Become a horserider of the machine apocalypse in World of Tanks Blitz, a free-to-play Nintendo Switch port of a previously mobile-only game. Developer and Publisher Wargaming has previously released the World of Tanks franchise on PC, Xbox, Playstation, and Mobile, so landing a place in the Nintendo eShop completes platform ubiquity for this decade-spanning franchise.
Tactical Shooting
The rules to win a match of World of Tanks Blitz are simple: destroy the enemy team’s 7 tanks before your team is destroyed, or take control of king-of-the-hill points scattered across the map. Almost every game I played ended with the former.
At the start of your tank career, a typical game of World of Tanks Blitz plays out much like a boxing match. A showdown between light tanks features a bob-and-weave flow, accumulating quick shots through a tightrope of sightlines. Often, the light tank showdowns only happen at the early level matches before players have upgraded tanks, so there tended to be much weaker gameplay from their inexperienced operators.
Heavy tank battles, on the other hand, resemble more of a jiu-jitsu struggle. Better tanks allow for better players to express their skill gap, and a good tactician behind a Heavy Tank can choke out weaker players. Give them a finger and they will take an arm. Once an advantage is established in a high-powered tank lobby, it’s only a few twisting manipulations away from surrender.
But it doesn’t have to be always like that. At least, if the game had any form of communication, it wouldn’t have to be so deterministic. Despite World of Tanks Blitz allowing mechanically-rich gameplay, it doesn’t allow that rich strategy to be enacted on a team-wide scale in a 7-person team game. World of Tanks asks for Counter-Strike or Valorant-like sightline holding for the game to really soar to its highest potential, but it can never be achieved in this ping-less, chat-less team game.
I Feel like a Tank
World of Tanks has been successful for over a decade because tanks are super powerful and being one is awesome. Wargaming has near-perfected the gamefeel of being a tank with superb SFX, simple controls, and meticulous historical veracity. I’m not particularly knowledgeable when it comes to the world of tank warfare, but anyone interested even just in the history of tanks could find this game enjoyable with its 150+ unique tanks.
Would you like to buy a Premium Pass?
With World of Tanks Blitz coming to Nintendo for free, it is to be expected for there to be paywalls, time-gated resource gain, a plethora of currencies, and just one simple way to bypass all of that. Money will get you what you really want in World of Tanks Blitz and it happens to be important too early in the game’s progression.
See, the most engrossing part of World of Tanks is the tank upgrade trees where new guns, treads, and equipment roll themselves into upgraded tank models with (oh boy!) new upgradable parts. Working through each nation’s tank tree is addictive, all up until about Tier V tanks. The upgrade costs require hours of grinding for a single tank so that great feeling of getting better at the game with even better tanks stalls out about halfway up the tank tier list.
The Port
Nintendo Switch specs outpace most mobile devices, but for some reason, World of Tanks Blitz came out looking like a mid-grade mobile game. Offered at a 720p resolution for handheld mode and at 1080p for the docked mode, World of Tanks Blitz ended up looking and feeling better with the smaller, more compressed screen.
In terms of gameplay, there were no bugs, stuttering, or crashes for me. I had a smooth experience with its online gameplay.
Verdict
World of Tanks Blitz impresses with its capacity for tactical gameplay and addictive upgrade loops but falls short of taking advantage of its main strengths by offering no team communication and by effectively pay-walling a majority of its best content.
Score: 6/10
Check Out the World of Tanks Blitz Nintendo Switch Trailer:
For more information, please visit: https://madgames.wotblitz.com/?na
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Nintendo Switch Review
Recent Michigan State University grad and current Game Studies researcher who plays fantasy RPG's to escape, Smash to compete, and Stardew to chill. Also have a +1 to rage/toxicity resistance due to the many hours sunk into WoW, R6, and LoL.
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