World of Tanks: HEAT review

Have you ever been playing Battlefield and thought “This is cool, but it’d be better if I couldn’t get out of the tank”? No, me neither (I’m more of a kamikaze jeep player) but World of Tanks: HEAT makes a compelling case for tanks being the focal point of a team-based shooter. 

Full disclosure: I’ve never actually played the vanilla World of Tanks. From what I gather it’s not exactly a milsim, but also requires more strategy than many multiplayer games. HEAT takes this formula, dials it a little more towards the “arcade” end of the dial and throws in a hero shooter system. As someone with thousands of hours on Overwatch, this piqued my interest, and I’m happy to say this scratches a similar itch.

The tanks themselves are weighty behemoths that are surprisingly nippy thanks to a handy boost function. Controlling them is simple enough: you use the left stick to control the orientation and acceleration of the tank, while the right stick controls the turret. It’s easy to get the hang of, although when things get hectic it can also be easy to panic and start fumbling with the controls. It happened to me more than once, but I think it’s largely my own fault for trying to play the game like I do Overwatch rather than embracing the slower and more deliberate nature of World of Tanks: HEAT. You can’t just speed in, take on 3 enemies and speed off before they get a chance to shoot you. If you’re going in then you have to commit, as your tank might be quick but it’s also got a large (and often slow) turning circle, so you need to think about your positioning before you take a shot.

Shooting varies depending on the type of tank you’re using. Some have hulking great cannons that fire a single shot then take 3 seconds to reload, while some of the swifter options have auto-cannons that operate on a heat gauge for sustained fire at the cost of power. The one I ended up using most had four sets of two shots loaded, with no way of reloading without emptying them all. Reloading took nearly 8 seconds, so it forced me to really think about each shot and where I was aiming for. Tanks can be damaged in a number of ways: you can shred side panelling to expose the tracks and other gubbins to critical hits, or you can hit engines and even ammo stores to deal more damage or reward yourself with more ammo. I loved needing to be so deliberate with every shot, although it took a while to rewire my brain for it and stop myself just shooting on sight. 

While the tanks are the stars of the show, you’re actually playing as one of 8 agents that operate them. They remind me a lot of the operators from Rainbow Six Siege with a mishmash of caricaturist styles that shouldn’t work together but for some reason they just do. Like, I know Hound is the “sniper” tank agent, but why’s he wearing a ghillie suit while driving a tank? It’s nonsense but I love it. 

My personal favourite was Raketa, a close-ranged fighter who looks like he’s just finished a shift in a steelworks. Each agent has two special abilities and an ultimate, and Raketa’s are a joy to use. A tap of L1 and he fires a harpoon into an enemy, reeling himself into them and dealing damage as his tank slams into theirs. I always followed this up with R1 which dropped a ring of caltrops around him, slowing down and damaging them if they tried to escape. The ultimates are hilarious to use too, as each one is accompanied by a campy cutscene showing the agent flicking switches and getting ready to use it. Raketa’s ultimate had me laughing out loud the first time I used it, as he flies into a rage which somehow lets his tank fire faster and survive any hit. Again, it makes no sense but I honestly don’t care, it’s brilliant.

Each agent gets two tanks too, so there’s quite a lot of variety when you drill down into it. I tried out a bunch of them, and although I liked the idea of sniper tanks, in practice they were a little bit too tricky for me to use effectively. They’re weak (as far as tanks go) and don’t seem to do huge damage, so I think they require more tactical thinking to target weak spots, which I’m not going to do when I can just pretend to be a giant mechanical Captain Ahab, spearing enemies and reeling myself into them.

Game modes are varied too, and while they often focus on controlling points on the map to earn points, there were a few unexpected surprises, like a Kill Confirmed mode, which I found really fun. I’m not sure it’s the type of game where I’d dig deep into modes and systems outside of the actual tank gameplay, but I enjoyed just booting up the game, pressing “Quick Match” and playing whatever it threw at me. 

Maps are sprawling, with more verticality than I expected although I struggled to make use of it due to how the tank turrets move. You’ll be fighting in deserts or across war torn battlegrounds, smashing through research facilities or blasting enemies through hollowed out buildings. There’s plenty of variety with lots of room for you and your teammates to spread out, and I imagine with some communication you could probably make good use of the space.

World of Tanks: HEAT surprised me with its engaging mix of arcade tanky combat and hero shooter systems. It’s a lot more tactical than I expected, requiring a good knowledge of your own abilities along with certainty in your actions to ensure you were engaging in fights you could actually win. There’s a ton of variety here in terms of game modes, maps and agents and you could easily spend hours just experimenting with it all. If you’re even remotely curious about hero shooters then this is definitely one worth trying.