Armored Warfare – Professional Pack Review

Consider this: perhaps just one free-to-play, micro transactions based tank multiplayer game is enough?

Someone could’ve pitched this notion back at one of their brain storm sessions. In 2015, Armored Warfare was released to PC by Obsidian Game studios. The developers who gave us games like Star Wars: The Old Republic and Fallout: New Vegas. Then, released in the first quarter of 2018 by ‘My.com’ after Obsidian severed ties with the game. And there’s good news! Armored Warfare has the same 2008 graphics as Obsidian’s predecessors. So, if you’re looking for a game that does everything World of Tanks does but worse… Here it is! It’s a game that surrounds itself around the zeitgeist of online micro-transactions games, the classic login to find that there’s new things to buy. And modes that surround themselves with filling your time.

Although there is no campaign, there is a backdrop of political and economic disdain. Where business owners and brands capitalise over the business of war in order to maintain a financial benefit. You, the tank…man… are employed in order to take territory after territory in order to win. Now these battles mostly come in the form of Armored Warfare’s main flagship mode: ‘Global Operations’, where you go around in a Tank and take over territories. Or PvP battles where you do the exact same thing. And ill spare describing the rest of the modes because you can guess what it is by now.

However, if you do in-fact want to download this game, and play its flagship mode you have to pay 30,000 credits a pop. Something you can earn as you play, or off-course, buy from the PSN store at your leisure. And if you perhaps feel incentivised to pay for these credits, the mode will mostly consist of you driving around an unusually slow tank for 3-4 minutes before you see an enemy in the distance.

And when you finally manage to confront the enemy; you will be privy to one of the most boring displays of battle you’re likely to see in a video game. It becomes a case of who shoots first, as you have to basically remain stationary, and wait 5 seconds to reload EVERY SHOT before you can finally hit the other tank for the 4th time.

Usually, a satisfying gameplay experience has to be a priority when developing a free-to-play game. And Armored Warfare makes the mistake of allowing in-game currency to dominate who has the better equipment, instead of just aesthetic rewards. Something which is why Fortnite and Overwatch dominate the gaming landscape right now.

Although it does have aesthetic customisation element, the game seems to lack much depth in its store. Essentially, this game becomes a pay to win game, but the winning part is the most apathetic and completely mind-numbing experience. Just a victory screen with no sense of enjoyment or positivity.It’s the lack of depth of the game that really disappoints me, there’s a market for free-to-play games after the release of Fortnite has done extremely well. This was an opportunity for My.com to be a part of the market share in this category of the PSN store. This is a game that will essentially leave you feeling like you’ve seen it all within 4 minutes of playing the first online game, if you fancy waiting 5 minutes for the lobby to populate itself.

To conclude, it’s really hard to justify the 30GB this game will take on your hard drive. It’s a game that will have you feeling like you’re wasting your time in its outdated engine, surrounded by other players who downloaded the game simply because it was free.

REVIEW CODE: A FREE Sony Playstation 4 code was provided to Brash games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.