of the map
or travelling all the way to their opponent’s base to capture it. The different
types of Tanks provide the standard kind of set-up with fast low fire powered
APC’s acting as scouts, main battle tanks bringing in the big guns and armor
and Artillery to coax out any enemies in hiding or just camping from a far.
There are a couple outlier classes but these other vehicles are just various combinations
of the previously mentioned roles. There is one vehicle type that is different
from the rest in the form of the Artillery vehicles that give you a top down
look of the map while firing. Positioning of this vehicle is extremely
important as it can easily have its line of sight broken by hills, buildings
and other structures rendering your shots useless not to mention that if an APC
or tank destroyer charges you, you’re pretty much dead. There are also certain
vehicles that have extra activatable abilities like Designate Target for APC’s
that tags an enemy vehicle for extra damage and ECU Override for light tanks that
drastically speeds up their movement. The different vehicle types also have varying
armour thickness which plays an extremely important role in the game as there is
a ton of different ammunition types including Armour penetrating rounds, Heat
rounds and explosive rounds with different ammo types able to be used by your
tank in a game.
With the tiered tank system in the game you
have a good chance of penetrating the armour of tanks in your tier however the matchmaking
puts you together with people from various tier rankings and if you’re on the
lower end it will be pretty hard to get any shots off that actually penetrate
an enemy’s armour. There are weak points in armour that you can find by moving
your reticule over a tanks hull until it turn orange or green indicating that
if the shot is accurate you will penetrate the armour and deal damage.
Alternatively if you are going up against a main battle tank with no
penetration points you can still be of use by aiming for its tracks and
disabling its movement, at least until it auto repairs. There are other parts
of a tank and its crew you can damage that will reduce the performance of it but
are a lot harder to damage significantly compared to it’s tracks.
Out on the battlefield almost everything is
destructible except for large buildings and structures. If it’s only 1 story
high, it’s more than likely you can just drive straight through it. As an added
bonus piece of visual information you can also see which part of your tank is
covered by environmental objects via the grey lines surrounding the tank in the
bottom left which can be useful if you are behind a small piece of cover and
want to make sure no part of your tank is hanging out. For people playing
stealthy spotting or artillery support classes there is also a cover mechanic
that will prevent enemies spotting you. By stopping your tank behind or in
foliage your cover meter will go up indicated by the bottom left meter. Being
hidden only works while stopped and not firing, as soon as you do either the
enemy will be able to see you especially if you fire. While this feature may
sound like it encourages bush camping, something World of Tanks is somewhat
infamous for, Armored Warfare’s map design providing no real open battlefields
means you can’t really do it, instead the maps encourage a slow pushing play
style. The different maps settings vary quite significantly too with you
fighting in the snow and ice on relatively flat land then fighting on a
tropical island in rough hilly terrain.
While the PvP battle mode will be where
most people go to play in Armored Warfare there is also a Co-Op mission mode
that will have 4 players taking on AI tanks while they try to complete certain
objectives. Enemy tanks are a little weaker then player controlled tanks so
they are easy to take down however they make up for their weakness by sending a
lot of them your way so you can be overwhelmed if not working together with
your team mates.
Outside of the main game you have a 2
different factions to the game with their own unique vehicles. I would advise choosing
one of them from the beginning as there is a fair grind to get the higher
tiered vehicles unlocked. Unlocking a new vehicle has it at its bare basics
requiring you to earn experience with it to unlock its full potential with
speed, ammunition, armour and other types of upgrades. You’re vehicles also
have a commander and crew that can level allowing them to gain small bonuses to
its performance like faster reload, faster speed and better accuracy. Bonuses
to experience gained, money earned, the cost of equipment and more can also be
increased via your base by building and upgrading certain buildings. You earn
resources for these buildings daily and the bonuses given can eventually be
quite significant.
Other features of the game include a guild
system called a Battalion that offers members some bonus rewards at the end of
games. You can also customize your tanks with decals and camo’s and this is
where the game will be aiming its free to play model along with a premium
subscription that increases your end game rewards by 50%. For those that want
to speed up their progress and play in higher tiered games you can purchase
premium vehicles that are all slightly less powerful then the vehicles you have
to work towards. Consumables can be purchased with the in-game currency but is
honestly not really needed unless you really want to get absolutely every
little bit of performance out of your vehicle as they are only around 5-10% bonuses.
Similarly you can add retrofits to your vehicle that add around the same kind
of percentage bonuses.
Altogether Armored Warfare is basically a
modernized World of Tanks both in terms of its graphics and its available
vehicle line-up. The map design has almost completely eliminated the whole
camping in a bush strategy while still having a hiding mechanic for the support
vehicles to take advantage of. The game leans on the arcade side of things
rather than the realistic something that I feel War Thunder does a little bit
better especially with their collision meshes. If you liked World of Tanks then
Armored Warfare is an easy transition to make and a nice step up graphically.
If you’re expecting anything new or innovative to the formula you may be a
dissapointed as the game follows it to T.
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