World of Warships
If you’ve been on board HMS Belfast in London and seen the kitted out games room, this is the game you can play. It’s available for PC and consoles for free and starts you off with a basic cruiser. You can undertake an introductory mission which gets you used to the controls and sets up a patrol of some fairly weak enemies. The gameplay is easy to start with, consisting of steering, aiming and firing, zooming in, and damage control. With each battle you’ll earn experiences points and credit. The EP goes toward researching new ships on the Tech Tree, the credits are for buying the things you’ve researched, like new weapons and improved equipment, or entirely new ships. You can control ships from Japan, USA, USSR, UK, France,
Italy, Pan-Asia, Europe, Netherlands or the Commonwealth and select which port you want to fight out of. There are over 450 detailed ships in the game.
Soon, you’ll be into a fully fledged battle, taking part with other players of a similar level against the same kind of ships – obviously you need an internet connection for this. The mission parameters dictate what the overall objectives are and the type of ship that you command determines the tactics to use. A mini-map with enemies on it makes it easier to see who you should be fighting with but it’s important to play as a team, not just steam off on your own.
The action is pretty intensive, considering that the ships can’t stop and turn on a dime/penny and when your ship start taking hits it’s time to send out the damage repair squad and maybe let someone else get to the front.
Soon you’ll be advancing through the ship Tiers, adding new weapons like torpedoes. For those that have mastered the ships, there are submarines and aircraft carriers, where you control flights of strike planes. The game is free so you only really need to pay for things you either want straight away or can’t be bothered grinding out enough EP and credits for. The class of ships goes all the way up from light cruisers to massively armoured and armed battleships and, as they are based on historical ships, you can get to refight classic battles from WWII. There are also ships that were designed on paper but never built, so these can be tried out to see how well they would have faired in practice.
There’s a big community and really, you get out of it as much as you want to put in. But with excellent graphics and thrilling action, there’s something here for the casual gamer up to the hardcore naval enthusiast. Head over to for European players.