World of Warships

World of Warships starts out well. The game is fast, it looks good, and it’s fun. Progress soon comes to a crawl, however, and the repetitive grinding, off-set only by a convoluted Free-to-Play system, dampens the experience in ways that the superb graphics and quick multiplayer matchmaking do little to offset.

Gorgeous lighting and water effects gently reflect infernos of burning steel. It’s a game that I want to come back to again and again. The lowest tier ships are fun, and that’s good—most players will probably only see the first three or four levels. With so much amazing art and incredible history in the biggest ships, though, I just wish that more of us could see everything Warships has to offer without an aggressive, expensive grind.

Anyone who has ever played the table top game Battleship! or even made paper boats in a puddle will find fun in World of Warships. Wargaming seems to have a knack for finding what is simply fun in large scale battles and bringing out our inner kid who played in the backyard or the bath tub pretending to wage war with toys. Where Warships really shines is in the ease of play, notable polish and quick battles that anyone can enjoy.

It might not have the unbridled thrills of World of Warplanes nor does it possess the immediacy of World of Tanks, but World of Warships manages to fill a special spot for action gamers. The deft fusion of strategy and explosives baits the trap for a “just one more game” cycle that can ruin work days. Its version of high seas mayhem absolutely should be experienced by anyone with a desire for sending thousands of man hours and millions of dollars bubbling to the bottom of the drink.

This is Wargaming's richest and most rewarding team game to date, with the most diverse set of classes and skills of any of its games. The irony is that this also means World of Warships is also the least consistent of its games, with higher peaks at the cost of lower valleys while you wait out games that have already been decided. But the view from those peaks more than makes up for those dives beneath the waves.

With a host of additional features like Ranked Battles, night fights, weather events, clan warfare, and more factions scheduled to hit the high seas shortly after launch, World of Warships offers veteran MMO captains and World of War newbies alike a lot to write home about – in this case, loose lips float ships.