World of Tanks HEAT Is A Mech Game. You Just Don't Know It Yet

The thing about mech games is, sometimes you gotta know where to find them. Mecha themselves are too niche and their fans too splintered to make a multiplayer mech game make sense. After all, the umbrella is so big that it can store multiple fantasies in it, and you need to be able to rally enough players with the same one.

World of Tanks HEAT seems to be that game for anyone who's ever fantasized about the boots-on-the-ground VOTOMS style mechs. The only catch- you're a tank. 

08th MS Tank

Having tried out the closed beta, World of Tanks HEAT is a pretty good middle ground between the systems-heavy World of Tanks stuff and something more welcoming like, say, your average hero shooter. On the front-end, it's not unlike something like Valorant. Choose your operator, then put them in one of two tanks that determines their loadout. 

But once you actually start the match, things change. I feel like a Scopedog, moving through the game's warzones to rush to capture points. You have a boost, but movement feels very intentional- you can't just be mindlessly sprinting since you're literally driving a truck with a gun taped on to the top of it. Even when running the DPS-class operators, you wanna still keep a good distance from your targets- hitting key points is extremely vital, and the best way to make sure you're not wasting rounds is to at least have the whole tank in view. 

It's in these shooting engagements that the game most feels alive. Tanks are naturally armor plated- your shots won't do much if you think like an FPS player and try for "head" shots. Instead, you wanna focus down key points of armor and shoot them off, exposing their vitals.

This is where the game really sings for me. The tank I was using had a series of rocket launchers next to the turret. I felt like something out of 08th MS Team, using a main firearm to create an opening and then unloading with heavy ordinance. Sure, I wasn't zipping around like an Armored Core, but that gritty, real robot feeling still carries over even when you're not technically piloting a robot. 

Even with my boots replaced with treads and my treads firmly planted on the ground, the action still feels intense. While I'm blasting rockets into a tank I'm suddenly getting notifications- I've hit the enemy's ammo supply, or even damaged their engine. Considering none of us are capable of hitting a kind of speed that hints at urgency, it's the only way to create tension- by having your tank fall apart while you're unable to do anything about it. 

The Clunk Is The Charm

There's something to be said about the ults though. World of Tanks HEAT does a good job of keeping them feeling grounded by not having them necessarily be big Ryu Ga Waga Teki Wo Kuraus. Instead, suddenly my floor is all lit up, and I'm getting an NPC on comms telling me to get out of an area before an airstrike arrives. Even trying to launch one of these strikes myself ends up being a higher-skill maneuver than you'd expect- you can't be calling airstrikes in the middle of a skirmish unless you're willing to let yourself take the hit with you. Worse yet, you might also need to take a few of your teammates, too- so it's better to think about time and positioning before you drop one of these. 

Still, if you enjoy this kind of clunky, heavy combat, I'd definitely recommend keeping an eye out for World of Tanks HEAT. I'm a sucker for any game that wants to do its own thing on a control level, and HEAT is doing exactly that by forcing you to learn gunfights on its own terms. There's no release date on the title just yet, but if you wanna get in your own wheeled Scopedog be sure to keep an eye on the game's Steam Page for future betas.