Recent reviews by Aquilae Mira

I too like running out of ammunition in Space 'Nam and resorting to calling in a napalm strike to utterly obliterate any resistance in front of me. Best game.

Update 28 November, 2024: Best game.

We be truckin'. We be truckin'. We be truckin'. We be truckin'. We be truckin'. We be truckin'. We be truckin'. We be truckin'. We be truckin'. We be truckin'. We be truckin'. We be truckin'. We be truckin'. We be truckin'. We be truckin'. We be truckin'. We be truckin'. We be truckin'.

no-scoped a deer, kicked a bear, 360'd a wolf, and threw myself off a cliff. all in 30 minutes. best game.

War Thunder is a special game in my opinion, one that has, at the same time, been one of the greatest and one of the worst games to play. It is surprising just how different this game can be depending on the day and what update one is playing in. Some days you're sitting there with your best mates having some of the greatest gaming moments, others you're slamming your fist against the table as the grind rears its ugly head. Consistently playing War Thunder sometimes feels like an addiction that keeps you coming back even in the worst of times; just for a couple matches, just for that new vehicle, just for something different. The emotional whiplash is intense, but the rewards are great and the friends you meet are priceless.

When I started War Thunder in mid-2016 after finally getting a computer able to run it, it was so gloriously new. Everything was fresh and each update kept a healthy stream of content and players to interact with. As time went on, the game seemed to get more and more 'corporate' (or maybe that was me growing up [or both]), yet for the sake of the vehicles I stayed in. I'm an avid history buff, and games like War Thunder fascinate me by being able to mentally recreate scenes and test things that I myself cannot. Nothing is quite like War Thunder, not a single game on the market comes close. The best comparison to it is Wargaming's World of... games, but they are far too arcadey for my taste and have even more predatory monetisation practises. From the library of vehicles to the easy-to-learn/hard-to-master controls, War Thunder fosters a healthy environment for learning tactics and the quirks of each tech tree's offerings.

Technically, it's fantastic. Graphically, it's gorgeous. Musically, it's subjective (Opinion: the old soundtrack is superior!). On the face of things, it is the greatest game on the market to strike a balance between arcade PVP multiplayer and milsim tactical action. It caters to a massively wide audience and can be a great launching point for other games and genres (for instance, using sim as an introduction to the air sim genre and subsequently getting into DCS), something I cannot claim I have seen in many other games. Its community is hostile, sure, but there are many diamonds in the rough to find; some of the best friends I have today I either met over or bonded with War Thunder.

So why do I not recommend it?

I don't want people to follow me as I am now, nor the game I present to you above. I want people to appreciate what it was and observe what it is now. It has changed for the worse, and not just in the corporate aspect aforementioned. War Thunder was great, Gaijin was a solid game company, but it seems all of the merit we as a community had given them from 2014 through 2016 whittled itself away as our hope died with it. Not to say it is truly dead yet; far from it, Update New Power wasn't that long ago. Update after update, stagnant and with seemingly less interest garnered around it as the products they were supplying became stale, were outright rejected by the community for their present state, or never fixed long term issues (the Scimitar rudder is still historically inaccurate, bomber cockpits are still absent save for the He 111 H-16, spotting system is still broken). I have in my Google Drive a thirteen page list of aircraft needed in the game, yet since its creation in January 2021 only fourteen of some couple hundred have seen the light of day. While I appreciate the development length of each vehicle, Gaijin seems to only pump out the 'next big toy' (top tier jets or modern tanks, usually, which add in their own issues) rather than fixing necessary and existing issues/suggestions from in some cases years prior. Take the Supermarine Scimitar (my personal favourite) as an example. The first record of it being passed for consideration was back in 2015, it was added to the game in 2020 in a historically inaccurate and poorly performing state compared to its real life counterpart. And, to add onto its already poor state, its repair cost was made unnecessarily high (not as much as the Ta 152 C-3 or B-29, of course, but still). All effort and focus seems to be on the new high tiers.

Which brings up my next point: they're using the community as a crutch for content. Update by update, event by event, we see more and more vehicles being introduced that are sourced from community members through Gaijin's revenue partnership programme. While this is great news (and fantastic work to the artists that made them), one would expect that these would be *in addition* to Gaijin's housemade update vehicles, which would make for massive and exciting updates each time. Instead, they are the show themselves, with the main focus going entirely to the top tier and a couple new maps (in this last update, that top tier was the MiG-27). I love pre-war, World War II, and Korean War content the best, yet as time grows on their content grows ever slimmer in perception. I was ecstatic to get the Shackleton and BV 138 this last update, and I hailed it as one of the best updates in a long time because of it, but then I really considered; two vehicles is my benchmark for praise? It seems privileged to talk about the game like this, but what funds them but the players themselves? If the game itself gets to be uninteresting, the players will figure that too.

I have already lost most of my friends to played War Thunder with me in one way or another. Some of them still play, but infrequently, or when they do it feels hollow, like they're playing out of pity or nostalgia rather than to really play and experience with me. I feel like I'm the only one anymore who experiences the exhilaration of being surrounded by the vehicles and technology I so love to learn about, fueled in no small part by the fact that what I am surrounded with is slowly decaying around me as it falls into unseen disarray. Old players are leaving just as fast as they can get new ones in to squeeze money into top tier jets, and I don't want anyone else to have to experience what I have.

I apologise for the rambling state of this review, but I thought it just had to be written. I leave you with this: Excite yourself with history, each vehicle has its own story to tell, but stay away from War Thunder. I will play it until it dies, but that is a personal decision made by arbitrary reasoning I cannot explain. You have a chance to not pick it up in the first place.

I love War Thunder. I hate War Thunder. The status quo is fulfilled.

(Update 23 November, 2022: Yeah, basically nothing has changed. This is still accurate.)

(Update 20 May, 2024: Still accurate.)