Armored Warfare Preview

Armored Warfare is under development by Obsidian Entertainment and My.com, and is a free to play tank shooter much in the style of World Of Tanks which we all know. Recently I was able to get some hands on time with the game, and also have a chat to the guys from Obsidian Entertainment and My.com on what they are trying to achieve by bringing Armored Warfare to the masses. Many of us know that free to play games rarely deliver a true free to play experience to the gamer and in many cases force the player to pay in order to win, and this was at the forefront of my mind going into playing Armored Warfare. These alpha builds that many developers show to the press usually have the best of the best equipment unlocked and ready to play, so we get the full experience from what they are trying to sell to the public, and this often leads to misguided information being reported back to you, the gamer.

A smaller tank may have been a better choice!

With all of that in mind I sat down to play Armoured Warfare with a very open mind as to what free to play games mean to everyone and how the developer was hoping to get our money through this model. As you can imagine going into battle, you have a wide choice of different vehicles  to choose from each with their own strengths and weaknesses, me being me, I chose the biggest heaviest and most armoured tank available, hoping to deliver crushing blows to the enemy in one foul swoop. This I found out was a major mistake on my part, as not only was my tank slower, it was also the target for mortar fire that left me crippled and soon dead. Respawing back into the battlefield served little to alleviate the problem and I quickly figured out that my choice of tank was somewhat hasty. The battlefield or map we were playing on had many objectives for the team to complete in order to win, not just destroying the other team. These types of online battle games are not really my type of thing, but I soon found myself getting into Armored Warfare once I ditched the keyboard and mouse in favour of a controller.

Having played games like World Of Tanks and Tanki Online, I found Armored Warfare looked and played better than these, with everything feeling realistic and well balanced straight off the mark. As I mentioned, picking the larger tank made my traversal over the detailed terrain slower and more cumbersome, just as you would expect from a vehicle that weighed tons. Attacking these heavy duty monsters from the front was pretty much useless and you will find yourself having to attack their weak points, such as the tracks from the side. I asked Obsidian Entertainment how the matchmaking would be handled, as there is nothing more off putting than entering into a game such as Armored Warfare to be thrown into a match with guys that have upgraded their tanks to be nigh on invincible, leaving you to quickly die and eventually leading you to give up on the game completely. They said that this was a major factor they are working on, and they are going to have a system in place that sees you matched with players of the same skill level as your own, and as you get better, you will be met with better players. They were also very keen to point out that at no point will Armored Warfare be employing a pay to win system.

Got ya!

This was definitely good news to my ears as so many of these free to play games have put me off due to the fact that if you did not pay some money towards upgrading your vehicles, you would have no chance of ever winning a match. Armored Warfare’s main source of income would be coming from visual upgrades to your vehicles, I was told, things such as decals, camouflage and paint to customise your tank. You will be able to gain all upgrades through playing the game, and you can even progress through Armored Warfare as a single player without ever entering the PvP, and that is good news to those you prefer to go it alone. Obsidian Entertainment and My.com were very open and direct with their answers, and I honestly felt that there was nothing I could have asked them that would have gone unanswered, in an honest way. Their main objective for Armored Warfare is to bring a free to play AAA title to the European and US market, as these tank battle games are massive in countries such as Russia and Eastern Europe.

On the day there was only one map available to play and a small selection of the vehicles that will actually be available in the finished build. Obsidian Entertainment and My.com are trying to bring gamers something they will spend time playing, not necessarily bucket loads of money, putting in the time will see you rewarded as much as the next guy and that is something they are firm on delivering. They have a great understanding that without people playing their game it will not succeed in todays market, where free to play games are ten a penny. I have admitted in this article that this type of gaming experience was not my type of thing, as far too many of them weigh heavily on your cash in order to win, and for me that is not free to play. Armored Warfare is trying to bring us an experience that lives up to the quality of games such as Warframe, with a model that is also similar, where you as a player want to spend some money because you feel that you are getting what you want from the game. Not a model that forces you to pay in order to progress in any kind of fashion. Hopefully we can bring you more on Armored Warfare in the future when it goes into open beta phase. Â

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