Wargaming has taken the gaming world by storm with their popular World of Warplans and World of Tanks games. However, after total land and air dominance their latest offering takes to the seas in World of Warships.
Despite being in open beta WOWships is surprisingly refined and brings in Wargaming’s trademark strategic gameplay into the sea. Players must choose one class of ship for each battle between cruisers, destroyers, battleships and aircraft carriers. The game then does a great job of balancing during matchmaking by ensuring no team is lopsided in terms of heavy artillery or mobility in their ship composition.
As of now, players can choose between Japanese and American vessels, each with their own unique features and historical accuracy but more importantly each class is vastly different from the other. Destroyers are fast and mobile and you’ll often find them going straight into the enemy fleet launching deadly torpedoes to great effect. Cruisers are a more well-rounded class that can pack a punch, launch torpedoes and move around well enough.
Battleships as you might imagine are the backbone of your fleet, large slow moving vessels with enough firepower to blow your fleet to smithereens however due to their slow-moving frame they make quite an easy target so they are usually confined to the fringe of the battlefield and more often than not need a little support to avoid getting ambushed, however one barrage from the primary canons can change the tide of battle.
Then there’s the elusive and slightly confusing aircraft carrier; while everyone seems to want one, not everyone can handle it. A more passive role in terms of direct gameplay however aircraft carrier captains must scout, provide support to engaged teammates but most importantly find and destroy the enemy carrier before their torpedo planes can wreak havoc.
One of my favourite things of WOWships was the fact that you can own multiple ships and once you get destroyed in one battle you can easily back out to the menu, hop into one of your other ships and you’re good to go while your previous battle finishes and frees up your ship. The game’s ship models are also quite detailed and polished for a game in Beta.
Between the tech trees, ship types, individual upgrades and captain traits the game offers a surprising amount of depth and is quite enjoyable for the most part, but unlike all team games the joys of matchmaking are bound to catch with you in terms of incapable teammates. But World of Warships is still Wargaming’s best game so far, simple enough to pick up but at the same time has enough depth for some great sea based combat.
